8

Stanton House Sheds Her Disguise

Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s house was particularly significant, as Stanton herself designed and supervised the construction of changes to the neglected house her father had gifted her when she left Boston to move to Seneca Falls. As she wrote in 80 Years and More, her father said to her, “You believe in woman’s capacity to do and dare; now go ahead and put your place in order.” Stanton moved to Seneca Falls ahead of her family and “set the carpenters, painters, paperhangers, and gardeners at work, built a new kitchen and woodhouse, and in one month took possession.”¹

But why had such a significant structure not been protected as other important historic sites were protected? In 1932, the state of New York distinguished the house with their blue-and-yellow-painted bronze marker prominent in the front yard, part of a statewide program to promote New York history. The sign announced the significance of the site, but no protection or funding came with the marker. The sign read

elizabeth cady
stanton
promoter of the first
woman’s rights convention
lived here. convention
was held across the river
state education
department 1932

After the state marked the significance of the site, it took thirty-three more years for the federal government to recognize the house. In accordance with its legislative mandate, in 1965 the National Park Service surveyed historic sites of “social and humanitarian movements” to see which should be designated as national landmarks. The survey included just five sites reflecting women’s history, including, besides the Stanton house, the Juliette Gordon Low house in Savannah; Hull House in Chicago; the Frances Willard house in Evanston, Illinois; and the Susan B. Anthony house in Rochester. Only thirty-three properties were nominated to be National Historic Landmarks, but the landmark nomination did include the houses of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Notes for that landmark study in 1965 include three pages describing the significance of Elizabeth Cady Stanton but only three paragraphs describing her house. It was also noted that the researchers were unable to see the inside of the house. So in this case at least, survey information on her home was sorely lacking. Thin information is a theme in this story. Despite the great honor of becoming National Historic Landmarks in 1965, for both the Stanton and Anthony homes no federal action followed. During the ensuing eighteen years up to 1978, no attempt was made to bring the stories of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony to the public through new national parks.

When regional office planner Shary Berg and I first arrived in Seneca Falls in December 1978, we found a modest house painted some color between robin’s egg blue and schoolroom green and showing wear and deferred maintenance. The porch sagged, the front stairs were dilapidated, and the entire house looked a bit neglected. Its size was similar to the other houses on the street, most of them built between 1920 and 1940. No one looking at it in 1978 would leap to the idea of a national park on the site. But I was determined not to be deterred by the reality of the house. I frequently and fervently announced to skeptics that the Stanton house had been declared a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service. Once such an honor was bestowed, the designation could not be undone or dismissed.

After the Women’s Rights National Historical Park was authorized by Congress on December 3, 1980, and signed into law a few weeks later by President Carter, the National Park Service commenced researching the house. Research in libraries and museums and collections of papers that were scoured by National Park Service historians did not reveal any photographs of the house, save for one showing its south side. No drawings or sketches of it were found. There was, however, a tantalizing reference in papers written later by Stanton’s daughter Nora Stanton Blatch describing the house as “having its wings clipped.”

Thanks to Ralph Peters’s belligerence and Park Service director Russ Dickenson’s enthusiastic support for this new park, along with effective fighting by Regional Director Herb Cables, funding for research and restoration was granted to the park quickly. Interior Secretary Watt actually helped fund the restoration, if only unintentionally. When Watt eliminated funding for acquisition throughout the Park Service, he transferred that funding to repair/rehabilitation. I managed to craft a request for $350,000 to fit the guidelines for repair/rehabilitation. The Park Service Historic Preservation Center in Boston received funds that allowed restoration to begin on the very day the park opened.

As Alan Alda and others were downtown cutting the ribbon to open the park to the public on July 17, 1982, the National Park Service’s newly appointed preservation crew manager, John Darcy, began work on the Stanton house. John replaced the deteriorated front steps during the ribbon-cutting ceremony, and the house opened to the public for just that weekend. The following Monday morning, July 19, John and his crew set to work in earnest. I had met John Darcy during his preliminary trip to the Stanton house and was impressed with his professionalism and acute awareness of the details of preservation and also his wicked sense of humor. He was not only a skilled and creative worker but an inventive artist as well.

