History in action!

Tonight, the Interpreting Material Culture class was finally introduced to the main house at Morven, where we'll be doing a lot of work in the coming weeks. Our previous classes have been held in the coach house, which is not connected to the mansion itself.

Follow this link to see the official Morven Park website. The first large green button under the animated banner, "Mansion & Grounds," has a brief advertisement video that allows you to see some of the outside of the house and grounds. It calls the house "newly renovated." In fact, the house is being renovated and is not yet open to the public. The current plan is to have a few of the front rooms open to visitors by April, but at the moment, the house is a gutted work-in-progress.

As grand as it looks in the video and website pictures, the impressive front is barely a hint at the massive labyrinthine interior. It is unimaginably immense, which is why the restoration process has taken over two decades so far and still has a long way to go. As of now, approximately $8 million has gone into the restoration project, which is small peanuts compared to other sites, and what will eventually be spent on this one. It is only through the luck of some smart financial moves early in the project that the foundation can afford to continue its efforts with the economy as it is now.

Below, I have about 25 photographs from our introductory tour. They were taken with my cell phone, so I apologize for the horrid quality of some of them. Dim light messes with the auto-focus, it seems.

And now, take a look at a few snapshots of what goes into preserving a historic home:



This is a sadly fuzzy shot of a lightbulb above the door to the mansion safe, which was installed in the 1920's. It was very Mafia.




These are the original floorboards, which have been in storage in a trailer for three years. Many rooms have piles of these lying around. They're being reacclimated to their original environment: before reinstalling them, the wood needs time to return to its proper shape after being stored elsewhere for so long. Each floorboard is numbered; they will be laid exactly the way they were before.




This photo is difficult to make out, but it was meant to be a shot of the wall under a staircase in the same hallway the safe door is in. With the floorboards removed, there's a gap between the wall and floor letting in light from the next room.




There are gaps like these in many of the rooms, made to install a fantastic fire-extinguishing system that uses an oxygen,removing mist rather than water to extinguish fire. You can see the original brickwork through the gaps.




This room is right off the main entry. I took this photo to show the high ceilings. The section of missing wall in the corner shows the original wooden framework, behind which is the outer wall of the earlier brick structure.




A close-up of one of the French windows. This will all be repainted and patched up eventually.




And here's what's behind that bare framework in the corner two photos up! You can see the foundation of the main structure. There's a large gap because it was originally slightly out of alignment with the additions.




Another view of the wall through the framework. You can't see it in my photos sadly, but this spot is still unpatched because they actually found where there used to be a door leading out of the main structure, which was bricked over and hidden.




Messy, deteriorated brickwork between the two walls.




An unfinished patching job where the pipes leading to the fire extinguishers were installed. I'm not sure what the white stuff is exactly, but we were instructed not to touch it with our bare hands as it contains lime.




The doorway between another side room and the main hall. It's a huge doorway and the ceiling goes up yet another three feet or so beyond it.




Some terrifying carvings on a mantlepiece.




The so-called Trophy Room is everyone's favourite. In stark contrast to the pale yellow and white dust-covered rooms of the rest of the house, it is rich and colorful, the top half of the wall papered in salmon burlap, and the bottom half all dark wood. The hunting trophies were inherited by the Davis family from previous owners.




The Trophy Room again. A braided hoof...?




MOOSE!




A wider view of the room.




Piled furniture under the deer head. I actually took this photo three times because it so confused me -- the large covered thing in the middle was not yellow, and I have no idea why my camera continued to register it as such. It was white. Huh.




In the bathroom off one corner of the Trophy Room -- a square toilet!




More mantle sculpture in the main hall.




Ancient electrical fixtures in the library. The wires are covered in CLOTH. Yes, that's a good idea...




Original wallpaper behind the bookshelf panneling.




Most of the ceilings had been restored, but here's one that had had no work done on it yet. It was terribly shabby.




Another gap between wall and wall, this one on the 2nd floor.




The kitchen! An iron stovetop put in where the hearth used to be.




The bottom of the cabinets all around the room. I thought it was quite beautiful.




Govorner Davis' bed. We were all at a loss as to how anyone could sleep comfortably on that -- it's too short for any adult of normal height.



So ends my tour. There will be more as the semester progresses. In March and April, once the construction has been finished in a few of the lower-level rooms, our class will go in to assist with some of the less specialized tasks -- taking inventory, re-hanging mirrors and portraits, situating the furniture, etc. Our professor told us we may even be allowed to help restore some of the heads in the Trophy Room, but they have to consult the experts on that, since the methods of preserving trophies back then involved arsenic and they don't know right now if it's safe to let students help.

A great class today. I hope those of you not paying for this have enjoyed my little glimpse into the field I plan to go into!