The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Garfield site marks 20 years
$12.5 million investment in Lawnfield completed two decades ago
Painstaking care went into the restoration of President James A. Garfield’s Mentor homestead in the 1990s.
Perhaps “paint”-staking would be a better word.
Researchers scraped through 17 layers of it on the exterior of the farmhouse, acquired by Garfield in 1876.
“The paint analysis shows that the house was painted twice the year of the presidential campaign, 1880,” said Joan Kapsch, National Park Service guide and former Lake County Historical Society director.
Color combinations included beige-pink and white with beige-pink and gray trim (spring 1880), white with a red door (fall 1880), beige-yellow with dark green shutters and front door, pink with green shutters, gray with green (when it opened to the public in 1936), and white with blue-green or black shutters from the mid-1940s until the restoration.
“The color scheme you see on the house today is the 1886 colors, chosen to compliment the sandstone of the memorial library,” Kapsch said.
Then there was the structure itself, which had become rundown and the repairs beyond the resources of then-owner Western Reserve Historical Society.
Enter the National Park Service and its $12.5 million to fund the restoration. The Park Service, which fully took over operations in 2008, is celebrating the 20th anniversary of completion of the project.
“We get many visitors that remember the work being done and the house being closed for a few years while the restoration work was done, so it’s fun to revisit that and remind folks just how long it’s actually been,” said site Manager Todd Arrington. “We’ve had many people tell us, ‘Can’t believe that was 20 years ago already!’ ”
History in the making
The Garfield family donated the “big house,” as they called it, along with most of its contents to Western Reserve Historical Society in 1936. The Historical Society turned over operation of the site to a newly created Lake County chapter. Operations, programming, maintenance and much of the fundraising were done by the Lake County group.
“As time went on, it became clear that, despite the best efforts of both historical societies, more was needed to properly restore and interpret the home of the nation’s 20th president and his family,” Kapsch said.
In the 1970s, the National Park Service took a particular interest in preserving sites related to the country’s presidents, and discussion began about the possibility of creating a national historic site at Lawnfield.
“Rudolph Hills Garfield, great-grandson of the president, often told the story that as conversations began about NPS acquiring Lawnfield, he contacted members of the Taft and Theodore Roosevelt families, asking if they were satisfied with Park Service operations of their presidential family homes,” Kapsch said.
Today, Lawnfield — as it was nicknamed by reporters during the presidential campaign — is one of the most accurately restored and highly detailed 19thcentury U.S. presidential sites. More than 80 percent of the antique Victorian furniture in the home, at 8095 Mentor Ave., was owned by the Garfield family in the 1880s. Many other pieces were acquired or recreated by the Park Service.
Ten wallpapers also were reproduced from photographs and samples discovered under layers of subsequent applications.
There was a great deal of discussion among the Park Service and local historical societies about an Anaglypta wallpaper, a deeply embossed basket-weave design that was once on the lower portion of the reception hall walls. It was documented by a postcard photo of the room in the 1930s and probably taken off the walls in the 1960s, Kapsch said.
“The raised part of the paper — the basket-weave — had a sandpaper-like texture, and the whole thing was painted,” she said. “Paint analysis done by NPS showed that the paper had been painted three times: first red, then cream and finally mustard yellow. That is the color you see on the sample, and it was pretty awful. … I kept thinking, ‘Please find an earlier, prettier wallpaper pattern. This can’t possibly reflect Lucretia Garfield’s taste!’ Fortunately, careful research prevailed, and the reception hall now is graced with a slate blue Tiffany wallpaper.”
Restoration recalled
The restoration was finished in 1998, but began several years earlier, with renovation and repurposing of the old carriage house for a visitor center.
“That building was in terrible shape and just about ready to fall down before it was restored,” Arrington said.
The visitor center opened to the public in 1995. The restoration also saw the reconstruction of the Garfield windmill, which was made possible by an anonymous donor.
The home was stabilized and restored to its appearance from the time that the memorial library was finished.
“So the home that people see and enjoy today is really the home as Mrs. Lucretia Garfield presented it from 1886 onward,” Arrington said. That includes the inside layout and decor as well as the outside color of the home. … The National Park Service wanted to give visitors a consistent experience both inside and out when they visit the home.”
There were no shortage of opinions on the exterior color scheme as the home went from decades of dirty white to bold battleship gray with red roof and trim.
“Of course, everybody was real happy it was getting worked on because it was getting kind of sketchy looking,” said Bob Harness, the site’s maintenance mechanic since 1997.
He said there were two types of people who talked about the color: those who had always known it as white and questioned the change, and those from military families who loved it.
“The first year (after it was repainted), I got bombarded with questions,” he said. “‘Where can I get that color?’ ”
To mark the anniversary, a new architecture and restoration tour of the home and property was introduced in May. The tour takes place the fourth Saturday of each month through October.
Ongoing efforts
The Park Service continues to pour improvements into the property.
They include replacement of the heating and cooling system in the home, new signs on-site and around Mentor, repainted outbuildings, repaved walking paths, solar parking lot lights and new ultraviolet light filters on the house windows to protect artifacts.
“A local Eagle Scout, Michael Shiner, just put up a brand new flagpole for us in May, and we’re planning a project in the next year or two to fully replace the fencing all over our grounds,” Arrington said. “We also get great support from the tree crew down at Cuyahoga Valley National Park, and they now come up here several times per year to prune and care for our large historic trees.”
This year, the home’s roof was replaced and an elevator is being installed at the visitor center.
“In addition to all of these improvements, we’ve also greatly expanded our program offerings both on-site and off-site, increased our outreach efforts to schools through the Every Kid in a Park program, introduced a cell phone tour of the grounds, begun a partnership with the Conservancy for Cuyahoga Valley National Park to create a nonprofit ‘friends’ partner group, known as the James A. Garfield Alliance, maintained a very strong presence on social media and much more,” Arrington said.