Presidential Remodel
March 30, 2007
Written May 12
Dear Friends and Families,
I am hopelessly behind on diaries. Our trip to Virginia generated more things we want to remember than I have time to record! Who would have thought?
One such record was yet another trip to see how the restoration is going of President Madison's house, Montpelier. I had visited a year or more ago, and wondered what was new.
This time, our first stop was the Madison Museum in Orange, Virginia. Apparently this was an important stop on the know-your-presidents tour, before the DuPont's donated Montpellier for restoration, but now it's a little "quaint". The display of the big mouth bass was nice though.
But our real goal was the presidential home. The profile has now been restored to it's appearance when Dolly and Mr. Madison were there. Subsequent owners had more than tripled the amount of floor space, but all that expansion has now been removed. Inside, the rooms are all defined as they were in the early 19th Century and as they will be again. You can compare this with our last visit. |
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Out back, there is a new set of displays showing how things were made in frontier Virginia. Even kids can join practice making fence stakes or roof "tiles". (Back home in Bavaria, these "beaver tail" tiles were and are made of fired clay, but wood was apparently more plentiful in early America. |
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Separate from the old house, there is also a start of a museum showing how the DuPont family lived during their stay at Montpelier. This was a center for horse breeding and racing and the DuPonts had their own race track. I suppose we'll have to make another visit when this part, along with all the rest, is finished. |
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So, that's one more Virginia stop noted. Now, on to the rest: Monticello. Roanoke, Staunton, Appomattox Court House, plus a family visit or two. Gotta get busy.
John and Marianne.