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A Catalyst for CHANGE Collections: Our Blessing or Curse? LEARNING fromLEISURE pagE Contents 20 SUMMER 2015 VOLUME 70, #3 pagE 7 pagE 17 Departments Features 3 On Doing Local History 7 One Exhibition: A Catalyst for By Carol Kammen Change By David Denney 5 The Value of History By James Grossman 11 Collections: Our Curse and Our Blessing 29 Award Winner Spotlight By Rick Beard By Aja Bain INSIDE: TECHNICAL LEAFLET 17 Things Have Changed and Do 31 Book Reviews Change: History Reminds Us of That By Jay M. Price and Hanna Griff-Sleven and Paul Sleven By Peter A. Gilbert ON THE COVER 20 Learning from Leisure Dr. Peter Fix has By Terri S. Blanchette and Nicholas J. Hoffman spent more than two decades preserving the 300-year-old 24 A Room of Her Own: Changing ship, La Belle, that is Values in House Museums and now the centerpiece of the permanent Preservation galleries of the By Gary Wolf Bullock Texas State Museum Management History Museum. Courtesy Texas Historical Tune-Up Commission By Trevor Jones and Linnea Grim History News is a publication of the American Association for State and Local History (AASLH). History News exists to foster publication, scholarly research, and an open forum for discussion of best practices, applicable theories, and professional experiences pertinent to the field of state and local history. THE MAGAZINE OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR STATE AND LOCAL HISTORY EDITOR Bob Beatty | MANAGING EDITOR Bethany L. Hawkins | ADVERTISING Cherie Cook DESIGN Go Design, LLC: Gerri Winchell Findley, Suzanne Pfeil Article manuscripts dealing with all aspects of public history are welcome, including current trends, timely issues, and best practices for professional development and the overall improvement of the history field, particularly articles that give a fresh perspective to traditional theories, in-depth case studies that reveal applicable and relevant concepts, and subject matter that has the ability to resonate throughout all levels of the field. For information on article submissions and review, see http://about.aaslh.org/history-news. History News (ISSN 0363- 7492) is published quarterly by the American Association for State and Local History, a nonprofit educational membership organization providing leadership, service, and support for its members who preserve and interpret state and local history in order to make the past 1717 Church Street meaningful. Single copies are $10. Postmaster, please send form 3579 to History News, AASLH, 1717 Church Street, Nashville, TN Nashville, Tennessee 37203-2921 37203-2921. Periodical postage paid in Nashville, Tennessee. Entire contents copyrighted ©2015 by the American Association for State 615-320-3203, Fax 615-327-9013 and Local History. Opinions expressed by contributors are not necessarily those of the American Association for State and Local History. [email protected] | [email protected] | www.aaslh.org A Room of Her Own: Changing Values in House Museums and Preservation By Gary Wolf istoric house museums are pre- View through Chadwick Foyer served as artifacts entrance pavilion, with mid- and witnesses of the past, but the twentieth-century setting stories that they tell are no more beyond. hunchanging than the buildings themselves. Just as a house may need a new roof or mechanical system, alterations for acces- sibility, or more dramatic inter- vention if its historic character was previously compromised, the history represented by the structure may require updat- ing or expansion. Historian David Lowenthal described the paradox of preservation: saving a building alters, reinterprets, and transforms it and its his- tory. Even more than that, each generation’s preservation may change a building and its story again.1 Longyear Museum’s Mary Baker Eddy House in Lynn, Massachusetts, illustrates the evolution of ideas about pres- ervation and historic house museums in the twentieth century, and reveals different approaches to the interpreta- tion of the past. A contribut- ing structure in the National Register of Historic Places Diamond Historic District, this small gable-roofed residence is listed by the National Park Service as one of the “Places 24 SUMMER 2015 Where Women Made was neither home to a Revolutionary hero, nor old enough Eric Roth History.” It has been to have witnessed the events of that era. Rather, it was preserved for more the residence of a still-living individual—and a woman, at than a century now, that—who was still making history. (Several years passed because of its associa- before Eddy established The Christian Science Monitor, later a tion with Mary Baker Pulitzer-Prize-winning newspaper.)5 Eddy, the founder It is telling that when members of First Church of Christ, of today’s Church of Scientist in Lynn purchased this property and opened it Christ, Scientist.2 for visitors eager to see Mary Baker Eddy’s home and her Eight Broad Street legendary attic room, they did not conceive it as a museum. in Lynn was