#DayOfFacts at Tudor Place

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On February 17, 2017, Tudor Place joined hundreds of other museums, historic sites, archives, libraries, science centers and cultural organizations on social media to address confusion over “alternative facts.” This “Day of Facts,” in the words of its grass roots organizers, reaffirmed “values of curiosity, intellectual pursuit and openness. Facts matter, our visitors matter, and we will remain trusted sources of knowledge.”

These are the stories behind the facts shared by Tudor Place:

Marietta Minnigerode Andrews: Artist, Poet and Author

Suffragist cover by Marietta M AndrewsBorn in Richmond, Virginia, Marietta Minnigerode Andrews (1869-1931) studied art in Washington, New York, Paris, and Munich. In 1895, she married her former art instructor, Eliphalet Fraser Andrews, Director of the Corcoran School of Art.  After he died in 1915, she began to write and publish prose and poetry.  She was also a founding member of the Washington Watercolor Club, a designer of stained glass windows, and creator of intricate paper silhouettes.  This cover drawing for the April 18, 1914, issue of The Suffragist, called “Signs of Spring,” depicts a woman orator addressing a crowd. The Suffragist was published by the National Women’s Party and issued monthly from 1913 until 1921. A group of works by Andrews came to the Tudor Place collection by way of Helen T. Peter, widow of Minnigerode Andrews’s son. Helen married Armistead Peter 3rd, the property’s last private owner, following the death of his first wife, Caroline.

Max F. Rosinski: “Washington’s Finest Cabinetmaker”

reproduction chippendale chair

This ca. 1903 Rosinski chair matched a Peter family set once owned by George Washington.

Max F. Rosinski (1868-1962) was born in West Prussia and moved to Washington, D.C., with his family at age 13. On March 12, 1895, he took the U.S. oath of citizenship. After an apprenticeship in cabinetmaking, he established his own shop in the city, where he was active for over 60 years. Tudor Place owner Armistead Peter 3rd was a loyal client, describing him as “the finest cabinet maker that Washington ever had.”

Rosinski’s works at Tudor Place include original pieces like a telephone table and an unusual sideboard/serving table in the Dining Room referencing Colonial style, as well as a pair of chairs commissioned to match the Peter family’s set in the Queen Anne-Chippendale style that were owned by George Washington in the presidential mansion in Philadelphia. Peter also employed Rosinski to repair significant pieces, including the square piano on view in the Saloon, and even had him work on the eight maple doors and pocket doors in house’s reception rooms.

John Luckett: Enslaved by Virginians and Union Soldiers

John Luckett w garden tools, A1.41bw

John Luckett, in characteristic apron and derby hat, with tools on South Lawn.

During the second Battle of Manassas, the Union army sacked a plantation in Lewinsville, Va., in Fairfax County, and “stole” several enslaved people. One of them was John Luckett. Impressed to drive a pair of mules pulling an army supply train, Luckett hatched an escape plan with 20 other men but was one of only three who actually ran. With no pass from an “owner,” Luckett ran the risk of recapture and imprisonment. As he told the story to his first Tudor Place employer, Britannia Peter Kennon, which she then recounted to her grandson, Armistead Peter Jr., Luckett and his fellows were again detained by Union forces but managed to convince them they had been visiting friends. His account of his enslavement and escape ended with, “I just kept on—crossed the Chain bridge and made for Georgetown.”

Kennon described Luckett’s 1862 arrival at Tudor Place in her reminiscences:

John came to ‘Tudor’ in March 1862. I was standing on the brow of the hill by the gate when he came in and asked: ‘Do you want to hire anybody?’ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I do want to hire somebody!’ ‘Well, I’s looking for a job!’ ‘Where did you come from?’ I asked. ‘Over yonder!’ ‘But, where is ‘over yonder’?’ ‘Over yonder,’ he said. Well, as I wanted some one to work the gardens, I asked him, ‘What wages do you ask?’ ‘Fifty cents a day and you needn’t be afraid to take me neither! Which I told him I was not and from that day to this John has proved to be all that I could wish for.”

Luckett was one of thousands of African-American migrants seeking work then in Georgetown and Washington City. A month after he arrived, Lincoln issued his emancipation decree for the District of Columbia. Did Britannia know he had been enslaved? Perhaps, or perhaps she only realized it later, but she was a single woman running an estate in wartime and needed help. Luckett told her only that he came from “over yonder,” later amended in family lore to “over yonder in Virginie.”

