Swannanoa Mansion
Virginia
High on the ridge above Rockfish Gap sits Swannanoa, a fifty-two-room marble palace completed in nineteen twelve by railroad magnate James H. Dooley as a gift of love for his wife, Sally May. Dooley, the same man who built Maymont Mansion in Richmond, spent two million dollars and brought over three hundred artisans to construct a building modeled on the Villa de Medici in Rome. The exterior is white Georgia marble; inside, Italian Carrara fireplaces, gold plumbing fixtures, and Tiffany stained glass windows.
Dooley died in nineteen twenty-two and his wife a few years later, leaving the palace without its owners after barely a decade of use. The property passed through several hands and fell into long decline, but Swannanoa still commands the Blue Ridge skyline, an improbable monument to Gilded Age excess perched above Interstate Sixty-Four.