the first Instead, in an early example of adaptive use, they planned a house Eddy owned and Christian Science Reading Room—a type of space that Eddy her home from 1875 encouraged churches to create. As typical with adaptive reuse to 1882 during a key (bemoaned by some as “adaptive abuse”), renovating for this Streetscape view of time in her formulation new purpose took priority over retention of historic fabric and restored house and fence, of Christian Science. layouts. Two-thirds of the first floor would be altered in the with new entrance pavilion As a fifty-three-year- Lynn church’s preservation of the building, along with what addition on the side. old single woman, she they viewed as its key significant feature, the garret room. purchased the recently Thus, the 1930s WPA Guide to Massachusetts recommended constructed two-family as a destination a renovated, but preserved, historic house.6 structure and rented Such modifications characterized the early phase of his- out most of it to cover her costs. She reserved the front par- toric preservation. Adaptive use saved cultural symbols but Wolf Architects Wolf lor of the first-floor apartment for meetings, teaching, and often paid less attention to details. For instance, architects services. Working in a small attic room, Eddy completed the Charles Brigham and John Hubbard Sturgis had given final edits for her major book,Science and Health with Key to the the Fowle House new life before the nation’s centennial, Scriptures. While there, she also founded the denomination, by moving it and converting it to a two-family residence. established a college, taught classes, conducted services, issued It would not become a house museum until decades later. two new editions of her book, and married Gilbert Eddy.3 Similarly, in 1927 the Belmont Woman’s Club rescued the Early Preservation and Adaptive Use historic William Flagg Homer House of 1853—another unlikely Victorian preservation effort in Massachusetts— purchasing the threatened picturesque villa where painter Less than twenty years later, the life and work of Mary Winslow Homer had worked early in his career, to repur- Baker Eddy on Broad Street, and the story of her finishing pose as its clubhouse. Eighty years later, now the club can her book in the skylit attic room, already assumed historic explore the building’s identity as a landmark of both art and significance. The Christian Science denomination boomed, architectural history, and consider anew its potential as an attracting a large and unconventional membership: not only educational resource.7 well-established businessmen but also single women and young city dwellers, who would play prominent roles in the The Historic House Museum as a democratically governed churches. By 1901, congregants Building Type had established more than 100 churches across the nation. In just a few years, its Manchester, England, congregation By midcentury, other values shaped preservation of the completed a distinctive new building—evidence of both the Broad Street house, now owned and operated by The First international reach of Christian Science and of its frequent Church of Christ, Scientist, Boston. Another round of embrace of new directions in architecture.4 changes privileged a new use as a historic house museum In 1901, the Church purchased Eddy’s house to assure its over the conservation of historic material. Architects Perry preservation. They took the same bold step organizations Shaw and Hepburn, Kehoe, and Dean drew from two nationwide continue to take today to assure the survival of decades of experience preserving, restoring, and reconstruct- structures from the past (despite the many challenges and ing Colonial Williamsburg. Surprisingly, they did not give concerns about the viability of historic house museums). priority to retaining the house’s historic features. Instead, They took a cue from pioneering preservationists such as renovations rotated the original front staircase to improve those who saved Mount Vernon and the Hasbrouck House access to the “Sales Room.” They opened a new shaft to in Newburgh, New York, a half century earlier, along extend the stair to the attic level (reached by a set of steep, with, in 1871, the little-known Edmund Fowle House in narrow stairs in Mrs. Eddy’s day). They widened the origi- Watertown, Massachusetts—all three because of association nal attic corridor to beter accommodate visitors outside with the American Revolution or George Washington. her room. And they reconfigured the apartment where the The decision at the beginning of the twentieth century to Eddys had lived following their marriage. New, thin wood save the Broad Street house is remarkable, for both when it floors through much of the house covered the wide, painted- happened and its history. Locally, Paul Revere’s house had pine floor boards. In previously renovated areas, these not yet been preserved, and Eddy’s wood-framed Victorian became the second modern layer.

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