Once on site, John quickly found several handsome carved mahogany pieces stored in a second-story closet. The pieces were laid out and found to comprise an elegant curved banister for a split stairway. Why was this pile of carved mahogany in the closet? The 1978 house had just a straight staircase in the back bedroom. This triggered the beginning realization that the interior as well as the exterior of the structure had been massively altered, and the preservation of the house was going to be far more complicated than we had anticipated. It was not yet known if our original funding would be adequate.

Blaine Cliver was a historical architect and chief of the Preservation Center in Boston and frequently traveled to the Stanton house. Blaine was expert at identifying the years when work was done—how wood was shaped, by hand or machine, and clues such as nail types and nail holes. The evidence was the house itself. Through careful analysis of the structure and its details, the team could determine what the house looked like in 1848.

Barbara Pearson Yocum was architectural conservator in the Park Service Preservation Center with Blaine Cliver and was researching and documenting the history of the house while Darcy and his crew continued their work to uncover physical evidence. By carefully collecting samples of many layers of paint and analyzing them in the laboratory back in Boston, Barbara could determine the paint colors of 1848. The team collected layers upon layers of pieces of wallpaper hidden behind studs, and larger pieces preserved on pieces of plaster that had been thrown under the porch. Comparing layers of wallpaper with layers of paint revealed which were of the Stanton era.

Blaine and Barbara frequently traveled out from Boston, and I would join them at the Stanton house. I was always thrilled to get a phone call when some new discovery emerged, and I would hop in my car and drive the five minutes to the work site and eagerly listen to John and Blaine and Barbara. It was a meaningful and heartwarming project for us all, and often dramatically engaging as the pieces came together. After the visitor center opened in 1982, the years 1983 and 1984 were relatively calm in the parts of the park open to the public, and I was grateful to have the time to be able to observe and learn the mysteries the Park Service team uncovered and pieced together.

When Blaine came to Seneca Falls we always gathered to watch him work. After the discovery of the banister, on his next visit he called for a bucket of his “magic water.” He filled a bucket with water in the kitchen sink, then splashed it around the floor of the living room where we were standing. As if by magic, the water revealed a perfect circle scribed in the wood floor, which matched the curve of the discovered pieces of mahogany banister. Blaine explained that the carpenter scribed the circle to guide him in creating the stairway wall that supported the banister and the stairs. The pieces of banister were hurriedly arranged, and it became clear that what we thought was the living room had been a grand entry hall, and the stairs went up to a landing, where they turned and continued upstairs to the second floor. On close inspection, nail holes discovered in the walls created a clear outline of where the stairway had been. More nail holes and altered wood bracing revealed there had been a large window at the landing.

Barbara did discover records of one former owner, Hugh Gilmore. The Gilmore family had made extensive alterations in 1903, including removing the front porch and back wing, the chimneys, all the fireplaces, the split stairway, and most of the window sashes. Gilmore also raised the roof over the dining and kitchen area. He had reused much of the wood he removed, so the Park Service crew discovered exterior cornices, door frames, and fireplace mantels that had been reused but could be placed back in their historic configuration. Again, by dating nails, wallpaper scraps, and analyzing multiple layers of paint, and many changes in the framing, the team teased out how the pieces had fit together in the time that Stanton lived there. Blaine and Barbara dubbed it their gigantic jigsaw puzzle.

Perceptions of the project and what it was going to require shifted dramatically. It might have halted work and launched a series of discussions on whether, and how, to proceed as the project became more complicated and costly. It could have been fatal. But a major decision was made by the officials in Boston as these investigations revealed how altered the house was. The house would be restored to its historic appearance, and all historic fabric would be repaired if necessary and retained. I had written the application for the funding within the guidelines for the “repair/rehab” category, and that carried on without challenge. The story was important enough to carry on. And there was that commitment to Ralph Peters by Director Dickenson, which it was necessary to honor.

