[MR] Peeling Back Layers of History [In Md. State House] - washingtonpost.com

[David Chessler]

Pictures in the original. The MD state house is the oldest in 
continuous use, dating to the 18th C.  There is a lot of colonial era 
archeology in MD

The people who have excavated Roman ruins (or older) may not be 
impressed, but we think it's pretty special.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/13/AR2009031303069.html?hpid=topnews

Peeling Back Layers of History
In Md. State House, Preservationists Hope to Return Old Senate 
Chamber Closer to Its Original Look

By Rosalind S. Helderman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 14, 2009; B01

Architectural detectives in Maryland will spend the next year 
studying ghost images that splotch the walls of one of the nation's 
most historic spaces in the hope that the clues will guide the 
restoration of the room to its appearance at the time of the nation's birth.

For years, a mysterious water leak had plagued the walls of the Old 
Senate Chamber in the Maryland State House, the nation's oldest 
continuously operative legislative building. The water was causing 
ugly bubbles in the plaster of the historic room, where in 1783 
George Washington stood in front of the Continental Congress and 
resigned his commission as head of the army.

Congress also ratified the Treaty of Paris, the official end of the 
Revolutionary War, in the room. And it was the home of the Maryland 
State Senate for 103 years.

In search of the source of the water, the preservationists last year 
peeled back all of the plaster and paint accumulated over the years 
in the Old Senate Chamber, revealing the bare brick beneath. And, 
stripped to its bones, the room began to share its secrets.

"What we have here is the closest thing we will get to having walls 
talk," said Elaine Rice Bachmann, director of outreach for the 
Maryland State Archives.

Clearly visible, for instance, are shadows around a podium where the 
Senate president's chair stood -- long hidden by years of accumulated 
paint and plaster. The shadows revealed that the raised platform once 
included two broad steps rather than the three more narrow ones the 
room has sported since a 1906 renovation.

High-tech paint analysis in the niche behind the chair shows that the 
room was originally a beige faux sandstone, not the lovely sky-blue 
color it was painted until it was recently stripped.

Protruding bits of wood set into brick around a large fireplace 
indicate that the wooden frame around it once extended much farther.

And the balcony that runs along the room's back wall? Well, the 
experts are convinced that the balcony looks entirely different from 
its original appearance.

The room was last restored in 1906, when the Maryland Senate outgrew 
the space and moved down the hall to a newly constructed State House 
addition. That year, the architects also aimed to return the room to 
its Washington-era state, all vestiges of which had been ripped out 
and replaced with high Victorian ornamentation in an 1876 
redecorating. The 1876 changes were roundly panned in their time.

Today's preservationists said their forbears did their best, but they 
simply did not have the advantage of the technologies and methods 
developed in the past century.

For instance, the conclusion about the paint was confirmed when it 
was revealed that a chip of the room's original plaster had fallen 
off the wall during the 1906 renovation and lodged in a small hole 
along the room's floorboard, where it sat undisturbed until the 
removal of the plaster.

The historians are also embarking on an exhaustive search for 
drawings or historic photographs that show the room in earlier eras. 
They hope that the long-lost clues to the room's mysteries could show 
up in someone's basement or attic and have appealed to the public.

They would love to turn up the faithful measurements that architect 
George Frederick said he took of the room's original balcony when he 
ripped it out as part of the 1876 changes. He told contemporaries 
that he packed up the drawings before he moved to Europe.

The historians believe Frederick might have fabricated the story of 
accurate measurements in an attempt to placate critics who disliked 
the new balcony. But they also hold out hope that some helpful 
citizens will discover the drawings and prove them wrong.

That discovery would pale in comparison to the big prize: original 
drawings of the Maryland State House by architect Joseph Clark.

They have been lost for more than 200 years, but State Archivist 
Edward C. Papenfuse still believes they could be found -- and he has 
reason to hope.

One day, three decades ago, a puzzling man walked into Papenfuse's 
office. The man refused to give his name or provide a phone number. 
But he claimed to be an Annapolis resident who had in his possession 
some original drawings by Clark. Papenfuse encouraged a donation, but 
the man eventually left, never to return.

"There's a real possibility someone out there has them," Papenfuse said.

The architects have figured out the reason for the bedeviling water. 
Instead of a leak from outside the building, as long assumed, the 
water was forming as condensation between the layers of paint and the 
bricks that form the wall.

Now they hope to complete their analysis of the newly discovered 
clues about the room's original appearance in about a year.

Then it will be time to make decisions about what to do with the 
results. The group will have to discuss whether to try to make the 
room look exactly as it did the day of Washington's resignation or 
include renovations completed just a few years later. Washington 
himself, returning to Annapolis as president in 1791, declared that 
he believed that the State House had fallen into disrepair. Papenfuse 
said he believes Washington's comments sparked a flurry of touch-up work.

They also will have to debate how much time and money should be spent 
pursuing absolute accuracy -- a goal the historians all agree will be 
unattainable. Still, they believe it is important for the experience 
of generations of visitors that they try.

"Is cubic zirconium okay for an engagement ring?" asked Orlando 
Rideout V, an architectural historian with the Maryland Historical 
Trust. "I can't tell from here, so why does it matter?"

Rideout said he believes accuracy is found in the details. A room 
that has had been faithfully restored, down to its floorboards, will 
have an intrinsic authenticity even to non-experts.

Papenfuse said increasingly visual visitors, weaned on television and 
YouTube, need to be able to see history to be able to understand it.

"We owe it to what transpired here to give a sense what it looked 
like as accurately as possible," he said.



This Story
    * 
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2009/03/13/ST2009031303269.html>Peeling 
Back Layers of History
    * 
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/gallery/2009/03/13/GA2009031303231.html>Reconstructing 
History at Maryland's State House


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