Luckett worked at Tudor Place for 44 years and was loved by the Peter family. His recorded wages in 1904 were $22 a month plus holiday gifts and paid sick leave. “Old John was a character (and one we loved dearly),” wrote one local chronicler, “not much over five feet tall, with grizzled hair and goatee, and always wearing an apron tied around his waist and a derby hat on his head.” Though the Peters offered to buy them a house in Georgetown, Luckett and his wife chose to live across the city. They raised six children in a home on Capitol Hill from which John walked to and from Georgetown every work day, almost until his death in 1906.  Family lore maintains that the Peter family adorned his coffin with fronds from their sago palms, a tradition usually observed for family members only.

Margaret Carraher: From a Tiny Pecan, a Mighty Tree

Maggie2

Born in Ireland, cook Maggie Carraher retired from Tudor Place in 1911, the year this was taken.

Margaret, known as “Maggie,” Carraher was an Irish immigrant employed at Tudor Place from 1905 to 1911, when she retired following the death of her employer, Britannia Peter Kennon. Listed on the 1910 census as “cook,” with an immigration date from Ireland of 1868, Carraher was later described by the Kennon’s grandson, Armistead Peter 3rd, who remembered as a small boy “helping” her in the kitchen and “particularly, I used to watch her making bread, which she used to do expertly, and which was the only bread that was used in the house.”

Carraher is perhaps best remembered for a tiny gift she gave Kennon, her mistress: a pecan nut that grew into a tree that today towers more than 80 feet. Britannia planted the nut south of the house. Though pecans’ generally prefer more southern climates, it not only survived but grew so large it had to be relocated, as described in the Tudor Place book by Kennon’s grandson, Armistead Peter 3rd:

The pecan tree to my left was planted during my great-grandmother’s lifetime, in the east end of the arbor, by the kitchen. I think that she had expected it to shade the path in front of the house in the afternoon, but they decided that it was a little too close to the house, and it was then moved down to where you now see it. My Father said that it stayed there for many years, practically with out growing at all, probably as a result of cutting the tap root. However, a few years later it started to grow and ever since then has made a splendid growth every year.

While at Tudor Place, Carraher lived in the room that is now shown as the office and helped care for Britannia Kennon in the last years of her life. She retired at age 62. House records indicated that the next owner, Kennon’s son Armistead Peter Jr., sent her cash gifts at Easter and Christmas for several years after.

 

From the January Clean: An Unexpected Repair

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Cleaning, counting, and assessing conditions are all part of the drill when the museum closes each year for what we call the “January Clean.” Rugs are rolled up, paintings removed from walls for examination, and the walls themselves examined. In the garden, bricks are relaid and trees trimmed amid the usual plant care and preparations for spring. The Museum Shop undergoes a careful inventory (14,000 postcards!), while in offices and workspaces elsewhere on the property, closets and cabinets are straightened, files sorted, and other year-long accumulations dealt with.

For collections staff especially, close examinations of objects left quietly undisturbed the other 11 months of the year leads sometimes to unexpected new projects. The repair of a heavy walnut desk bookcase in the North, or “children’s,” bedroom was one such. Armistead Peter 3rd, the estate’s last private owner, first brought the 19th century piece here from the family’s Content Farm, a Washington County, New York, property where they spent several months each year. Today, the desk bookcase holds school books, novels, small toys, and other objects from “AP3’s” childhood.

The desk bookcase is actually two separate pieces, an upper cabinet with two glazed doors that sits upon a desk with drawers and a fall-board writing surface. When they examined it as part of a routine January inspection, Curator Grant Quertermous and Collections Manager Kris Barrow found one of its rear feet had loosened too much to support the piece’s weight. To relieve the immediate pressure, staff removed the item’s entire contents and the upper case.

As so often happens with a “lived-in” collection like ours, long in use, Grant and Kris needed first to address an earlier repair. The leg had had been reglued during the mid-1900s, and the adhesive from this earlier repair had weakened over time.  The leg and glue block (itself replaced sometime in the 20th century) had separated from their attachment point at the desk’s back corner, placing additional stress on the carved bracket foot.

