Lincoln's home: preserving the private for the public

Lincoln's home in Springfield has just undergone a $2.2 million restoration. The house, which is administered by the National Park Service, is the only one Lincoln ever owned. Located in a four-block National Historic area, the home is open to the public daily, except for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day.   Photo courtesy of Springfield Convention and Visitors Bureau

Abraham Lincoln's Springfield home is, quite simply, one of the most famous houses in America. Since his death in 1865 the frame house on the corner of 8th and Jackson streets has been a mecca for travellers from around the world seeking a better understanding of this legendary figure. Even with all the endless publications about, seminars on, memorials to and appraisals of Lincoln, Americans and foreigners alike still need to touch the place where he dwelt from 1844 to 1861. This experience seems to satisfy a craving for contact with the legacy of the man in a way the written or spoken word will not. Our human need to visit the places associated with our heroes has caused monuments to be erected in every society. It has also fostered the historic preservation movement in the United States.

Because of Lincoln's stature at home and abroad, his Springfield house provides an interesting illustration of changing patterns in this movement since its early days. Last autumn, for the first time in more than 30 years, the house was closed to the public. This was its second major restoration and the most extensive and expensive ($2.2 million). Lincoln's home was reopened with national fanfare on June 16, 1988, and a million visitors are expected to walk through its front door in the next year.

Over a century ago Americans first began saving historic buildings — not for their intrinsic architectural merit, but for their association with revered figures. By understanding our hero's environment, so it was reasoned, we could better emulate him and thus improve ourselves. The first American house museums were, in effect, places for moral instruction. Henry Adams, social historian and architectural critic, asserted that before the advent of the printing press, the "reading" of buildings was a fundamental way in which we absorbed our cultural lessons.

Problems of interpretation inevitably arise, however, when a new society no longer understands what the original builders and occupants of preserved structures meant to convey. As Henry Adams's biographer J.C. Levenson notes, this has "rarely interfered with men's talent for seeing the reflection of their own desires" in structures from the past. In this fashion Lincoln's home has been read differently by successive generations. Only gradually have we overcome the log-cabin Lincoln, realizing that his Springfield house was, in many ways, an urban, upper-middle-class dwelling reflective of gentility and refinement. Through more than a century historic preservation generally and the Lincoln home specifically have reflected each era's tastes, prejudices and desires.

American preservation began in 1853 with Ann Pamela Cunningham, a southern lady who became the driving force behind saving George Washington's Mount Vernon. Miss Cunningham's personal campaign marked the first time that national attention focused on saving a historic building. Charles Hosmer, in his Presence of the Past, finds that in these early years support for preservation came mainly from the middle class, who were bent on promoting our heritage and patriotism, not on saving interesting or valuable architecture.

Lincoln's house soon followed Washington's Mount Vernon as a target for preservationists. For the first couple of decades after his death the house was controlled by his eldest son, Robert Todd Lincoln, who fretted continually over its future. Lucian A. Tilton,

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president of Illinois' Great Western Railroad, had been the first tenant to occupy the house after Lincoln, renting it in 1861. Even in private hands, Lincoln's former home attracted much attention. Springfield historian James Krohe Jr. reports in "People come to Mr. Lincoln's home" (Illinois Times, February 10-16, 1978) that before the Tiltons moved from the home to Chicago in 1869:

"Pilgrims came to it from all over the North, some to pay respects, some to learn first-hand more about the man Lincoln. The men and women who lived in the house came to expect the knock of strangers asking, sometimes incredulously (for there was scarcely a less log-cabin-like structure in Springfield), 'Is this where Lincoln lived?' The Tiltons alone counted 65,000 of them in eight years."

The obvious step was to open the house to the public. What was needed was a determined individual like Ann Pamela Cunningham at Mount Vernon. Springfield's version of Miss Cunningham was the mildly eccentric Osborn Hamilton Oldroyd, a pioneer collector of Lincoln memorabilia. After a checkered career as a newstand-keeper, insane asylum steward, kitchen-ware maker and bookstore manager, Oldroyd finally landed in Lincoln's hometown. "The sole focus in Oldroyd's otherwise unfocused life," says Krohe, "was Abraham Lincoln." Oldroyd managed to rent the Lincoln home from Robert Lincoln's agent and opened it to the public in 1882, hawking souvenirs in its rooms to help defray expenses.

