Tickets to the fateful performance at Ford's Theater
One of my favorite past projects allowed me to think long and hard about museums (I was thinking specifically about historic sites) and how they do — or do not — connect with their visitors. I nodded vigorously in agreement with Gaynor Kavanaugh’s (Dream Spaces: Memory and the Museum) argument that artifacts should be presented as storytelling objects that evoke comparison with personal experience. He emphasizes that basis for interpretive elements should be based on understanding the people using the museum, not the objects. That’s basic customer service — what do people want and how best to deliver it? It’s shocking how many history-oriented organizations come at it the other way around — and create a disconnect.
I once stood on a busy sidewalk in downtown Philadelphia asking passersby a question with the word “history” in it. You should have seen how their faces glazed over. “History” does not enter their daily lives in a conscious way, although they can’t avoid it on the streets of this city. They hear the word history and are afraid that their ignorance is about to be revealed, that those questions they got wrong on their 5th grade history test are about to catch up with them. That’s why historic sites must warp through time and tell a story people understand in terms of their own daily experiences.
The newly revamped museum at Ford’s Theater was recently reviewed in the New York Times (see link) and seems a great example of the “right” way to present history.
Booth's boot, cut to treat the leg he wounded jumping from the presidential box
The previous exhibit “presumed an understanding, but did not create it,” says the review, perfectly summarizing the main problem with so many old house museums. The new exhibits “lead the visitor through a historical journey” and create a context for the myriad objects on display related to the Lincoln assassination. The objects are no longer numbered artifacts, but are vessels filled with meaning that bring an old event to life. In fact, the “objects become creepier once you’ve seen the place where it all happened.” That’s because they have context and context gives meaning.
For the visitor to bustling modern Washington, D.C., the museum employs “time machine” methods to show Washington the way it was: “the malarial Potomac Flats, open sewer running along what became Constitution Avenue, the marble stump of the Washington Monument, abandoned for lack of funds.” With those pictures in their heads, visitors feel transported through time.
Lincoln's box at the Ford Theater. The upper right corner of the frame around Washington's portrait is nicked, where Booth's spur caught it leaping from the box
Another “time travel” experience the Ford museum creates sends visitors through a passageway where facing walls recount timelines of the two leading players — on one side Lincoln, the other Booth — and open into the theater itself at the point where the two stories intersect with tragic consequences.
Also significant is the museum’s partnership with the Petersen House across the street, where Lincoln’s body was carried after he was shot at the theater. It seems obvious for the visitor to be able to complete the “journey” through history by finishing at the Petersen House, but it’s amazing how often struggling historic sites overlook the opportunity to create mutually beneficial relationships with thematically linked sites. One look at the streetscape (below) clearly shows that the Petersen House is slowly being edged out of what is no longer a block of pristine historic buildings.
Petersen House, second from right
It’s remarkably easy to imagine that central building with the green shutters refaced as a new Benneton. Could the Petersen House attract enough visitors to survive alone? Perhaps. But the theater partnership is a wise marketing move. A tourist will find it easier to buy a single ticket that tells the whole story, start (such as it is) to finish, than to make a choice about whether to cross the street and buy yet another ticket for the finale.
The entire museum experience sounds creative and compelling. It sounds emotional. The interpretation at this historic theater sounds, dare I say it, theatrical. Granted, Lincoln’s assassination still resonates with this country as a significant tragedy and one could argue that it would be hard to make the story boring. Yet all over the country there are places with compelling stories that are told in a very boring, disconnected way. Ford Theater offers important lessons for successful approaches to connecting the past to the present. (Or perhaps Gaynor Kavanaugh would have it that we need to connect the present to the past…)
See what Anderson is up to? $10k!
The winner is the one who makes the most noise. Guess who’s going to win this round?
(I’ll give you a hint…)
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Altar Smoke — grace in the common things
I heard this poem on NPR and thought I would share. (The author, Rosalie Grayer, was 17 when she wrote it, in 1946)
Altar Smoke
Somewhere inside me
There must have always been
A tenderness
For the little, lived-with things
A man crowds upon his worn fistful of earth.
Somewhere inside of me
There must have always been
A love
Made to fill the square aggressiveness of new-cut hedges,
And feed the pursed green mouths of baby leaves;
A love made to understand
The way grass cuddles up to porch steps leaned upon by time,
And why dandelions nudge the stones along the walk;
A love for garden hose curled sleeping in the noon hush,
Coolness trickling lazily from its open mouth,
For shingles starched and saucy in white paint,
And an old rake rusty with dreams of tangled grass and butterflies.
