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A FORGOTTEN AMERICAN TREASURE OPENS TO THE PUBLIC
NY TIMES - If you look out the windows of President Lincoln's Cottage at
the Soldiers' Home - the idiosyncratic and intriguing museum that is
opening to the public on Tuesday- you have to imagine what Abraham
Lincoln might have seen during those summer evenings when he stood here.
The cottage is on a hilltop, the third highest in the area. And when
Lincoln first came here, seeking a respite from the summer heat, the
swampy air and the incessant bustle of the White House, he could have
looked out over the expanding city below him, with the unfinished
Washington Monument and incomplete Capitol dome rising in the distance.
. .
The exhibits and guided tours follow the lead of the historian Matthew
Pinsker, who says in his book "Lincoln's Sanctuary" that it may be
impossible to trace the course of Lincoln's presidency, the development
of his ideas or his views of the war without also taking into account
the experiences he had here, his contacts with soldiers and former
slaves, his reading aloud of Shakespeare on the cottage steps, his clear
views of the cemetery and the Capitol.
This makes it all the more remarkable that with all that has been
written about Lincoln, this place has played such a small role in the
Lincoln cult. A few days ago a taxi driver did not know where it was,
even when the contemporary institution surrounding the cottage was
named: the Armed Forces Retirement Home. We are often told where
Washington slept, but we know little about a place where Lincoln lived.
Mr. Pinsker pointed out that there are no official records of the
Lincolns' residency here, no documentation about which cottage they
inhabited, no account of what belongings they had with them and no
images of their home. . .
In a radical experiment the museum did not recreate the home that the
Lincolns might have set up each summer; too little was documented.
Instead everything was stripped away, almost to the bare walls and wood.
The colors of the lowest level of paint were reproduced, and the
original architectural divisions were restored (including a pine-paneled
library in which pale lines mark the ghosts of old shelves). And that's
it. A few period objects provide seats and some atmosphere.
Then, because this is not a home filled with objects but a home with
conceptual and biographical significance, it is treated as a kind of
empty frame. The only way to see the cottage is as part of an hour long
15-member group tour, with a guide explaining the issues that faced
Lincoln during the crucial three summers that he lived here, from 1862
to 1864, while also sketching something about his character. Integrated
into the tour are videos and re-creations of dialogue from documentary
accounts.
In one room, for example, a single rocking chair is next to a small
table. The guide sets up a scene based on an 1862 eyewitness report.
Lincoln sits here, we are told, exhausted - overwhelmed by slavery
debates, the war's casualties and incessant demands - at the end of a
day that offered little hope. An injured Union officer suddenly arrives,
beseeching the president to help him recover his wife's body - she died
in a steamer collision - from a region closed off by the army. We hear
Lincoln's frustrated, angry voice: "Am I to have no rest? Is there no
harbor or spot when or where I may escape this constant call? Why do you
follow me out here with such business as this? Why do you not go to the
War Office?". . .
Then we learn that the next morning Lincoln sought the man in his hotel,
apologized, set the bureaucratic wheels in motion and asked him not to
ever tell his children about the president's shameful behavior.
Heard in that bare room, the story takes on additional power. It demands
the same imagination as the view outside the window. The empty frame is
filled.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/arts/design/14linc.html?_r=
1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
[Note: Your editor's (Sam Smith) wife was on the interpretation advisory committee
of the cottage]
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A FORGOTTEN AMERICAN TREASURE OPENS TO THE PUBLIC
NY TIMES - If you look out the windows of President Lincoln's Cottage at
the Soldiers' Home - the idiosyncratic and intriguing museum that is
opening to the public on Tuesday- you have to imagine what Abraham
Lincoln might have seen during those summer evenings when he stood here.
The cottage is on a hilltop, the third highest in the area. And when
Lincoln first came here, seeking a respite from the summer heat, the
swampy air and the incessant bustle of the White House, he could have
looked out over the expanding city below him, with the unfinished
Washington Monument and incomplete Capitol dome rising in the distance.
. .
The exhibits and guided tours follow the lead of the historian Matthew
Pinsker, who says in his book "Lincoln's Sanctuary" that it may be
impossible to trace the course of Lincoln's presidency, the development
of his ideas or his views of the war without also taking into account
the experiences he had here, his contacts with soldiers and former
slaves, his reading aloud of Shakespeare on the cottage steps, his clear
views of the cemetery and the Capitol.
This makes it all the more remarkable that with all that has been
written about Lincoln, this place has played such a small role in the
Lincoln cult. A few days ago a taxi driver did not know where it was,
even when the contemporary institution surrounding the cottage was
named: the Armed Forces Retirement Home. We are often told where
Washington slept, but we know little about a place where Lincoln lived.
Mr. Pinsker pointed out that there are no official records of the
Lincolns' residency here, no documentation about which cottage they
inhabited, no account of what belongings they had with them and no
images of their home. . .
In a radical experiment the museum did not recreate the home that the
Lincolns might have set up each summer; too little was documented.
Instead everything was stripped away, almost to the bare walls and wood.
The colors of the lowest level of paint were reproduced, and the
original architectural divisions were restored (including a pine-paneled
library in which pale lines mark the ghosts of old shelves). And that's
it. A few period objects provide seats and some atmosphere.
Then, because this is not a home filled with objects but a home with
conceptual and biographical significance, it is treated as a kind of
empty frame. The only way to see the cottage is as part of an hour long
15-member group tour, with a guide explaining the issues that faced
Lincoln during the crucial three summers that he lived here, from 1862
to 1864, while also sketching something about his character. Integrated
into the tour are videos and re-creations of dialogue from documentary
accounts.
In one room, for example, a single rocking chair is next to a small
table. The guide sets up a scene based on an 1862 eyewitness report.
Lincoln sits here, we are told, exhausted - overwhelmed by slavery
debates, the war's casualties and incessant demands - at the end of a
day that offered little hope. An injured Union officer suddenly arrives,
beseeching the president to help him recover his wife's body - she died
in a steamer collision - from a region closed off by the army. We hear
Lincoln's frustrated, angry voice: "Am I to have no rest? Is there no
harbor or spot when or where I may escape this constant call? Why do you
follow me out here with such business as this? Why do you not go to the
War Office?". . .
Then we learn that the next morning Lincoln sought the man in his hotel,
apologized, set the bureaucratic wheels in motion and asked him not to
ever tell his children about the president's shameful behavior.
Heard in that bare room, the story takes on additional power. It demands
the same imagination as the view outside the window. The empty frame is
filled.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/arts/design/14linc.html?_r=
1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
[Note: Your editor's (Sam Smith) wife was on the interpretation advisory committee
of the cottage]
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