1. The Historic Room and House Museum
Outdoor Museums
Chapters 6 and 7
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2. A house museum is “a museum whose structure itself is of historical or architectural significance and whose interpretation relates primarily to the building’s architecture, furnishings and history” and also an adaptive use
House museums are educational in context, because one learns how the owners lived, their habits, their tastes, and their times
Historic rooms are artifacts in that they are similar to antique objects, but larger, and yet smaller than an entire house
When furnished with artifacts from the house, they show visitors the setting in which people lived everyday life
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3. Fulton Mansion State Historic Site, Fulton, Texas
Constructed
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4. One of two pioneers in historic house museums were William Sumner Appleton of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiques
He developed a series of house museums throughout New England and the idea that these were as indispensible as written documentation in the study of material culture
Appleton also promoted these structures as pedagogical instruments and believed they should be furnished with intact original items so that their teaching potential is maximized
Like John Ruskin, he thought buildings should be left as is and not prettified
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5. The other person responsible for the development of historic house and room museums was Henry Francis du Pont
Du Pont was a serious collector of American furniture and he furnished his home, Winterthur, with these items at first and then through the purchase on entire rooms
Winterthur Museum began when he opened his house to the public in 1951 and it became the most prominent assemblage of American artifacts and historic interior in the world
Unlike Appleton he did not have an issue with relocating furnishings from their original location
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6. Winterthur House Museum and Garden, Delaware
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7. Both du Pont and Appleton set standards for scholarship and authenticity in historic house and room museums
Sayward-Wheeler House, York Harbor, Maine
Gropius House Lincoln, Massachusetts
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8. A major issue with room museums and furnishings is that one must avoid the critique of stealing furnishings from other buildings and thereby causing the original to lose part of its historic fabric and the relocated furnishings to lose their context
Du Pont said that he saved the rooms and furnishing from destruction that would have occurred had he not interfered
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9. Hearst Castle—San Simeon, California
William Randolph Hearst hired Julia Morgan as the architect for his “castle”. He admired many of the places he had seen in Europe and she designed it in the Spanish Revival style
Julia worked with Arthur Byne, an American living in Spain, to purchase architectural interior and exterior elements from Spain and other places in Europe
Byne dismantled interiors and exterior elements and shipped them to San Simeon where Morgan designed the home to fit what was shipped
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10. Hearst Castle. San Simeon, CA
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11. This led the way for Frank Lloyd Wright’s approach of total design
American Society of Interior Designers have the most direct connection to historic rooms as they often use furniture from other periods to convey a sense of the client’s taste
The 1897 book, The Decoration of Houses by Edith Wharton Ogden Codman, Jr. was a landmark publication in interior design which identified the most important interiors by period
It also proposed that interiors should be organically linked to the building’s design
This led the way for Frank Lloyd Wright’s approach of total design
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12. Outdoor museums began in the 19th C. in Sweden
In the US they are a 20th C. development
Definition: a restored, re-created or replica village site in which several structures have been restored, rebuilt, or moved and used for educational purposes
Three types of outdoor museums
Original buildings on their original sites used for educational purposes
Historic buildings moved from their original locations as in the National Ranching Heritage Center
Or composed of reconstructed buildings
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13. Old Salem, Winston-Salem, NC.
All original on their original sites
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14. Dallas Heritage Village
Buildings moved from their original locations
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15. Melrose Plantation
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16. Plimoth Plantation
Totally reconstructed
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17. Disney World’s Hometown U.S.A.
Another is Colonial Williamsburg, complete with actors demonstrating everyday life that is a mixture of reconstruction, rehabilitation and restoration
Disney World’s Hometown U.S.A.
Similar as it is a recreation, but not for educational purposes, rather for entertainment
Sweden’s Artur Hazelius is the father of outdoor museums
In the 1870s, he began collecting buildings and in 1891 he opened an outdoor museum called Skansen near Stockholm
He utilized costumes, music and appropriate textiles to tell the story of each building and their period of significance
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18. Skansen Museum
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