Montpelier's Shrunken State Is Fit for a President

An Unusual Restoration Peels Away the Layers to Reveal James Madison's Home

Josephine Minutillo

Most restoration projects involve a fair amount of detective work to determine a building's original condition. The absence of early photographs and detailed architectural drawings can turn the sleuthing into a Sherlock-Holmesian task. But the restorers of Montpelier, James Madison's lifelong home in Orange, Virginia, faced even greater challenges than such missing clues. In the century and a half since Madison's wife, Dolley, was forced to sell the beloved residence-where the "Father of the Constitution" carried out much of his exhaustive research-subsequent owners made drastic changes and massive additions to the historic house, burying the Neoclassical structure within what ultimately became a grandiose mansion for William duPont and his family at the turn of the 20th century.

Following the death of Marion duPont Scott, Montpelier's final resident, in 1983, the building was handed over to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The decision to restore it was not taken lightly: Work to return the house to the one the Madisons created during James's presidency (1809−17) commenced nearly 20 years later under the stewardship of The Montpelier Foundation.

"There was plenty of skepticism before the restoration began; we were completely challenged to find anything in the building that related to James Madison," recalls John Mesick of Mesick, Cohen, Wilson, Baker Architects (MCWB), who was initially hired to assess the feasibility, cost, and duration of such an undertaking, and later served as the restoration architect. But underneath the added rooms and plastered-over bricks, the Madison home had survived largely intact.

The exterior of Montpelier has been faithfully restored. Photo courtesy The Montpelier Foundation 1. Portico 2. North-wing room 3. Closet 4. James Madison's room 5. Dining room 6. Drawing room 7. Rear porch 8. Madison's mother's rooms 9. South-wing room

Demolition, or "deconstruction," of 23,739 square feet of living space­-including 29 rooms composing two thirds of the house-were done without compromising any original building fabric, all of which was protected and analyzed. By the end of deconstruction, 10 windows, 17 of the 37 surviving doors, and two fireplace mantels were identified as Madison-era items. Recycled wood panels and boards also gave clues to the appearance of the Madison home. "Despite the DuPont's wealth, they were very frugal-reusing many of the house's original elements in new locations," says Mesick.

When the nearly 2,000 tons of rubble were removed-a foot of soil and a geotextile fabric protected the area around the house for archaeological digs-masons began the exterior restoration by chiseling off stucco that had been applied over the outer brick walls, using hand tools to minimize damage. The first stucco application, believed to have occurred in 1855, consisted of a lime base, causing less damage to the bricks it concealed. Later applications, containing impermeable portland cement, were not as forgiving to the bricks, which  were also scarified to accept plaster, particularly on the rear facade.

Prerestoration frontal and aerial views show additions made by William duPont. Photo courtesy The Montpelier Foundation

 

Original bricks-archaeological discoveries of kilns confirm they were made on-site-were retained wherever possible; new hand-molded bricks replicating the colors and size of the originals replaced damaged ones. Masons used mortar made from local limestone with added sand from the nearby Rapidan River floodplain-almost the identical ingredients and sources that both James Madison and his father (who built the core of the Montpelier house in the 1760s) had used.

A drawing shows the house as it was during Madison's presidency, in color, and later additions (above). Workers install a cellar window (below left) and pull a screed along the capital of one of the portico columns (below right). Drawing courtesy The Montpelier Foundation/MCWB Architects; photos courtesy The Montpelier Foundation

 

Other major alterations to the exterior, including replacing the wood roof shingles with metal ones, came early on. One of the first owners after Dolley Madison-the property changed hands six or seven times before the DuPonts bought it in 1901-retracted the front porch so that it sat behind the portico's plastered-over brick columns, which were then elongated to meet the ground. Madison, who had consulted often with Thomas Jefferson when he was adding onto Montpelier (Jefferson was renovating Monticello at the same time, and shared the same master builder, James Dinsmore), specified Tuscan columns based on Palladian proportions. "You don't have to know the mathematics behind it to realize what an egregious error it was to lengthen the columns," says John Jeanes, Montpelier's director of restoration.

