The Wythe House is one of the finest surviving pre-Revolutionary homes in America and was the residence of George Wythe — Virginia's most distinguished lawyer and legal scholar, America's first law professor, and the man who taught Thomas Jefferson the law. Jefferson considered Wythe his most important intellectual mentor, and the house was a salon for the Virginia Enlightenment.
The house is a large, symmetrical brick building of exceptional quality for the colonial period, built around 1755. It stands at the Palace Green in Colonial Williamsburg and is furnished to reflect its 18th-century appearance. Tours interpret the life of the Wythe household, including the enslaved people who lived and worked there — the house serves as a good case study in the moral contradictions of the Founding Fathers generation, Wythe being a particularly complex example (he eventually freed his enslaved servants in his will, unusual for the time).