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Architectural conservator hunts for clues to past at Mount Washington Tavern

By Frances Borsodi Zajac 7 min read

Like a detective, Barbara Yocum searched for clues in Mount Washington Tavern as the National Park Service prepares to restore the 19th century tavern to the look it had during its heyday along the National Road. “The goal is to restore the tavern to a period more authentic to the mid-1830s,’ said Yocum, architectural conservator of the Historic Architecture Program for the Northeast Regional Office of the National Park Service.

Yocum spent three days in late May searching the house for paint and wallpaper samples, building on work she first performed in 1995 that was included in a 1997 historic structures report for the tavern, which is part of Fort Necessity National Battlefield in Farmington.

“My group provides service to all parks in the Northeast region and we’re sometimes called to other parks which don’t have the services we have,’ said Yocum, whose office is in Lowell, Mass.

Yocum already has worked this year at Washington’s Headquarters in Valley Forge National Historic Park in Pennsylvania. She’s also been called to Ellwood, a 1799 house at Fredericksburg National Battlefield in Virginia that was a Union headquarters in 1864 and a Confederate hospital. She’s also done research at Thomas Edison’s house in West Orange, N.J., and Eleanor Roosevelt’s home in Hyde Park, N.Y.

Now she’s returned to Mount Washington Tavern, built in 1835 along the National Road – present-day Route 40. The National Road was the first highway built by the federal government and now is celebrating the 200th anniversary of President Thomas Jefferson signing legislation to create the road, which stretches from Cumberland, Md., to Vandalia, Ill. The new interpretive center at Fort Necessity celebrates the story of the National Road and visitors to the park have an opportunity to see an authentic National Road tavern at Mount Washington.

Superintendent Ken Mabery noted it was good fortune that funding for the project came now, noting, “Restoring the tavern in this anniversary year is something we take pride in.’

According to literature from the National Park Service, “James and Rebecca Sampey and their family-owned and operated this imposing brick and stone building. The Mount Washington Tavern catered to the stagecoach cliental and was serviced by the Good Intent Stagecoach Line. This tavern owes its name to George Washington, who as a young man fought a battle nearby. He returned 15 years later to initiate the purchase of the land which he owned until his death in 1799.’

The tavern includes a barroom, parlor, dining room and kitchen on the first floor as well as seven bedrooms on the second floor. There also is an attic (redone in the 1990s) and a basement – floors that are not available to the public.

Lawren Dunn, park ranger and cultural resources manager, asked Yocum to return to the park this year when funding became available to continue the paint and wallpaper analysis and begin a restoration project.

“This is the first major project funding for the tavern in a long time,’ Dunn noted.

The work will include removing wallpaper that was put up in the 1970s, repairing plaster, painting the tavern walls and woodwork and refinishing the floors.

The tavern will remain open daily during the restoration, although the furnishings are being removed. Tours are also being given daily as work schedules and availability of staff permit. Work is expected to be completed by the end of September in time for the fall foliage.

The restoration will remove the wallpaper that was put up in the 1970s because it is not identifiable to any historic period.

Yocum said, “The challenge in the ’70s is that not much was available (for wallpaper) in the historic line. This was done before the bicentennial when things took off. …There’s so much available to us now.’

She explained that after the nation’s bicentennial, more people became interested in historic buildings, restoration and doing it authentically. Companies began reproducing wallpaper from documented original papers.

Still, Mabery said, “One of the issues is that even though wallpaper companies do this work, it’s a special order that probably exceeds project funds available at this time.’

That means that park service staff will be just use paint for now: the walls will be painted white and the woodwork a cream color.

Even when money for wallpaper become available, officials will take an educated guess as to where that wallpaper would have hung.

“It’s hard to say because we don’t have records,’ said Yocum. “The logical guess is the parlor – the best room in the house with the best woodwork – had paper and the dining room, with the second-best woodwork, may have had paper.’

Mabery noted it’s logical to believe the barroom did not have paper.

Meanwhile, research and technology continue to be the keys to searching for the answers of where the wallpaper may have hung and how the walls were painted. In other words, what did this tavern look like?

So, Yocum’s work is important. She takes samples from the tavern back to her lab, where she investigates them under a microscope. She already can tell some things: the building has a lot of its original plaster. The first finish was calcimine paint, a water-soluble paint like ground-up chalk with a glue binder. She found a cream-colored paint from the woodwork that she also traces to those early years.

“We have found no wallpaper except for tiny fragments with no identifiable pattern,’ she said.

Yocum show some fragments that she found crunched up and stuffed behind a baseboard, noting that it looks like newspaper – brown and brittle.

She believes it’s rag paper, but the problem is this was made up to 1900.

Her previous work also helped to date the tavern because she discovered the locks, which had just one coat of paint under them, were from a British company that used the initials of the reigning monarch – in this case King William IV, who reigned 1830-37.

“That gives us a great date range for this,’ Yocum said. “I use circa 1835. Get a building with this kind of lock, it’s gold because it’s so dateable.’

While this project is taking place, officials are also being careful to document and preserve everything because technology changes all the time.

“While we’re restoring to the 1830s look and feel, we’re also careful to keep it as a living lab so future investigation can learn more than we can now,’ said Mabery, noting such examples as hand-held X-ray machines that allow investigators to look inside walls. “… A lot of advances come from medical science or space. We never know where the next advance might come from.’

“History can change daily if someone produces a diary. The fort’s a prime example,’ said Dunn, referring to Fort Necessity. “It was thought to be a square fort until Harrington came out and found original posts to prove that it was round.’

Dunn refers to the 1953 archeological dig by Jean Carl “Pinky’ Harrington, a pioneer in historical archaeology, that proved Fort Necessity’s actual shape. The French burned the original fort after the 1754 battle. For more than 100 years, the shape of the fort was a mystery. A square fort had been erected on the site in 1932 as the nation celebrated the 200th anniversary of Washington’s birth. But Harrington’s team found the remains of the posts of the original fort and proved it was circular. The square fort was torn down and a new circular one erected at the site in time for a rededication during the 1954 bicentennial commemoration.

And while searching for answers on decor, there still is much known about life in Mount Washington Tavern, which proved prosperous until the coming of the railroad took traffic from the National Road. Park staff eagerly share details of tavern life, and there’s no getting over the beauty of the building.

After investigating the structure twice, Yocum was asked her opinion of Mount Washington Tavern.

She never hesitated.

“I think it’s a marvelous building, extremely intact and it’s just a privilege to work here. It’s a treasure,’ she said.

For more information, visit online at www.nps.gov/fone.

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