For the first time in 30 years, Colonial Williamsburg overhauled its official guidebook, resulting in a 256-page full-color tome that now includes a comprehensive look at the city’s role in the revolutionary years.
The new book — available at local merchants for $19.95 — is meant to serve as a repository that details the entire Colonial Williamsburg experience, from Historic Area programming to dining and lodging to history and architecture.
“For someone who wants a history of Williamsburg during the revolution there is no better place to go,” said Paul Aron, the director of publications for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.
Colonial Williamsburg has offered a guidebook since the 1930s. The guidebook received its last major overhaul in 1985, though it has received minor revisions with subsequent printings since then.
Aron said the book offers something for everyone. It can be used to help plan a trip to Colonial Williamsburg, to help digest a recently completed trip or as a guide book for visitors walking the streets of the Historic Area.
Near the beginning of the book is a section about planning a visit to Colonial Williamsburg, followed by a detailed portrait of Williamsburg, from when it became capital in 1699 to its prominent role in both the buildup to the American Revolution and the revolution itself.
“The 1985 book certainly has history, but the last guidebook was a lot more focused on architectural history, when was building built, architectural features,” Aron said, “while this is much more focused on the political side of the history and the economic side of the history and the social side.”
The shift toward focusing more on the city’s revolutionary period is in keeping with the addition of the Revolutionary City theme at Colonial Williamsburg.
“In 1985, we were very much Colonial Williamsburg and not the Revolutionary City,” Aron said. “Now we’re both.”
Also contained in the book are individual sections on more than a dozen landmarks around the historic area, biographical sketches of key Williamsburg figures in the revolution, the architectural history of every building in the Historic Area, a comprehensive look at the trades around the city and several other sections detailing programs like the RevQuest interactive game and the art museums.
“[It took] more than two years from start to finish [to create the new guidebook],” Aron said. “In a way that underestimates what was involved, because while a normal book might take that long and have one person, this was very much a foundation-wide effort involving lots of people.”
There was no guidebook during Colonial Williamsburg’s first years. High-level officials at the living history museum had discussed the need for one, but they placed the project on hold until the restoration of the Historic Area was complete, according to a history of the guidebook on Colonial Williamsburg’s website.
In 1931, four years after John D. Rockefeller, Jr. agreed to a proposal from Rev. W.A.R. Goodwin of Bruton Parish to restore the sleepy streets of Williamsburg into a vision of 18th-century America, the decision was made to begin work on a guidebook. Since then, the guidebook has gone through several iterations — including one printed in the 18th-century style on “specially made rag paper” — culminating in the new edition.
The new edition can be purchased for $19.95 at booksellers around Williamsburg and at the Regional Visitor Center. It is also available at Everything Williamsburg in Merchants Square, the official gift shops of the Colonial Williamsburg hotels and online at the foundation’s Williamsburg Marketplace and on Amazon.
