mansion is substantially built of brick, three story and basement. The foundation walls are three and one-half feet thick. The reception hall is large, the ceilings lofty, and the whole mansion is indicative of refined taste and wealth. From the upper windows, a magnificent view is had of the surrounding level lands and the waters of the creeks and the York River. During the life of Governor Page, Thomas Jefferson was a frequent and welcome visitor there. On one of his visits, he wrote the rough draft of the Declaration of Independence in what is now known as the 'Blue Room,' situated on the northwest corner of the second story of this house. The elaborate Flemish bond brickwork, the towering three stories, and the siting of the mansion were all meant to recall elaborate London homes of the era. In that sense, Rosewell was among the most sophisticated early buildings built in America. "Rosewell was the largest and most advanced brick building in Virginia at the time," writes architectural historian Daniel Drake Reiff. "It was unique in being of London townhouse design, and it seems likely that a London bricklayer was brought over to supervise the massive undertaking and to execute the more complicated detailings in brick – like the door casings."The similarity in Flemish bond brickwork between Rosewell and Christ Church, built in Lancaster County by Page's father-in-law, Robert Carter, has led some to speculate that the same masons may have worked on both. The mansion was the first in the American colonies to have a projecting central pavilion, "antedating any other by a score of years," wrote architectural historian Fiske Kimball in Domestic Architecture of the American Colonies and of the Early Republic. "At Rosewell the pavilions, front and rear, are masses deep enough to affect the spaces of the interior, but a glance at the plan reveals that they were adopted for plastic exterior effect." As originally completed, the house had a flat lead roof behind a parapet atop its three stories, and twin octagonal cupolas at each end. Flanking dependencies in front of the mansion formed an elaborate forecourt. The interior was painted in high style, such that the restorers of Colonial Williamsburg relied, in part, on an order by John Page for paints from London to give a sense of the colors in the Governor's Palace at Williamsburg. In 1771 Page wrote to John Norton