The term “glue block” might be unfamiliar unless you collect or study antique furniture: It describes a small piece of wood that braces a corner joint — on this piece, where the two sides of the ogee bracket foot are joined.  A piece like this desk bookcase, where the carved bracket foot is simply decorative, actually rests in back on two uncarved, square feet concealed behind the rear ogee bracket feet.  With this rear foot loose and the joint separated from the glue block, much of the piece’s weight was now on the non-supporting decorative element, rather than the intended weight-bearing element.

Had we not detected the loose foot, the bracket foot could have split or, worse, buckled under the weight of the desk bookcase and its contents. Fortunately, the necessary repairs were uncomplicated. Staff elevated the desk on its back on padded saw horses to relieve the bracket and gain access to the damaged area and applied wood glue in key spots to re-attach the foot and glue block.  Clamps were placed on the foot overnight to apply pressure while the glue dried.  All of the work was documented and photographed as this repair now becomes a part of the physical record of the desk bookcase and is noted in its file. The piece itself, meanwhile, once stabilized,  resumed its place along the wall and its familiar toys, books. and childhood treasures returned to its welcoming shelves.

Just one project among many, the exercise shows how the room-by-room January Clean enables us not just to monitor objects and spaces within the house but to undertake crucial conservation work where needed. For more complicated repairs and conservation, the January assessment often marks the starting point for extensive planning and, often, fundraising, for projects involving conservation specialists.  [Tudor Place members are invited each January for a New Year’s breakfast and behind-the-scenes look at the January Clean and projects underway, scheduled this year on January 23, 2016.]

Having completed the upstairs rooms during the first week of January, Collections staff have turned their attention to the Drawing Room and Parlour, including careful cleaning of chandeliers (see the video clip) to make their crystals gleam.  The Office, Kitchen and servants’ spaces follow toward the end of the month. Lastly, Grant will oversee the Dining Room installation for Presidents’ Day and spring’s highlighting of the Washington Collection, for which we happily welcome back the public when we reopen (at half price all month) on February 2, 2016.

View January Clean albums on Facebook:

What Lies Beneath, Part II: Secrets of the Temple Portico Roof

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The Temple Portico is sporting a new roof, its first in almost a century and a half. (Keep reading for the details behind that estimate.) Just as important as a repaired roof to keep the house interior dry, conservators and historians are excited by what the preservation process “uncovered” about the roof we replaced (“Phase 2,” from the 1870s) and the original that preceded it, “Phase 1,” 1814-1816. From acorns to rafters to double-struck nails, the dome’s innards revealed a rich  history to anyone patient enough to read the clues. Among the key revelations, we can now confidently date and type the roof’s previous incarnations.

Following Preservation Protocols
The roof project followed years of planning and weeks of studying its foundations. As posted earlier, conservation began with removal of the existing, Phase 2, metal cladding, followed by documentation and stabilization of the framing — curved wooden rafters — and wood sheathing beneath. When we opened a small section to examine existing conditions back in January.

Architect William Thornton had made the Temple Portico the centerpiece of his drawings for Tudor Place, as seen below, but left construction details to be worked out by the unnamed craftsmen who built it. Because they left no records, this conservation project was our chance to see how, with simple equipment, materials and tools, they made the sketched dome a physical reality.

Any project that removes historic fabric requires scrupulous notes on all that came before — materials, design and construction — for future reference and interpretation. That’s why, as soon as the scaffolding was complete, Curator Erin Kuykendall and I mounted its top level on the first of what would be many ascents.

We made measured drawings and took photographs of the old tin roof’s seams and other construction particulars. As the project progressed, we gathered material samples for our architectural fragment collection.

Clues “Written” with Wood and Nails
From the prising up of the first metal scrap, we could see that this was going to be an exciting reveal: The wood below appeared relatively intact and displayed clear evidence of nail patterns from a still earlier roof. (We also found two acorns sitting on the rafters, which Director of Gardens and Grounds Suzanne Bouchard identified as white oak.)

Through the patterns of nail holes, the roof’s story began to emerge. In the photo above, the pulled-back metal reveals nails spaced at three-to-five-inch intervals. Looking right, though, other lines of nail holes — black ones — appear, spaced about every inch. Their pattern creates eight-inch-high rectangles of widths between six and 12 inches. This is roughly half the size of the metal pans being removed in 2012; that accorded with what we already suspected about the Phase 1 roof. But now we were getting closer to answers about how long it was there and of what it was made.

