Bellevue was also the home of Catherine and Margaret Reynolds, Robert’s sisters. They occupied their time as artists, working in pencil, crayon, sepia wash and water-colour. Paintings include scenes along the Detroit River and the north shore of Lake Erie. The work of the Reynolds sisters is considered to be among the earliest work by an English artist in the province, and include “A View of Amherstburg, 1812”; “The Commandant’s House at Amherstburg”; “Bellevue”; “Stowe”; and “Chief Joseph Brant’s House, Burlington”. Catherine and Robert Reynolds lived at Bellevue until their deaths in 1864 and 1865, and are both buried at Christ Church.

“Bellevue in 1820 had the Neo-classic plan beloved in Virginia: a large central hip-roofed block with gabled dependencies attached by covered passages to the main unit. In Miss Reynolds’ water-colour the large windows, their lintels ornamented with keystones on the façade and sides of the house, were glazed with double-hung sashes of equal size, six panes to a sash, making a total of twelve panes per window.

The water colour shows a small-scale repeat pattern in the roof cornice such as would be produced by the application of the Neo-classic Doric Order.

Bellevue in its heyday was Neo-classic in the true Adamesque sense; all principal reception rooms enjoyed fine proportions and delicate detail. The mantelpieces, now perhaps over-restored, boasted the reeding, the paterae (flat, formal rosettes), the swags of fruit and flowers which graced the best buildings of Robert Adam or Samuel McIntire of Salem.” [From “The Ancestral Roof”]