Overview
The Ludwell–Paradise House fronts Duke of Gloucester Street in Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, a handsome brick townhouse of the 1750s built for the Ludwell family — its place in preservation history secured in 1926 as the first property John D. Rockefeller Jr. purchased for the restoration — and its human story belongs to Lucy Ludwell Paradise: Virginia heiress, London salon figure and celebrated eccentric who returned widowed to this house, kept up flamboyant carriage rituals in her yard, and declined into the mental illness that saw her committed to Williamsburg's Public Hospital, the colonies' first asylum, where she died in 1814 — a real woman's sad end, told with dignity. Costumed-city telling keeps her presence: the sound of bathing — Lucy's famous multiple daily baths — from the upper floor, footsteps, and a woman at the windows, accounts interpreters share gently. The house is not generally open to walk-in visitors, seen from the street within the historic area. Present Lucy's story with sympathy first, her ghost as Williamsburg's tender tradition.