Digging down further yielded clues. Once the entire upper portion of the Phase 2 metal was gone, we found wood sheathing in varying condition. Some crumbled at the touch, but other sections were sound. Most exciting from a historical standpoint, almost all of it appeared to date to 1814-1816, the construction period of the house’s center block. From an architectural standpoint, the roofers and I marveled over the high level of craftsmanship employed in the dome’s construction, including hand-cut, curved wood sheathing and massive rafters that taper in depth as they near the dome’s top. Most likely, the rafter structure would have been crafted and pieced together at ground level before being installed above.

When it came to further narrowing dates, nails proved the best clues. The light colored wood sheathing you see at the dome’s pinnacle, above, is a different thickness than most of the darker wood below it and was attached with different nails. The wood below is sash-sawn yellow pine, cut by hand on a curve so as to wrap evenly around the spherical shape.

The specimen at far right above is a one-inch machine-cut nail used to secure tin plates. In the center is a machine-cut three-inch nail that attached the lighter-colored wood sheathing beneath the metal near the top of the dome. (These were also lightly scattered through the rest of the wood layer.) At left is the most interesting find of all: A double-struck nail of a style employed for only about three decades starting in the 1790s. This period marks the transition from fully hand-wrought nails made by blacksmiths to the introduction of completely factory-made nails, in the first half 19th century. Double-struck nails combine a machined part — the long, cut “shank” — with a head shaped by a blacksmith with two strikes of the hammer, hence the name. The blacksmith’s blows gave the heads a distinctive rectangular shape showing two depressions from each hammer strike.

The Portico roof findings conformed with date estimates of the main (central block) roof, as that larger portion was also secured with double-struck nails. This match of materials and craftsmanship confirmed our conviction that the Portico was constructed concurrently with the center block of the main house.

The Clues Beneath: Dates and Materials Answer Old Questions
Struck by the richness of this and other new information in the roof’s lower layers, we opted to delay the project for additional investigation and documentation. The postponement enabled us to invite an examination by Orlando Ridout V, renowned architectural historian and co-author of the Tudor Place 2002 draft Historic Structure Report (an architectural analysis commissioned by Tudor Place). Ridout, who heads the Maryland Historical Trust’s Office of Research, Survey & Registration, confirmed that we were indeed looking at the circa 1814 building fabric.

Until this point, Tudor Place staff and researchers had been unable to say for sure what material covered the dome during the earliest (Phase 1) period of 1814 to the 1870s. Based on wood shingles that had been found in a roof over the hyphens (the corridor sections linking the center block to the outer wings), we had surmised it might have been clad in wood. But Ridout’s inspection of the tightly spaced nail pattern (black holes) indicated that metal was the material of choice in 1814.

He also helped us home in on the dates of the later, Period 2, roof. Because its tin pans were attached with machine-cut rather than wire nails — the next step in nail technology — it must have been installed in the mid- to late-19th century. Knowing that, and assuming a life span of at least 50 years for the original 1814 roof, I delved into the Tudor Place Archives to examine early photos of the house’s south elevation.

Eureka. Although difficult to see here on a computer, looking through a magnifying glass at an early print of this circa 1873 photograph showed seams on the Portico’s metal roof that matched the seams of the tin roof we removed this year. The means the tin roof and, most likely, the repaired wood sheathing beneath it date to sometime between the Civil War and 1873. That means most of the tin still there in January 2012 was 140 years old!

The demolition process also unveiled evidence of numerous repairs over the years, especially to the roof’s flashing and water table. It is the flat portion at the bottom of the dome. Just above it, you can see a series of wood shims that were installed all the way around the dome. These were nailed atop earlier flashing that was very rusted and had obviously failed long before. Probably in an effort to skim water from the roof toward the gutter, the shims changed the angle of the bottom of the dome. Because they were attached with wire nails, we recognize them as an early-20th-century alteration.

Clues for Further Research
More clues came from the metal used for the flashing — smaller metal pieces that bridge and seal the junction of roof and wall. We found two manufacturing stamps. The earlier metal was stamped by a company called Blue Ridge, while some of the later flashing (at the water table level) was stamped by a company called Potomac. Both names indicate they were regional manufacturers, which gives us a great starting point for future research about the materials and craftsmen involved in construction and maintenance of Tudor Place.

