Past Grantee Reports 

Poplar Forest Field School, 2017

In 2017 the VAF awarded Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest a grant from the Orlando V Fieldwork Fellowship Fund.  This grant helped defray the administrative costs of the Architectural History Field School program which from its beginning in 1990 was designed to lose money in order to attract students and young professionals.  This intensive two week program is unique in its goal to convey the public history intersections of architectural history, historic preservation, fieldwork recording, public site interpretation, and museum house authenticity. This year the program had the maximum enrollment of ten people, plus a graduate student in architectural history interning for the summer at Poplar Forest. These participants came from Alabama, Missouri, Illinois, Virginia, Colorado, Maryland, North Carolina, and Tennessee.  The careers and backgrounds were typically diverse: professionals in state preservation offices; professionals in regional preservation; restoration architects; graduate students in architecture, history, interior design, and architectural history; a recently retired engineer; and the owner of an interior decorating business.  The program focuses on understanding the complexity of restoring well-known larger museum properties and the challenges faced by very small museum properties. The best conservation and restoration practices are also explored at state institutions like The University of Virginia.  The discipline and process of architectural restoration is absent from academic, falling between the cracks of many disciplines.  This remains the reason for this program.  

The program is taught from the perspective and history of Poplar Forest, whose idealistic process provides a private non-profit model.  The history and architectural history of Thomas Jefferson is covered in great detail. The objective of the fourteen day program is to convey the complexity and may layers of historic house museums: investigation, conservation of materials, interpretation of physical evidence, methods of documentation, use of analytic tools such as paint and material analysis, philosophy of architectural restoration and interpretation, use of traditional materials and hand-crafted processes, methodology of historical archaeology and landscape archaeology, archaeological lab processes and artifact conservation, the best use of mechanical systems in historic buildings, interior furnishings and interpretation, and the ways in which architectural history and historic buildings are interpreted to the public. In addition to the professional restoration staff at Poplar Forest, other experts are brought in to lecture. Fieldtrips take participants to see the behind-the-scenes restoration work at Monticello, Montpelier, and The University of Virginia where the restoration staff provide insight on current work. 

One of the more practical parts of the program is a fieldwork exercise of investigating and documenting an old building.  Each year an early building in the region is selected based on some need, whether it is documentation before demolition, creating awareness to facilitate preservation of a structure, or contributing to the heritage record at the county and state level.  Each site usually has one thing in common: they have never been recorded.  Buildings with an evolutionary history of change and ones with mysteries to solve are prime candidates.  The typical two-day investigation relies on dating a building through physical clues without documentary history.  The exercise, which for most participants is a new experience, is about how to look at a building and figure out its date and physical history. The group works as a team during the investigation and then as a team in the final week compiling the documentation into a draft report that is later edited, printed, and distributed to the group, to the owner of the property, and to the state preservation office. This year the property was Clement Hill, an eighteenth-century house with many changes that was either going to be demolished or given to the small town where it is located.  The field school report provided documentation on the house for either of its future scenarios, hopefully influencing its preservation.  It included analysis of molding types, nails, paint finishes, mortar and plaster, landscape features, and outbuildings.  While this type of documentation is a steep learning curve for a two day project, it provides an exciting hands-on experience that conveys the lessons of why fieldwork is important.  The fieldwork connection to museum house restoration is perhaps an obvious one for professionals but not to the general public. In order to know what to restore, you must know the regional context for the details you are examining, or the ones you will be restoring.  In the past the field school project has recorded buildings that are now gone or severely altered, has educated property owners,  has convinced owners to preserve rather than demolish buildings, and has contributed to the architectural heritage at the local, regional, and state level. 

Laurent Généreux B. Sc.