The House of Burgesses approved money for a governor's residence in 1706, and the building was finished in 1722. Alexander Spotswood arrived in 1710 and moved into the partly finished house in 1716.
Patrick Henry (1776 to 1779) and Thomas Jefferson (1779 to 1780) lived here as governors. When the capital moved to Richmond in 1780 the governor's residence moved too. After the Siege of Yorktown it served as a hospital for wounded American soldiers, and it burned on December 22, 1781.
The house you see is a reconstruction. Work on the original foundations began in December 1931, using excavations, Jefferson's drawings and the Bodleian Plate, an engraving from about 1740. The palace opened to the public in April 1934.