Jefferson was instrumental in convincing Madison about many of the building elements. One in particular was a sawtooth-shaped metal roof developed by Jefferson himself. It was installed over the north- and south-wing rooms. The serrated form, like a pitched roof, allows water to easily flow away from the building, but has the advantage of permitting a flat deck to be applied over it, creating terraces for the second-floor bedrooms. Later additions placed over these terraces have been removed, and the zigzagging roof replaced. "We wanted in every respect to be faithful to the original building technology," Mesick says, though he added an EPDM rubber membrane between the wood framing and sheet metal "as a belt-and-suspenders approach."

The DuPont additions, two thirds of the 36,000-square-foot, prerestoration mansion, were carefully deconstructed (above), with elements re-created in exhibits at Montpelier's adjacent visitor center. Photo courtesy The Montpelier Foundation

 

The practical-minded Madison drew the line, though, on some of his presidential predecessor's suggestions. When Jefferson advised lifting the floor above the drawing room to accommodate a semicircular window over the main entrance, Madison opted for a smaller, elliptical window, keeping the floor as it was. "The house is a great autobiography of the man," Jeanes says. "He was a pragmatic, smart guy. The same sensibility he brought to the Constitution, he brought to building his house. Visitors can see that now without the later architecture clouding it." 

Each of the 30,000 reproduced Madison-era roof shingles, made from old-growth cypress, were hand-scalloped to match the originals. Top photo courtesy The Montpelier Foundation; bottom photo courtesy Josephine Minutillo

 

Madison's correspondence with Jefferson was one of the many tools restorers used to connect the dots during the restoration process.    Madison also kept meticulous building records, documenting all of his building-supply purchases. (In one telling anecdote, the restoration team eventually located 3 feet of wood that was accounted for in Madison's records when they found a door opening that had been filled: The missing wood formed the lintel.) Restorers also referred to early lithographs and paintings of the house, always confirming what was illustrated with archaeological or other evidence in case the creator of the image had taken artistic license. For instance, a well-known watercolor depicted a dark-colored, or "invisible," fence around the house, rather uncommon for that time. The charred remains of the pales, or pickets, were found in holes in the ground, verifying the type, location, and paint color of the fence, as well as the species of wood used (white oak and walnut).

Exterior restoration began by stripping off stucco that had been applied over the outer brick walls about 1855, and again in the 20th century. Photo courtesy The Montpelier Foundation

As the exterior restoration progressed, provisions for a climate-control system-sufficient to meet the curatorial requirements for collection care and visitor comfort-were considered. MCWB worked with Quantum Engineering to devise a system which would cause minimal intrusion upon both the historic fabric of the structure and archaeological resources, ultimately agreeing on a remote system similar to the one they had installed for the restoration of Poplar Forest, Jefferson's second home. All equipment for mechanical, electrical, security, and fire suppression and detection systems was located in a 1,000-square-foot utility vault situated 18 feet below the rear lawn. Geothermal power provides efficient heating and cooling. Located beside the vault, 12 wells-four groups of three-are buried 400 feet deep. "This is a more desirable system for a historic site," admits Curtis Wilsey, a principal at Quantum. "There is no noise, and no visual clutter."

The house was open for public tours daily throughout the nearly five-year-long restoration process, which celebrated its completion on Constitution Day, September 17, 2008. Photo courtesy The Montpelier Foundation

 

From the three air-handling units in the vault, conditioned air is conducted to the house via two large, buried conduits that are threaded under the cellar floor. The air is then distributed vertically to the upper floors. Two of the largest vertical risers, conducting supply air for the second floor, pass upward through a series of DuPont-period doorways that needed to be filled in to restore original layouts. In the attic, the air is distributed horizontally, then directed down through the ceilings of the second-floor rooms.  Return air is drawn from the fireplace in each room and rises vertically in the original chimney flues to the attic, where it is collected and redirected down through a reconstructed chimney stack to another buried conduit leading back to the utility vault. Seven heat pumps, used in a variety of heating or chilling combinations, help control air temperature and humidity while allowing for a broad range of conditions. "We weren't constrained by a meager budget. The funds were there to do the job right," says Wilsey, whose work was just a small part of the $24 million overall restoration project, made possible largely by an $18 million grant from the estate of Paul Mellon.