We began to realize the house of Elizabeth Cady Stanton as it stood did not tell her story. It spoke quite another story, looking like its neighbors on a block of modest houses built probably in the mid-1940s on smaller lots. The historic wood clapboards, which would have been painted white in her time, were covered with more modern wood shingles painted turquoise. The front porch had been enclosed, with a bank of aluminum frame windows and more turquoise shingles. Shutters on the windows elsewhere had been removed. Early reviewers had summed it up with “it does not look like a national park,” and it turned out they were more correct than I realized.

The demolition and removal of the Stanton house’s modern alterations eventually meant stripping the house down until all the exterior siding was removed from the framing studs, including the shingles and clapboards and sheathing. The crew wrapped the house in huge sheets of plastic to protect the remaining historic plaster. I could stand in the front yard and look through the house to the back yard. After the house was reduced to its frame, it was clear that many openings had been changed from doorway to window or window to doorway. What we thought was a living room on the right side of the house, as one looked at it from the street, had been a sitting or dining room. The two little rooms on the left of the entry hall in 1978 had been one large double parlor with French doors opening to a porch looking out to the rear yard. One supposed window in that left rear room of the double parlor had actually been an interior doorway, establishing that there had been a wing on the left, or northern, side of the house. The front porch had been open, with Doric columns supporting the porch roof.

One enormous challenge was lowering the roof on the south portion several feet down to its historic height. First the crew had to remove the walls that had increased the height to create the second floor, but leave the roof intact, stabilized with a seemingly delicate arrangement of posts holding it up. The sight of the roof balanced on two-by-fours, with several feet of air space down to the historic walls, was terrifying to me. Four tall jacks had been installed, one at each corner. Then the crew, one stationed on each jack, lowered the roof by taking turns lowering their jack just a tiny bit. During this time I frequently made the quick drive over to the house to check on the crew and the work, but this operation was the most memorable and heart-stopping of my visits.

The scraps of wallpaper being uncovered were invaluable clues. One day John Darcy emerged from under the porch dragging pieces of plaster with wallpaper intact—thirteen layers of wallpaper on one piece. The prestigious interior design firm Scalamandré was contracted to duplicate four of the historic wallpapers, including foliage and geometric patterns with bold colors of green and gold. The wall coverings in the completed restoration were both distinctive and dramatic, showcasing the personality of Stanton. Barbara Yocum documented the findings and compiled them into the Historic Structures Report, or HSR, for the Stanton house.²

Park Service archaeologists from the regional office in Boston dug for more information. All had read that the “wings of her house had been clipped,” but we did not know how literally true that was. The archaeological dig confirmed that there had been a wing on the left, off the double parlor, and another on the back of the house. The public was welcomed to observe the dig, and a press conference was held at which the archaeologists explained their methods and findings and answered the many questions from the Seneca Falls press corps and others. I had heard rumors of criticism of the Park Service’s management of the preservation project. Though the work crew was locally hired, there still was talk that Seneca Falls contractors could have done the work for less money. But the crowds that came to see the archaeological dig realized that the Park Service project was much more complicated and costly than simply repairing the house. I heard no more complaints afterward.

Once it was confirmed that there had been a wing on the northern side of the house, the team began to hope that the house immediately next door on that side might be the missing wing off from the double parlor and could conceivably be reattached. The owner agreed to an inspection, and in eager anticipation we awaited the return of Blaine Cliver. Alas, it was clear to Blaine when he examined the foundation, framing, and nails that the house next door was in fact a later structure. I mounted a campaign to rebuild both wings but was not successful, as there was not enough evidence to reconstruct what was missing. While the existing physical evidence justified restoration and preservation of the extant house, reconstruction from scratch of the clipped wings, based on speculation, was a line the regional office would not cross. We had the foundation outline for the north wing but virtually nothing more. For the south wing we knew what one exterior wall looked like, because it was visible in our one historic photo. But nothing was known about the other walls, or the interior. The final agreement was to outline the foundations of the missing wings with landscaping materials and “ghost” their former locations on the exterior siding using plywood and gray paint rather than the white clapboard on the rest of the exterior of the house.