A love
For candle flames, like pointed blossoms on their ghostly stems,
And frost-forests breathing wonder on the parlor windows.
Somewhere inside of me
There must have always been
An altar of hewn stones
Upon which my love casts these —
Burnt offerings —
To make a sweet savor
Unto my soul.
Give me the strength my God,
To scatter my fires and tumble the altar stones in confusion;
Give me the strength to raise my eyes,
So that hard and sharp across my heart
Like shadow cut on mountain rock,
Will fall the agony of sunset —
So that I can see
The laughter of clouds spun into the blue web of infinity,
So that my soul can reach out
And melt in the sweep of forever
Above all these.
– Rosalie Grayer
Seeing eye to eye
I’m often stunned by how shortsighted people can be about the places and the buildings that create atmosphere — the sense of “special.” Smart, creative use of unusual structures are the best way to make “place.” Yet the world seems in danger of becoming one giant chain store experience. Every day we lose they-don’t-make-them-like-that-anymore structures and they erect new fast food/big box/developer’s acres places that could be anywhere in America. I get that people want to be able to buy cheap tvs and tube socks at Walmart but at what other cost?
NH: Office of the Governor
State House
25 Capitol Street
Concord, NH 03301
(603)271-2121
(603)271-7680 (fax)
History in Disguise
Let me explain.
The robots are from the summer blockbuster, popcorn flick “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” which pulled in $200 million at the box office in just five days. There is very little plot to speak of — it’s all action, explosions and running from here to there (so that newest “It” girl Megan Fox can stretch her legs). In a movie where visuals are of primary importance, you must have really, really good visuals. Those backgrounds had better be as compelling as the robots.
The clandestine meeting between the hero and a five-stories tall robot was set amid the highest marble monuments of Laurel Hill in Fairmount Park.
Half empty, half full
This house lost its twin. A shame since it sits in the middle of a whole block of these identical twins. (And the remaining half has been halved again — note the two entry doors.)
Fitzwatertown, Montgomery County
Since learning of its impending demolition, the Upper Dublin Historical Commission has been working to preserve a building connected with one of the founding families of the area. The building, on Limekiln Pike, is currently owned by the Lulu Country Club. Formerly used as a residence for the club groundskeeper the building is vacant and is suffering deterioration from deferred maintenance.
The Fitzwater HomesteadWhile it is somewhat difficult to say where was the original Fitzwater homestead, yet it is certain that Mrs. Robert E. Potter now lives at one of the old homes of the family. This is where John Fitzwater lived [who ran the mill at Sandy Run], and on the west side of the turnpike, a short distance from the store _____. Here is a large smooth _____ with a modern porch. Though the house has a new appearance, it has only been modernized, the walls being of the olden time. A large stone barn stands in the rear. These buildings are on the south side of Sandy Run. This is part of the very old grant of 1695, made to Matthew Perrin, of 500 acres, and the subsequent history of which is told in the account of the Stont farm. It is part of these tracts which in 1768 Samuel Noble and Chas. West by deed of partition conveyed to Aquilla Jones and Elizabeth, his wife, parents of Isaac Cooper Jones. In 1808 Isaac Cooper Jones sold 90 1/2 acres to Thomas Livezey and John Fitzwater. The latter conveyed his right to Livezey who was a justice of the peace. At a different time, Livezey conveyed the property to John Whitcomb. The latter was landlord of the old hotel at Fitzwatertown, standing where the present one stands, and which was on this tract. In 1832 Whitcomb sold to Robert McAdams, who held the tavern til his death, in 1846. His daughters, Julia Ann and Jane, came into possesssion in 1852, who that year conveyed to Robert E. Potter, whose wife had been Charlotte, daughter of John Fitzwater.In September 1898, the Ambler Gazette featured an item about the death of Charlotte (or “Lottie”) Potter’s brother, John Fitzwater of Philadelphia. The funeral was held at Charlotte Potter’s home (“a large number of friends of the deceased attended the funeral”) and the burial followed in the nearby family plot on Twining Road. The digitized collection of the Ambler Gazette begins in 1886 and is a wonderful resource for those interested in local history.
My Time Machine — and welcome to it
There’s a story I have yet to write about how I grew up nowhere and somehow moved to my genealogical epicenter. Though I bought a house because it was close to the train and had a pretty little arbor in the back, I later discovered that I was nearly surrounded by ancestral ghosts.
Nostalgic for the original Wayback Machine?
My Own Time Machine: Buildings, Places, People & Things 