Experts Say Exhibit Not Reconstruction is Best Use of First NH State House |
HISTORY MATTERS
The 1758 colonial State House that once stood in the middle of
The final report will be released later this month, but the DHR leaked a two- paragraph summary of its forthcoming recommendations last week in “The Old Stone Wall,” the agency’s electronic newsletter. The long-awaited report will recommend “a phased, multi-component approach that uses the First State House to supplement and support historic sites and stories around the state.” In other words, the preserved wooden pieces have an important story to tell, but not as part of a reconstructed building.
“We don’t know exactly what the first New Hampshire State House looked like,” says DHR Director and State Preservation Officer Elizabeth Muzzey. “We’d need extensive modern materials to construct it and it would be conjectural. That’s not good museum practice now. It might have been at one time, but things in the field have changed.”
Only fragments of one-third of the original building are left and no money is currently available to rebuild it. No one knows what happened to the other two-thirds of the building or exactly what it looked like. The surviving third was discovered on Court Street in the 1870s and the idea to “rebuild” it was first suggested in 1935. The surviving piece, then a liquor warehouse, was moved to
Despite decades of intense discussion about rebuilding the State House (estimated $2.5 million) in
“We were really fortunate to get the grant so we could begin to figure this puzzle out,” Muzzey says. “It’s a puzzle with a lot of missing pieces. Anything we do beyond this study will need to come through grants from the legislature or other funders. It’s going to take a lot of fundraising.”
After years of public hearings, research, forensic analysis, and meetings with experts and consultants, the DHR will now recommend a three-phase plan for the best use of what they call “the resource.” The resource consists of 493 mostly deteriorated wooden pieces salvaged from one-third of the State House when it was removed from
FINAL STATE HOUSE RECOMMENDATIONS continued
No Plans to Rebuild First NH State House (Continued)
“Those additions and subtractions that happened later are interesting,” Muzzey says, “but they don’t relate to the history of the State House and they’re not authentic to that time period. So we never had a building-in-a-box as many people may have thought. It could not be reconstructed as a standing structure that would represent even one-third of the First State House. There had been too many changes to it.”
Since no authentic replica is possible, the team of experts hired by DHR was asked to recommend ways to best use the resource. They studied the physical condition of the artifacts, examined the architecture, created computer graphic simulations, research the heritage tourist market, and looked at budget projections. The DHR shared each phase of the process with the public in a series of hearings and online reports.
More than 20 locals attended a lively November 2011 public hearing at
By the final hearing at the
STATE HOUSE RECOMMENDATIONS continued
If You Build It, They Won't Come (Continued)
So what will the DHR recommend in its upcoming multi-phase report?
“The first phase is hopefully to find a large interior exhibition space that we could use part of the State House to create a sculpture, in effect, of the timber framing,” Muzzey says. “One idea that has been thrown out was the
This step would allow the public to visualize the wooden skeleton of the large building in whole or in part, but without actually creating another building. The fragments might then be preserved in public view with an accompanying explanation as part of the sculpture.
The second phase of the DHR plan involves a pair of small interpretative exhibits, one at the
The third element definitely includes a Web site, Muzzey says, and must focus on getting the story to a state-wide audience. The first “purpose-built” state house was in
‘I think that the story of
So was the conclusion really worth nearly a century of debate and a $250,000 federal grant? Muzzey says the funds were effectively used.
“We’ve come up with a new vision of the First State House,” she says. “It’s one that we feel is feasible. We think that folks will support it and finally be able to understand what the resource is all about, and how the early story relates to the rest of the state. We hope to find a new way to get people excited about
But like the baby monster at the end of every horror film, the renovation idea will never truly go away. No accurate replica is possible, Muzzey says, and then she hedges: “If somebody digs up a painting of the building in an attic that dates from 1790 or somebody uncovers the full set of plans from when it was built …” She laughs and leaves her sentence unfinished.
But there is nothing in the DHR recommendation, she admits, that would prevent anyone with a plan, a site, and a lot of money from reconstructing the imagined building.
“From what we know today, it’s certainly not the best use of those materials,” she explains. “But you could always build a building that you felt resembled what the First State House might have been. You can always do that with or without the pieces we have in the trailer.”
So it’s still possible?
“Absolutely,” Muzzey says. “It’s a free country,”
READ ALSO: State of State House Revealed with more pictures
FOR MORE INFORMATION on the First State House Project visit the NH Division of Historic Resources Web site where the final report will appear later this month. (http://www.nh.gov/nhdhr/programs/state_house.htm).
Copyright © 2012 by J. Dennis Robinson, all rights reserved. Robinson’s history column appears in the