Your attention is called to a flimsies post of a general preservation news story. The focus is the restoration of Montpelier, James Madison's 19th century home in Virginia. Mountpelier Foundation is "backdating" the house to Madison's day by removing extensive 20th century additions. The artcle includes this statement:Happy reading!Wesley

I suppose in Mr. DuPont's experience with house/structure restorations, backdating to an earlier era might be uncharted territory--for him personally. But for us in the railway preservation "business" that's what we all do and I think we do it quite well. I offer as prime examples (if you don't mind a little horn tooting) our own Twin City "gate car" No. 1239, IRM's Wabash Valley interurban, East Troy's gorgeous No. 26, Seashore's Cleveland No. 1227.I can go on and on, but it's clear that this DuPont fellow has a fairly narrow view of the restoration community and his knowledge is rather myopic in that he totally ignores what others have done.Thanks!

Agreed Jim - I have "unremuddled" more than one old structure in the past 3 decades. Amazing what the insular world of academics can do to remove a wide POV even within a smaller world. If he had read OHJ back before it got printed on slick paper it was mostly about this stuff.dave

OK, now that the proverbial kindling is going, here's another quote from the same article:Enjoy!Wesley

I visited Montpellier last march, and found it to be an impressive project. They are taking a building colonial building that had evolved into a 1920’s mansion, and stripping all the post 1820’s work away, then restoring what remains to its original appearance, when Dolly Madison and her husband lived there.The scholarship seems good. There was much evidence of the extensive research supporting the project. Paint research windows were much in evidence. They are recording the type and direction that the lath runs as they gut the building. In one room they have begun to reconstruct a colonial stair case made from misc. lumber found reused throughout the building, base on remaining paint and nail holes.The site and tour are impressive. They are continuing to give tours while the work goes on. The gardens have been maintained, and they have several room settings in a former stable.On the other hand, they have made a decision to restore EVERYTHING, possibly to excess. In one room they had exposed stenciled plaster around a colonial fire place. As I understood it, rather than try to save that original detail, they would document it and replicate it. In general, the project reminded me of some of the restorations done for CSRM in the 1970’s, (the 1874 Carter Brothers Combine for example) where the goal, an “original” as built car, so overshadowed the project, that the result is more replication than preservation. There did seem to be a bit of intellectual myopia among the people I talked to (guides rather than curators), believing that they had created a new standard of restoration, and not understanding that instead they were following a well worn path.The overriding concept of restoring everything back to its earliest appearance, (along with the idea of using, and by definition consuming artifact) was one of the issues which brought railroad preservation into conflict with the established museum accreditation groups and resulted in the creation of the recommended practices for railroad museums by ARM (http://www.railwaymuseums.org/RP.htm) As the manager of a historic house museum, I think the time is ripe for house museums to create a similar set of practices specific to what we do. Recently there have been editorials published in History News, the magazine of the American Association for State and Local History, (one such article is on line at http://www.aaslh.org/images/hhouseart.pdf )as well as workshops at various national meetings, calling for an evaluation of what house museums are trying to do, and suggesting that there are just too many house museums and that as a group need we need to question both preservation and operating practices.

To add some detail to just one point in Brother Randy's excellent post, let me sketch in a little more detail on behalf of one of those accrediting groups--also my employer--the American Association of Museums. Rather than "conflict," it might be better to say that railroad museum community's initial interaction with AAM accreditation standards was a learning process for both sides, conducted for the most part with goodwill on either end. One outcome of that learning process was the mutual realization that railroad museums, like zoos and aquaria and art museums, had unique issues that required field-specific standards. AAM arranged a grant to ARM to develop the neccessary standards for railroad museums.I expect to see several railroad museums move successfully through AAM accredition within a few years; one of the things that will help them do so is demonstrating that they have applied appropriate discipline-specific practices, namely, the ARM standards.

Randy,There is already a find set of standards which are used for an building on the National Register and many others.It is called [i]The Secretary of the Interior's Standards for Historic StructurePreservation Projects[/i] It is available on the National Park Service web site and other places as well.I work with the Historic Vessel version all the time.Ted Miles