With Oldroyd's occupancy the Lincoln home became a house museum. In 1887 Oldroyd's private enterprise became public when Robert Lincoln donated the home to the state of Illinois. Beginning in those early days, however, and continuing to the present, bitter arguments have raged over the appearance and interpretation of the house. How should it look?

This group, out for a ride, paused to have their photo taken in front of Lincoln's home in the early 1900s. Already a famous tourist attraction, the house was painted a light brown with darker brown trim, much as it is today. The tree in front is the long-dead original Lincoln elm; it has recently been replaced with a newer, more disease-resistant variety.   Photo courtesy of Lincoln Library

The household as the Lincoln family knew it largely disappeared when the Lincolns vacated it for their 1861 move to Washington, D.C. Mary Todd Lincoln parted with many belongings in a great hurry. One of the few dependable depictions of those rooms in the Lincolns' time is series of interiors from Leslie's Illustrated, and even these reflect some artistic license in their rendering.

Recreating Lincoln's home began pretty haphazardly with Oldroyd. The souvenir-shop atmosphere reflected the lack of direction in historic preservation theory at the time. The accepted method of illustrating a famous resident's life was to display carloads of relics and mementos related to his public and private existence. In this spirit Oldroyd filled the house to overflowing with clutter reminiscent of the "Great Emancipator." But this mood struck many — including Robert Lincoln — as being undignified and disrespectful to Lincoln's memory. When Oldroyd was unceremoniously booted out by Gov. John Peter Altgeld in 1892, he was replaced by a minor patronage appointee as custodian.

The main change during the next 20 years seemed to be in furnishing the house with (mostly) period pieces. But, in reality, the stage was being set for battle — a fight between accurate reproduction of the rooms versus prettification of them to suit modern taste. This goal of accuracy was slow in coming about. To compensate for the seemingly old-fashioned look of the parlor, for example, one custodian slipped in several new tables, chairs, lighting fixtures and accessories. Even the old pieces were given an up-to-date look by their arrangement. The custodian placed furnishings with the studied casualness then considered stylish, in contrast to the more stiffly formal arrangement present in Lincoln's day. The rooms were an 1890s evocation of 1850s decor. But with more and more historic houses being opened to the public, increasingly sophisticated visitors began to question the appearance of the rooms. More care in their presentation inevitably followed.

The first big strides in recreating a house more identifiably Lincoln's came under the successive custodianships of Mary Edwards Brown (1918-1924) and Virginia Stuart Brown (1924-1953). Both were descendants of old Springfield families and proud of their connections to the hometown of Abraham Lincoln. Both struggled (in the words of Virginia's brother) to "maintain the dignity of the Lincoln Home, deplored commercialization of it, [and] regarded it as a shrine." They jealously guarded the house while handicapped by miniscule budgets and limited help on the one hand and incessant demands of tourists on the other. Virginia Brown fought for correct wallpapers and furnishings "in order to place the furniture like [the] Leslie's Weekly sketch."

Historic preservation in the first half of the 20th century, though stressing accuracy more than it had in the 19th century, was still characterized by rugged individualists who brooked no questioning of their motives or conclusions about "their" sites. In this Virginia Brown was typical, as illustrated in her decision about the house's exterior color. She had concluded

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from talking with Springfield residents that the house had originally been white with green shutters, and thus it stayed during most of her tenure. This color combination had, by 1920, become associated in the popular mind with the "colonial" era, which was considered superior to the recently dead, mostly unlamented Victorian age.

