Captain Newton H. White; first commander of the USS Enterprise. Upon his retirement, White developed and maintained a 600-acre estate with a lucrative dairy farm that aimed to be the model for local agricultural practices.   The mansion is currently operated by MNCPPC/PG Parks & Recreation as an event venue.

 The main house, designed by Wm. Lawrence Bottomley and constructed in 1939, is a two-story, Regency Revival style structure, with symmetrical curving wing walls. Two brick piers at the house and two at the driveway entrance are topped by sculpted brick roosters and hens. After a hurricane severely damaged one of the chickens, WEI was asked to reconstruct it and repair the others, as well as the piers.

The chickens and all recoverable pieces were removed from the piers, crated, and brought to WEI’s Baltimore facility, where the sculptures were inventoried, cleaned, labelled, and assessed for damage.  The loose top layers were completely disassembled to work on individual brick units, and at that time, a rusting armature was revealed.  The mild steel armature was removed from the structure and replaced with a carbon fiber reinforcement.  Cleanly broken units were repaired and returned to the assembly and occasionally patched to fill in losses.  If units were irreparable, the conservation team made molds of the corresponding piece in the matching bird, and if both copies were missing the same piece, WEI sculpted new positives for molds.  One piece that was missing completely was the crown of the hen.  Based on the design of the existing pieces, WEI researched heirloom breeds to determine which one would be the best model for the new sculpt.  All new pieces were cast in cement colored specially to match the color range of the existing bricks.

 On site, the piers were repointed with a ribbon joint that matched the existing in color, texture, and technique as the main house. Damaged brick replacements were cast and installed at the driveway piers. The hen and rooster sculptures were then returned to the site and reassembled on the caps of the piers.