Parlor from the William Moore House

This parlor was taken from a house built in Petersburg, Virginia in 1811 for William Moore, an Irish-born pharmacist, but prominently displays furniture made in New York City. Many pieces once belonged to the noted early-twentieth-century collector Bertha King Benkard and were donated to the Museum after her death. In 1980, the Museum renamed this room in her honor. Like the American Wing's Baltimore and Haverhill Rooms (18.101.1 and 12.121, respectively), the Benkard Room exemplifies the popularity of Robert and James Adam’s neoclassical taste in the young United States. Each of the Moore House’s two floors had a center hall with a room on either side. The Museum’s interior was taken from the parlor, which originally had windows on the fireplace wall and the two adjacent walls.