When scientific methods of examining paint colors came into general use in the early 1950s, state officials determined that the house had really been a shade of brown, called in contemporary documents "Quaker" brown. A battle ensued which caught the fancy of the press and pitted the old view against the new. On one side were the bulwarks of preservation, maidenly ladies of dignified mien, backed by the gods of patriotism and tradition. On the other was a battery of government experts armed with stacks of research documents. The government won. In September 1952 Time magazine reported with detached amusement an exchange between Virginia Brown and state archeologist Richard Hagen:

Hagen: "Now, here's a board I scraped —"

Miss Brown: "Your board was put on after the [18]70s. Here is an original walnut board."

Hagen: "It doesn't have any white paint on it." Miss Brown: "We know it was white part of the time Lincoln lived —"

Hagen: "The only proof of white paint is from people born after 1890 who talked to people born before 1890."

Virginia Brown retired the next year.

The change in exterior color was the first step in a major renovation during the 1950s which transformed the house into the place we knew until 1987. Before work began in the 1950s, state archeologist Hagen carefully reported the findings of his detective work, supported by old photographs, documents, newspapers and, for the first time, physical evidence. Careful notation was made of "all evidence bearing upon physical changes in the house."

Hagen ultimately realized, however, that all efforts to recreate the house of this era would be hampered by several "major blights," foremost being the prominent protective railing installed inside the house to keep visitors from wandering aimlessly and bumping into valuable artifacts. "Adjustment has been necessary in every room," said Hagen, "between space allotted for restoration and space for public traffic." Even today it is still necessary to separate tourists from furniture with guide rails.

Despite these "blights," the house had come to reflect more accurately than ever before how Lincoln might have known it. The larger concern for the second half of the 20th century centered around the physical setting for the house itself. Its neighborhood had greatly deteriorated, and many feared that the house would soon be afloat in a sea of commercial development. Not only local, but national concern was voiced about such a fate. In 1969 local officials sought federal protection for the house, which culminated in successful negotiations with the U.S. Department of the Interior to assume ownership. In 1971, amid much fanfare, Presdident Nixon travelled to Springfield to sign the bill making the transfer official. Not only the house, but 12.28 acres of the surrounding neighborhood were acquired for the newly founded Lincoln Home National Historic Site.

Department of Interior staff responsible for the 1987-88 restoration were still beset with the problem facing preservationists a century earlier — our continual desire to impose what we find attractive in the face of contrary evidence. "I think it's mainly a mid-20th century resistance to 18th and 19th century practices which prevents us from seeing what is right there before us," says Fran Krupka, project historical architect for the most recent restoration. A good example is the exterior brickwork (chimneys, foundation and front retaining wall) as well as interior trim, which had been unpainted for years. Physical evidence uncovered recently confirmed that all or parts of these had been painted originally. Many, including Krupka, balked at the thought of covering over walnut woodwork, so carefully refinished during the 1950s renovation. "But walnut," admits Krupka, "was considered far from rare then — merely a good, dense, workable, native wood which could be painted to conform to the current Greek-Revival preference for light colors." Once the idea of painted brick and walnut was accepted, researchers looked at historical photos with a new perspective and realized that the evidence had been correct. Our minds had simply refused to register these facts earlier.

This tendency toward personal interpretation is something that everyone, from first-time visitor to Park Service administrator, brings to the home. The goal of the newest restoration, in Krupka's words, is simply to produce "the most faithful restoration to date." That this goal has been met is impressively evident. But it is still important to realize that any historic building which attempts to freeze a moment in time is always creating an idealized version of that time. The artfully arranged children's toys on the bedroom floor would never have been so perfectly placed while Lincoln's family occupied the home. But the newly restored setting gives us both a better approximation of their house and a sounder starting point from which to find the reflection of our own particular desires.

These reflections can be played out on a broader stage than ever before, not only in the home itself, but in the panorama of the entire Lincoln neighborhood. In times past the Lincoln home has loomed too large in relation to its less visually interesting neighbors, giving us the wrong impression of its original importance. Now, with a reworking of the four surrounding blocks, we have a better setting than previous generations in which to see the home, not as a monument, but, as it should be, as an integrated part of a Springfield neighborhood.□

Edward J. Russo, a Springfield historian, is head of the Lincoln Library Sangamon Valley Collection and author of Prairie of Promise, the most recently published history of Sangamon County.

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