Mirador

Built in 1842, for James Marshall Bowen (1793-1880). The house as seen today is largely the result of an extensive remodel that took place under architect William Adams Delano in 1921, transforming the Federal plantation house into a Neo-Georgian Gilded Age estate. Acquired by Colonel Langhorne in 1892, it is most famously associated with his family: it was the childhood home of the first woman to take a seat in the British House of Commons, Nancy Astor (1879-1964); and, it was the birthplace and home (from 1920 to 1950) of Nancy's niece, Nancy Lancaster, the celebrated interior designer and owner of the fashionable fabric manufacturers/designers, Colefax & Fowler. In old age she said, "Mirador is deep in me, I feel it in my bones even now. Nothing else has ever been as important. I'm not really interested in England or America, only in Virginia and Mirador. They're my roots and my soul". It remains a private home today.