I'm always up for road trips and historic houses. When the two are combined, it's irresistible.
So I hit the interstate on a recent morning to see the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center in Fremont. I wanted to see the $1.2 million historically accurate renovations that are almost finished at the Hayes mansion and learn about the detective work that allowed caretakers to restore some rooms to exactly the way they looked when Hayes and his wife lived there, right down to vases and portraits.
My first impression was of the stately trees dotting the lawn leading up to the 31-room mansion. My guide, executive director Thomas J. Culbertson, said that Hayes collected seeds during his travels, and the 25-acre grounds hold many varieties of non-native trees.
I could have spent a day just admiring and learning about the trees, but I followed Culbertson up the steps onto the mansion's wide porch, where Hayes used to walk laps for exercise during bad weather.
I was embarrassed that I didn't know much about Hayes' administration; was it before or after the Civil War? Culbertson, obviously used to dealing with history-challenged visitors, told me that Hayes served two terms as governor of Ohio before serving as president in the late 1880s and overseeing the end of Reconstruction.
His mansion on the Spiegel Grove estate was built by his bachelor uncle in the late 1800s as the uncle's residence and a summer home for Hayes and wife Lucy. Hayes inherited it in 1874 and added a north wing when he returned to Fremont at the end of his one-term-by-choice presidency.
If you go
Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center
What: The nation's first presidential li brary dedicated to the 19th U.S. president, and his Spiegel Grove estate, where he and wife Lucy are buried.
When: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, noon-5 p.m. Sunday and holidays. Closed Mondays and major holi days. Visitors may tour the home, museum or both.
Where: Corner of Hayes and Buckland avenues in Fremont. There is no spe cific street address.
Tickets: $5-$13, 1-800-998-PRES (7737).
Members of the Hayes family lived in the mansion until 1965, when the house was turned over to the state of Ohio. Most of the original furniture was stored in the attic, just waiting for the day when it would be put on view for the public.
Not only was the Hayes center staff fortunate to have original furniture, but thanks to an enterprising Hayes cousin, we also have photographs of almost every room, taken when Rutherford and Lucy lived here, Culbertson said.
Those photographs, diaries, letters and newspaper articles yielded valuable clues about wallpaper designs, colors, fabrics and more. Every item present in the couple's bedroom at the time of their deaths was carefully labeled, allowing restoration workers to pull the items out of storage and put them in their exact places.
View full sizeGrants and donations allowed the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center in Fremont to restore seven rooms and two hallways in the mansion to the way they looked in the 1800s. "It doesn't sound like a lot, but it is," said executive director Thomas J. Culbertson. One of the most challenging aspects was finding craftsmen who could re-create period wallpaper and furnishings. For help, the presidential center turned to the Intermuseum Conservation Association in Cleveland, one of the oldest conservation facilities in the country.
During the five-year project, the Hayes house sent furniture, paintings and textiles to the conservation association in batches so that the house could remain open for tours, Culbertson said. The last batch of furnishings was returned to Fremont last week.
In the case of a pair of damaged door curtains, clues to their original color were found in a small folded-up section that escaped sun damage, said Jane Hammond, textile conservator at the Intermuseum Conservation Association.
The embroidered curtains were gifts from a decorative arts society to Lucy Hayes in honor of her support of Prohibition, Hammond said. The curtains, originally silk satin worked with cotton thread, were decorated with flowers and peaches.
The originals were too deteriorated to be displayed, so conservators sent samples to a mill in Pennsylvania, where a family used antique looms to make new cotton/rayon fabric. Hammond supervised a team of embroiderers who re-created the decorations copied from the original. It will take about 1,500 hours of work to complete the curtains, she said.
A snippet of original fabric found on furniture in the Red Room parlor allowed experts to make a digital print of the maroon and tan pattern and reproduce it, Hammond said.
Intermuseum Conservation Association paintings conservator Wendy Partridge cleaned surface grime and yellowed varnish from paintings, and reframed a cropped portrait to restore its original, larger dimensions. "All of a sudden, the portrait had more room to breathe," Partridge said.
Partridge and Hammond agreed that this project was special. "It seemed like it was something to help the house be interpreted for the 21st century," Hammond said.
The mansion restoration was funded by a Save America's Treasures grant from the U.S. Park Service. The grant stipulated that the Hayes site had five years to raise money and complete the work. Additional money came from a second grant, state funds and donations.
Not every room in the mansion was redone. "We had to draw the line in how far the money would stretch," Culbertson said. But visitors who come for the official open house in July will be able to see the president's bathroom/study in its 1800s glory. "He called this his inner sanctum," Culbertson said.
He hopes people see the house as Rutherford and Lucy lived in it, surrounded by things they liked and portraits of the people they loved.
Culbertson will retire in July after the restoration project is complete, but he doesn't see this project as his legacy. Rutherford and Lucy are always uppermost in his mind. "It's not my legacy -- it's their legacy," he said.
Thanks to Culbertson and other talented people who care about the past, it's our legacy, too.