When the crew finished their work in 1985 the house was transformed from a modest and unremarkable dwelling to a gracious and beautiful structure reflecting the mid-nineteenth-century Greek Revival style in upstate New York. Similar homes were scattered around the county. Their defining characteristic was handsome Doric columns supporting an open veranda on the front of the house. They were typically painted white and had shutters on the windows. This restored house and its suggestion of a still larger house better reflected Elizabeth Cady Stanton, especially since she had personally designed and overseen work on the house when she moved to Seneca Falls. It could no longer be said that “this house does not look like a national park.” After all those discouraging and then maddening “ohs” politely shortened from “oh, no” and “oh, dear” by early reviewing officials, all could now see that Stanton had in fact lived in quite an elegant house. It actually was fortunate that this information evolved only out of the preservation work, because in the legislative phase I had repeatedly said that yes, the Wesleyan Chapel had been profoundly degraded over the years, but the Stanton house retained its historic integrity, hoping all the while that the landmark status of the house, and its then-supposed lack of alterations, would make up for the sad condition of the Wesleyan Chapel laundromat. Presenting carefully worded bureaucratic concepts to bureaucrats can often resolve a conflict. And I believed what I said when I said it. I was corrected by the hands-on research at the house.

Within the definition of “nationally significant” lies the core of the mission of the National Park Service: to use historic buildings to bring history to life for visitors. For example, visitors standing in the house of Elizabeth Cady Stanton would ideally see something very like what she saw, both inside her house and outside through the windows. They would walk through the rooms as she would have walked through her rooms. They would see the dramatically beautiful wallpaper she had chosen, and could imagine walking up the elegant split stairway as she had done, one hand on the mahogany banister on her way up to the bedrooms, perhaps carrying the youngest child on her hip. Visitors could imagine Stanton stopping on the landing to admire the view of her extensive property through the large window. They would experience the quiet of being on the edge of Seneca Falls, separated from the bustle of the town. They could imagine the isolation of the house, many blocks from downtown. They could wonder how Stanton worked from this house, surrounded eventually by her seven children, writing speeches and letters to move ahead the fight for the right to vote.

That mahogany banister had changed everything; it gave us our first glimpse of the life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton in her house in Seneca Falls. The wallpaper in the entry foyer also changed our understanding of her house. The bold repeats of the geometric design, green on white, were almost overwhelming, especially since the design continued up the stairs to the second floor. It was obvious that Stanton wanted her entry hall to make a dramatic statement: this place is distinctive and special, and come on in to find out why. I chose to not fill the Stanton house with furniture that “might have been hers” or was “of the period.” The house was gracious but limited, since we had ruled out adding back the missing wings. The newly revealed historic rooms were small, and the newly fabricated wallpaper so bold and grand that I did not want the distraction of explaining to visitors that the furnishings had not belonged to Stanton. Also, Stanton family descendants had generously loaned an oak chair and an oak desk to be placed in the house; they were known by the family to have been used by Elizabeth Cady Stanton later in her life. I believed the open rooms could more easily allow the visitor to imagine standing in the house in 1848 talking with Stanton, or to imagine her working at her desk or playing with her children. And more visitors could be included in the small rooms.

There were still more surprises, as Park Service research revealed that Stanton owned two acres of land around her house. In 1978, three more recently constructed houses were standing on what had been her property. Stanton family descendants, including Rhoda Jenkins and John Barney, purchased and generously donated to the Park Service the vacant lot next door, to be used for parking. It would later be confirmed to be part of the historic Stanton homestead. Legislation would be enacted in 1996 to authorize purchasing the three neighboring houses to re-create Stanton’s property. The Park Service now owns the two acres surrounding her house, for a total of 2.91 acres.

With the preservation completed, a ribbon-cutting ceremony was scheduled for two in the afternoon on June 29, 1985. The attendees would include Congressman Frank Horton, Stanton’s great-granddaughter Rhoda Jenkins, Stanton Foundation president Corinne Guntzel, New York Urban Cultural Park director Augie Sinicropi, and Park Service North Atlantic regional director Herb Cables, along with Blaine Cliver, Barbara Yocum, John Darcy, and the work crew. Stanton’s great-great-granddaughter Coline Jenkins and her baby daughter traveled from Sweden to attend, so that three generations of Stantons would enrich the celebration. Former owner Ralph Peters came from Seattle and grinned from ear to ear.

