Hand-split weatherboard covers the Brush-Everard House, a five-bay, story-and-a-half home on the east side of Palace Green next to the Governor's Palace. John Bush, an immigrant from England and an early gunsmith in Williamsburg, bought this property in 1717 and began building the house ca. 1718. Over the decades, the house passed to Elizabeth Russell and her husband Henry Cary, who owned it between 1729 and 1742; Cary, who had completed the Governor's Palace and built the President's House and chapel at the College of William & Mary, added much of the wood trim and the elaborate stairway with "its elaborately turned balusters, sweeping handrails, and richly ornamented carving on the stair brackets.
In 1742 the house was bought by artist and dancer William Dering. About 1755 Thomas Everard purchased the front portion of the lot; he would be elected mayor of Williamsburg two times and served as clerk of the Committee of Courts of Justice at the House of Burgesses. Notice the weathered boards and the stair's carved details, then the Governor's Palace rising just beside it.