Because half the dome extends into the mansion’s interior, the roof restoration also proffered an opportunity to look at its hidden, back side. At its top, we found, the wall is wood frame rather than masonry.

The photo above shows how the dome’s rafters were formed before the expert smoothing and shaping of the carpenters’ planes. In the shadows, what looks like scrap lumber is actually nailed joints of rafter boards coming together to make the curved dome. On the exterior, they were smoothed and carved into a semi-spherical surface, before being covered by flat metal tiles or “pans.” (The cuts ran to depths of about six inches near the top of the dome, expanding to about 18 inches near the bottom.) But within the house walls, the rafters required less labor: Their upper edges were left with the awkward-looking right-angle joints seen above.

Unfortunately, no great artifact was hidden there — just construction debris and a great view of the curved rafter design on the one side, and the backside of the dome’s plaster ceiling on the other.

A High-Tech Record of a Low-Tech Roof
Given all the roof revealed, we couldn’t resist capitalizing even further on this once-in-a-century opportunity to see “what lies beneath.” Delaying one day more, we brought out a crew from Direct Dimensions, a laser-scanning firm, to document the roof with state-of-the-art laser cameras. The data they gathered will be used for historic documentation and future research. It will help with identifying and sorting out the nail hole pattern associated with the circa 1814 roof. Most exciting of all, it enables us to create three-dimensional virtual models to use in  future interpretation on the evolution of the house.

These are snapshots from the laser scan draft report:

Below, the larger dots indicate nails securing the wood sheathing to the rafters. The hundreds of lighter dots are nail holes left from the Period 1 (1814-1816) and 2 (1870s) metal roofs. If you look closely, a pattern of the smaller, Period 1 roof pans emerges (follow the gray “lines,” which are actually rows of closely spaced dots).

At Last, Repair and Reconstruction
Once the roof was scanned, repairs to the wood sheathing began. Wagner Roofing applied reclaim heart pine to adjust the water table’s slope and repair short “sister” stretches of the rafters damaged by moisture and dry rot. They used southern yellow pine to fill gaps in the sheathing. Even working with thicknesses of only 5/8 inch, they found it challenging to bend the wood onto the dome, inspiring new respect for the craftsmen two centuries ago who managed the job with only saws, hammer and nails.

Once the gaps were filled, the sheathing was covered with 1/4 inch-thick plywood to provide a solid surface for the new metal roof. Using plywood allowed us to retain most of the original sheathing, even though parts of it were in poor condition. Next, the metal crew arrived to install new lead-coated copper pans and to line the dome and gutter.

The height of each course of metal matches the tin roof just removed. This preserves the Phase 2 roof’s visual character. The metal’s shine will fade, meanwhile, to the weathered gray seen today on the hyphen roofs (to either side of the house’s center block).

The metal installation having been completed, the surrounding stucco was replaced around the roof flashing’s edges.

 

By Elizabeth Peebles, Preservation Manager

An Heirloom Returns: The George Washington Plateau

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By Curator of Collection Erin Kuykendall and
   Communications Officer Mandy Katz

Imagine the excitement at Tudor Place last week when we accepted delivery of the exquisite plateau, or set of mirrored trays, that belonged to George and Martha Washington, according to Peter family tradition. Hand-crafted of exotic woods and mirrored glass and set on ball feet, the artifact had been away since May 2010, undergoing treatment at the Williamsburg, Virginia, studio of conservator Thomas Snyder. Today, visitors will find it center stage in the Dining Room for the duration of the Window on Washington  (through March 18), a close look at Tudor Place items relating to the first First Family.

The Tudor Place Dining Room is set to show how the plateau might have appeared
 on a late-18th-century table. With its original seven sections, the mirrored set 
could have added sparkle to a full banquet-length table at Mount Vernon. 

