Kenmore’s Chamber Room

A depiction of Apollo, the sun god in classical mythology, is at the center of this elaborate plasterwork ceiling in the chamber room at Kenmore, in Fredericksburg. The mansion was built in the 1770s by the merchant Fielding Lewis and his wife, Betty Washington Lewis. In 1819 a later owner, Samuel Gordon, named it Kenmore and it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1970. The house features several rooms with intricately designed ceilings, the work of an unnamed "Stucco Man," who also created the plaster decorations on the ceiling in the small dining room at Mount Vernon.