Restoration and Reconstruction

Putting an 18th-century face on a 21st-century building is a feat of research and resourcefulness, explains Colonial Williamsburg architect Scott Spence. September 01, 2008

Transcript

Lloyd Dobyns: Hi, welcome to Colonial Williamsburg: Past & Present on history.org. This is "Behind the Scenes" where you meet the people who work here. That's my job. I'm Lloyd Dobyns, and mostly I ask questions. With me today is Scott Spence, director of architecture and engineering for Colonial Williamsburg. Scott and his team oversee the restoration and reconstruction of Historic Area buildings. When did you start here?

Scott Spence: I started here at Colonial Williamsburg in 1975, just prior to the bicentennial year.

Lloyd: Have you ever restored, reconstructed – whatever you want to call it – a building or part of a building and then found out it was wrong?

Scott: Several times. Not necessarily to say it was wrong, but at any point in time we do a reconstruction or restoration, you use all of the tools and the knowledge and the research that you have at that time and you put forth that information into your project. Currently right now with the Anderson blacksmith shop, which we reconstructed in the early 1980s, we are now in the process of preparing plans to again reconstruct that building in a different style based on knowledge and research that has resurfaced within that timeframe since the early '80s. The Governor's Palace, being another perfect example, where we had new inventories came to light, new research that allowed us to more authentically reproduce the interiors of the Governor's Palace, based on that knowledge.

Lloyd: You say new research came to light. Considering the length of time it has been, is there much new research that's still being found?

Scott: Maybe not so much in documentary research, but certainly the field of forensics, and understanding of archaeology and building materials has certainly brought new things to light for us, whether it's in paint analysis or the analysis of fragments that we get during archaeology, or reading the stratigraphy of the sites, or understanding the plant material remains on sites. Also, finding new architectural materials in and around the site – perhaps materials that were used that were borrowed in another project that show up that we've discovered from one building to another. A perfect example of that is the project we're currently working on now on the design of Charlton's coffeehouse. Much of what we know about that coffeehouse actually lies within the Cary Peyton Armistead house, which was built in the 1880s. A lot of material inside that building was borrowed from the 18th-century coffeehouse and was discovered and has been analyzed to help us understand what that structure would have been like in the 1760s.

Lloyd: Of the materials used in a building today, how many would have been, or could have been used in the buildings in 1760?

Scott: Very few. The materials today don't meet the species specifications or the hardness, say in materials of wood. You don't have the ring count or the density of wood today that's on the market. Say, take a lumber that you buy – pine – for two-by-fours it's very fast growth and it's not rot resistant, and it has very large growth rings, and it's not as dense as the woods that were being harvested in the18th century and used in our buildings. When we go out to reproduce or reconstruct a building, we try to find those same types of materials to the same specifications. I won't say they're far and few between, but it takes a little bit of work to go out and find those materials. For brick, for instance, we are able to reproduce brick pretty readily to match the specifications of what they did in the 18th century, but again, you're not going to go to your local builder's supply and find the kind of brick that we use. Always we have to have that specially made for us.

Lloyd: Well you have your own, you make your own brick here, don’t you? Do you use those?

Scott: We do, to a degree. We have limitations on the amount of brick that we can produce. One little catch there is that bricks that we use do have to meet the hardness and the strength characteristics that the modern-day building codes require. Even though we can get the shape and the size and the texture and the color to look 18th-century, we also have to have the hardness that local or modern-day codes require. So that requires a little bit different firing.

You can look at the Ludwell-Paradise house, another one of our original buildings. The Palmer house on the east end of Duke of Gloucester Street near the Capitol. I would say those are some of the finest examples. Again, the Wythe house, an original building on Palace Green. Great examples of 18th-century brickwork.

Lloyd: What do you do for glass? I mean, you can't just go buy a pane of glass.

Scott: There are still companies that reproduce glass in the method that was used in the 18th century. We've also stockpiled glass over the years that we've been able to salvage, either from salvage yards or from buildings that were being destroyed. Even though we don't like to salvage materials from buildings that were destroyed, it is one way to save one element of a historic building. So we do have, you know, a stockpile of some of that glass. Fortunately, our glass holds up relatively well. We don't have to replace it very often. In a reconstruction, we do need those materials, so we do have those on hand.

Lloyd: After more than 30 years of doing this, have you gotten used to certain builders from that period, so that you can look at a certain building and say, "Aha, Charlie built that."

Scott: Well, there are some identifying characteristics of carpentry work, maybe some of the brickwork, certainly finish work – whether it's wainscoting or paneling. There are some characteristics and markings on the wood that we, during analysis, we've been able to identify who that person may have been in the 18th century. Several of the buildings were built by master builders throughout the 18th century. You can certainly see their hand in the work of those buildings.

Lloyd: Along Duke of Gloucester Street, what are the buildings that you would recommend that people go see if they wanted to see construction work from the 18th century?

Scott: Certainly some of the better examples would be the Peyton Randoph complex, which we completed over the last 10 years. That included the restoration of the Peyton Randolph house, but it also includes now the reconstruction of the kitchen and the hyphen that connected the kitchen building to the house, and then several of the outbuildings, including dairy, smokehouse, granary, and some storehouses. It's a perfect example of an urban plantation setting that Peyton Randolph had. But if you go into each of the buildings, you can certainly see the techniques that were used in joinery and the size of timbers, and the way they were put together in a very clear manner. I would say also if you go to the Anderson Forge, even though I mentioned earlier that the Blacksmith's shop is currently under study and plans are being done to reconstruct it in a different manner, I think it is typical of some of the buildings that were built very quickly in the 18th century. It's very popular with our guests, not only from the fact that people love to see the blacksmith working in the shop, but I think the architecture, or the simplicity of the architecture, perhaps in comparison to some of the finer buildings in the Historic Area is a nice contrast.

Lloyd: When you start on a building, the building still exists, you want to restore it to what you think it looked like in 1760 whatever-it-was. What's the first thing you think of?

Scott: Well obviously, we do a lot of research to try to understand how that building was used in the 18th century. What was its function? Certainly a very detailed analysis of that building is one of the first orders of business. To really understand the function, how this building was built, why was it built, who built it, and what are we going to do to try to be authentic to that building.

Lloyd: That’s Colonial Williamsburg: Past & Present this time. Visit history.org to learn more. Check back often, we'll post more for you to download and hear.


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