Plateaus were a fixture of fashionable European dining tables in the late eighteenth century, so it seems fitting that the new American President — albeit living on a more modest scale than his counterparts across the Atlantic — would have acquired one, too. During his presidency, Washington asked his close friend, Gouverneur Morris, to send “mirrors for a table … the frames may be plated ware or anything else more fashionable.” What Morris sent was a nine-part, silver-plated French plateau with a pierced gallery of turned balusters. It repeatedly graced the presidential dining table until Washington retired to Mount Vernon in 1797. At that point, he sought something simpler and more suited to life on his Virginia estate.
A Vermeer? No, this image shows Curator Erin Kuykendall examining an endpiece of 
Tudor Place’s recently returned mahogany plateau before a south-facing window
in the mansion’s Dining Room, where the piece will be displayed through March 18.
The Tudor Place plateau is carved from mahogany and has delicate satinwood-inlay stringing around the lower edge. Small, ball-shaped ebony feet elevate the plateau above the table-top. Each section contains a silvered-glass mirror bordered by a carved, gilt molding. Of the plateau’s original seven pieces, four are owned by Tudor Place Foundation, and a fifth is on loan from a Peter family descendant. The Washingtons also owned a dozen figurines of unglazed “bisque” (or “biscuit,” meaning not-fired) porcelain like the ones below, which would have been arrayed atop the mirrored trays in fanciful arrangements: 

Bisque figures on loan from Martha Custis Peter, 
descendant of Martha and Thomas Peter.



Around these figures, the hosts would have displayed twinkling candles, gleaming silver candlesticks, and colorful flowers for a truly dramatic effect.

During the Window on Washington, four sections of the plateau, each measuring two feet, take their place on the Tudor Place dining table, bearing items from the French porcelain dinnerware service that the Washingtons purchased in 1790 from a French diplomat, the Comte de Moustier. The Washingtons’ delicate English wine glasses with wheel-engraved decoration (on loan from Martha Custis Peter, a descendant of Martha and Thomas Peter) also grace the table. 


This cut-glass salt cellar (left) and Sèvres sauce boat served on both
Washington and Peter family dining tables.
The plateau’s treatment by Conservator Thomas Snyder included a thorough cleaning to remove centuries of surface debris. Two new ebony feet were turned to match and replace missing ones and adhered with fish glue. Gaps and breaks in the plateau’s gouge-carved mahogany railing, or “gallery,” were filled with replica pieces crafted from mahogany and stained to match the original.
The plateau’s edge, or “gallery,” needed extensive repairs. 
(Plateau section on loan from Walter Gibson Peter III, a
descendant of Martha and Thomas Peter.)
Replacement pieces were crafted, like the original, of mahogany.
The mahogany insert was stained to match the original.
Mercury leaching from the original silver-amalgam glass had to be contained; broken mirrors were replaced with commercially obtained reproduction glass of tin leaf-and-mercury, sealed in place with hide glue. (Antique replacement glass was considered but rejected for the reasons that it might later be mistaken for an original installation or repair, and because it might also fail over time, much as the original pieces had.) Here is the renewed piece, its wood shined with a mixture of pigmented beeswax and carnauba waxes:

Microscopic examination by Dr. Martha Case of the Herbarium of the College of William & Mary (WILLI) identified the loose seeds and grasses cushioning the two ends of the plateau as containing a species of Asteracea, or commonly found field daisies and sunflowers. These plants grow all over the world. Since the seeds ripen during the summer months, it is likely this practical, botanical packing material was collected and assembled into the plateau sometime in June, July or August.

Detail of the seeds, plants, and animal frasse found
in the curved end section of the plateau.
The original glue blocks in place on the plateau sections also provide further clues as to the plateau’s origins. Microscopic analysis of the wood identified the species as Pinus strobus, or Eastern white pine, and the use of this locally available wood suggests the plateau was probably made in America, rather than imported from England or Europe. George Washington purchased furniture from prominent Philadelphia cabinetmakers and it is possible this plateau was also made in a thriving urban port such as New York, Philadelphia, or perhaps Baltimore. If the plateau was made by an American frame-maker or carver working in the new American republic, it would be an exciting discovery, since very few wooden plateaus survive in American museums and collections. Further research on these questions is still underway. 
The plateau was still at the conservator’s studio when
Curator of Collections Erin Kuykendall came to Tudor Place
in August, so she is making the most of this first opportunity
to study it first-hand.
Executive Director Leslie Buhler examines a
hand-made brass screw from the original piece.
Curator Erin Kuykendall’s observations on the construction
and materials of the plateau will enter the object record for this piece
and add to our understanding of decorative arts in the Federal period.