Selling the Colonial Past: Entrepreneurship, Tourism, and the Creation of the Colonial Williamsburg Experience, 1926–1976
Introduction When visitors entered Colonial Williamsburg in the middle decades of the twentieth century, they encountered far more than a collection of restored buildings. They moved through an environment designed to make the eighteenth century legible, comfortable, memorable, and marketable. Reconstructed public buildings gave architectural form to the political story of colonial Virginia. Costumed interpreters, historic trades, guidebooks, films, shops, restaurants, and hotels extended that story into a complete visitor experience. Merchants Square placed a modern commercial district beside the restored town rather than inside it. The Williamsburg Inn offered visitors a refined place to stay without pretending to be an eighteenth-century building. By the 1950s, a modern Visitor Center and an elaborate orientation film managed traffic and introduced guests to the historical narrative before they entered the Historic Area. The result was neither simply a museum nor simply a re...