Another element common, and often distinctive, on late 18th century stairs was the stair bracket.  To design a bracket for the ca. 1797 stair at Montpelier, architect Mark Wenger based his design off of an existing ca. 1790 stair bracket at the Moses-Meyers House in Norfolk.  In turn, this bracket itself appears to have been based on a design found in a commonly available late 18th century architectural pattern book by William Pain.  However, the bracket's design was not copied exactly and it was modified to fit the longer depth of the Montpelier stair's treads.