My intention for the opening was a warm thank-you to all who had worked so hard to complete this project. Five thousand had attended the ribbon cutting for the new visitor center. For the Stanton house I wanted a more intimate ceremony and a less stressful event. The opening event would be on the front lawn, covered with our cheerful red folding chairs, showing off the house as backdrop. The house would then open for tours. An ensemble modeled after a family singing group that toured pre–Civil War America, the Hutchinson Family Singers, performed songs of the period. There was also an enormous tent in the rear yard displaying life-size photographs of Elizabeth Cady Stanton at various stages in her life, an exhibit created by artist Lisa Baskin and loaned to us for the opening. It was a precious and delicate exhibit that would perhaps not be safe in the midst of a crowd of thousands.

It would also be an event to give special honor to the Stanton family, who so generously supported the park. Rhoda Jenkins was an architect and a trailblazer in her own right, a magnanimous and wise woman who was intensely devoted to the family traditions and archives and enthusiastically supported the park and the Stanton Foundation. Her brother John Barney, thus also a great-grandchild of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, frequently came to town and loved to host several park supporters at a dinner at the Gould Hotel; his support was appreciated as well. After Rhoda Jenkins’s daughter Coline returned to the United States to live, she became a strong and tireless advocate for the park and its development and has been a frequent presenter on its significance.

The planning for the opening was going smoothly until several unknown men came to town and were observed strolling around. They never met with me or identified themselves, but their ear wires and distinctive shiny suits, brilliant white shirts, always with ties, stood out in the community. The townspeople could not help but notice them, and word went around that they might be from the Secret Service. An idea began to circulate that President Reagan was coming to cut the ribbon for the opening. The president had not been invited—or so I thought at the time. I wanted only former owner Ralph Peters and Congressman Horton to be the featured guests, along with Herb Cables and the directors of the Stanton Foundation.

But calamity threatened. That summer, several miles south of Seneca Falls, a large gathering of women had encamped on a farm near the Seneca Army Depot. The group was protesting nuclear weapons, which they believed to be stored at the depot. The women became the talk of the town that summer. Rumors swirled, including one about a group shower in the local car wash. I entrusted Corinne Guntzel, then president of the Stanton Foundation, to meet with the encampment leaders and persuade them to not demonstrate at, or for, the Women’s Rights Park. I believed the park still too fragile to withstand demonstrations, positive or negative. I wanted very much to proceed steadily with the restoration of the Stanton house, and rather quietly open it to the public. Corinne was the ultimate peacemaker, creator of understanding, and facilitator of reconciliation. She did persuade the demonstrators to not demonstrate in or for the national park. However, the encampment group did become agitated by the sightings of the supposed Secret Service agents around town. They became enraged that their much-despised President Reagan might come to town to celebrate an event for women’s rights. With great fanfare they announced that they would line the streets of Seneca Falls lying shoulder to shoulder on the pavement to prevent his motorcade from driving up to the Stanton house for the opening event.

Suddenly there were no more men with ear wires surveying Seneca Falls. On Friday, a week before the opening, I received forty-three phone calls from press around the country, asking why I had rescinded the invitation to President Reagan. I said, quite truthfully, that I had not rescinded the invitation, and danced around the reality that he hadn’t been invited in the first place. Of course, he would have been welcome if he had chosen to come, I insisted, but we didn’t know that he had wanted to come, and … and … My tongue was very tired that evening, and I left my office late to attend the wedding celebration of the director of the Seneca Falls Historical Society. I was relieved that nothing was published on the non-story.

I later discovered that the president had in fact been sort of invited. I had coordinated with the regional office staff while planning the event, and they had included the ribbon-cutting ceremony in a list forwarded to the office of the interior secretary for his potential attendance. In that office, some events were selected to be forwarded to the White House for possible attendance by President Reagan. So, he had been officially notified. I was relieved I had not known that when answering all those phone calls from the reporters.

I was frequently corrected by new information, but I had always believed what I said at the time was true.

