Ladew Manor House
Window Documentation and the Path to Restoration
Ladew's manor house carries its story in its windows: the wavy glass, the hand-cut muntins, the Palladian arches. Progress Preservation was engaged to produce a comprehensive window schedule and documentation package for the manor house — the evidentiary foundation for stewardship, planning, and any future restoration. Over a two-day survey in May 2026 we worked room by room and floor by floor, measuring openings, recording materials and construction, noting condition, and photographing each unit. The full photographic record of 167 images is keyed to a room-numbering plan recovered during the survey, so the record and the schedule cross-reference cleanly for a craftsman, a curator, or a future board.
The windows resolve into a handful of families, not dozens of one-offs, and that clarity shapes everything that follows. Principal double-hung sashes, roughly three feet by six, set the rhythm of the center-section rooms. The Oval Library's matched Palladian pair, set into the curved wall above a checkerboard floor, are the architectural jewels of the house, with two more Palladians crowning the upper gables. The study's Gothic bay carries hand-painted glass in its upper lights, and the Elizabethan room keeps diamond-leaded casements with painted roundels beneath an extraordinary plaster ceiling. Most units are in good order for their age and handmade origin; a short list warrants attention as the schedule is finalized.
The house has also given us the evidence for a shutter restoration done right: a single exterior shutter survives at the executive office, dated to circa 1929 with its original hardware intact, and across the house the attachment hardware survives even where shutters do not. Field survey, unit numbering, measurement, and the photographic record are complete. The condition assessment and comprehensive window schedule are in progress, followed by annotated location drawings on the redeveloped plan, restoration bidding based on the schedule, and the evidenced shutter program sequenced after the windows.