A worker uncovers a decorative wall painting that dates back to circa 1764. Photo courtesy The Montpelier Foundation

 

Once the installation of these systems concluded, the restoration of interior finishes could be accomplished. Only five photographs exist of the pre-DuPont interiors. Guided by careful "reading" of surviving evidence, the architects developed drawings for all the lost elements. These included the four original stairways, interior trim, doors, fireplace surrounds, and hardware. As layers of history were peeled away, new details were revealed, such as the imprint of an original roofline buried behind a plaster wall or Madison-era paint hidden behind a molding.

The area around the house continues to be an archaeological site. Photo courtesy The Montpelier Foundation

 

Restorers initially feared that the two original, central staircases-which were removed during later renovations-would forever be "black holes." They eventually discovered just enough physical evidence to understand their form and placement. For one, the exact location, width, and rise and run were preserved in original framing outlines.

The DuPonts replastered the interior walls in the Madison-era house, where the layout of rooms changed dramatically. While the original lath was mostly intact, restorers removed the 20th-century plaster and replaced it with a recipe similar to the one used by Madison-one that once again consisted of lime (which would not hold moisture in the walls as the modern formula had). Fifty-six pounds of horsehair were incorporated into the scratch coat. Extensive paint analysis determined colors. Painters applied hand-ground pigments using round and oval-shaped animal-hair brushes to re-create the authentic sinewy texture and gloss. Investigations to determine original wall coverings are ongoing.

In the cellar, archaeologists reveal the herringbone pattern of Dolley Madison's brick kitchen floor. Photo courtesy The Montpelier Foundation

 

Much of the original heart-pine floors survived­ and were refinished by hand rather than with a sander. Unlike modern wood floors, whose planks are uniformly sized by machine, these floors contain boards of random widths. If one needed to be replaced, a comparable old-growth board would replace it. These were either found recycled in other parts of the house or on the property. In one case, a recycled baseboard was discovered holding laths supporting 20th-century ceiling plaster. In another, a nearby bowling alley-one of the oldest in the country-was found to contain original wood from the house. In other instances, restorers acquired salvaged timber from old, disused New England mills. Where necessary, original floors were patched with carefully fitted plugs, or "dutchmen," repairing damage caused by insects and installations of heating and plumbing.

The concrete over the cellar floor was removed to reveal the herringbone brick pattern of Dolley's kitchen floors. (The cellar is the only spot in the house where a new steel beam had to be inserted. Throughout the rest of the house, steel is used sparingly for connections only.)

Most of the Madison-era woodwork, including mantels, door frames, cornices, and window surrounds, survived. Even many of the original window panels withstood the test of time, their wavy glass providing warped views of the rolling hills beyond. To restore interior framing and partitions, architectural investigators looked at mortises in floors and ceilings that once held wall studs in place. Surviving nail holes and paint colors also provided clues.

	A view of the estate's rolling hills from a second-floor window (top left). President Madison's room (top right). A master mason carves the egg-and-dart pattern into red sandstone around the drawing-room fireplace (left). Detail of the mantel in a second-floor bedroom (bottom). Photos courtesy The Montpelier Foundation

 

More difficult to determine is the look and arrangement of Madison's furniture. Historians and curators continue to research and analyze data that gives insight into room use, furnishings, and the Madisons' lifestyle.

"Prior to the restoration, we were essentially giving tours of the DuPont mansion," says Jeanes. "You would walk past the room where Madison died and it had been transformed into a hallway. It was almost impossible to see Madison in this house. All that has changed." As one of the last of the founding fathers' homes to be restored, Montpelier now gives a more complete picture of this country's pivotal, early days.

An off-site bunker controls and monitors airflow. Image courtesy MCWB Architects