The opening the next week was a heartwarming event without a lot of added drama. The aging Ralph Peters was the featured star and grinned from ear to ear the entire time. But by then I was exhausted and made a major mistake during the ceremony. I had decided to present a red carnation to every person who had been so important in the purchase and restoration of the house. The list was long, and shortly before the event the Stanton Foundation requested that all of their directors be seated in the VIP red folding chairs, not just their president. I unfortunately did not get my VIP list updated before the ceremony. I gave out the carnations but ran out of them before one very key individual received one: Augie Sinicropi, the head of the Urban Cultural Park program. Augie was, as always, very gracious about the slipup, but it haunted me for some time, especially since I had awarded a flower to Tripod, the three-legged black cat that had hung around the site and had overseen all the preservation work.

I was deeply grateful for the superb work done by John Darcy as work-team captain and the staff that he had hired locally. John was wise and clever and very funny, and we would often meet up at the Gould Hotel at the end of our workdays. I was very intentional about presenting a positive and supportive face of the National Park Service to the community. There were in truth many frustrations involved in working with the Park Service, but I did not share them with the citizens. After all, how many times had I heard “We hate the feds here,” and I did not want that to include the National Park Service. I could, however, share some of my frustrations with John, and he had plenty of his own. We could usually end up laughing at the stresses.

However, I asked John to promise me that he would have the alarm system on the Stanton house working smoothly before he left town after completing work. It didn’t happen. He set it up shortly before he left, and more times than I could count I was awakened by a telephone call from the police at 3 a.m. informing me that the alarm was going off. I had to get dressed and drive into Seneca Falls to meet the police at the house, because they wanted me to open the door and work through the security system to turn off the alarm. I found it all quite stressful in the dark and middle of the night. The system finally calmed down, and I could count on a decent night’s sleep again. Fortunately, the weather was good, and I did not have to worry about driving into town on snow and ice.

It was fortunate that the restoration of the Stanton house was funded, the crew hired, and construction under way before the arrival of the newly appointed chair of the federal advisory commission for the park, Dorothy Duke. The first commission meeting was October 1982, but Duke made a preliminary visit on her own. She announced to me her determination to oppose expenditures of funds on the history that the park was created to preserve and interpret. Duke said that Elizabeth Cady Stanton was no more important than any other woman of achievement, and the Park Service was wasting funds preserving her house and interpreting her. However, the authorizing legislation enacted by Congress and signed by the president was quite clear regarding the mission of the Women’s Rights National Park:

94 STAT 3547, TITLE XVI, Sec. 1601(3), Public Law 96–607:

There are nine sites located in Seneca Falls and Waterloo New York, associated with the nineteenth century women’s rights movement which should be recognized, preserved, and interpreted for the benefit of the public.

This was classic Park Service legislative language, which assumed, without specific mention, that the preservation and interpretation of the house of Elizabeth Cady Stanton would be the basis for interpreting her life and achievements. Fortunately, Duke decided that because work on the Stanton house was funded, staffed, and under way, she would not attempt to intervene. She set her sights instead on the Wesleyan Chapel.

Perhaps only the National Park Service would have done such a painstakingly accurate restoration of the Elizabeth Cady Stanton house. This is what the National Park Service does. The preservation of the Stanton house was a clear and obvious mandate in the authorizing legislation. Funding for the preservation was provided by internal National Park Service priority setting, supported by the commitment of the director of the Park Service. Because the legislative mandate was so clear, and the cost below $500,000, we were able to proceed expeditiously to restore the house. This was not typical of most national parks, where no actions would be taken until after years of work developing a general management plan and environmental impact statement.

The next phase of developing the big park was much more challenging. The work on the Wesleyan Chapel would require more than $500,000. That meant that the two major planning documents—again, the general management plan and the environmental impact statement—would have to be completed first. Then came the challenge of obtaining the millions needed for the work on the laundromat. Whether that funding was raised within the park, or sought from Congress, years of work faced us next. That was supposing we would somehow be able to acquire the laundromat in spite of an agency-wide ban on purchasing property, thanks to Secretary Watt. We had a steep hill ahead for the next phase.