McGuffey house mysteries

Sunday, May 30, 1999

McGuffey house mysteries

Preservationists are investigating 1833 Miami University home for its evolution, not just history

They're breaking into the walls, tearing out plaster and poking holes in the ceiling, searching for clues to solve the mysteries of the McGuffey house in Oxford.

“The first thing we need to do is to find out what happened here,” says Robert Kret, director of the Miami University Art Museum and the house, called the McGuffey Museum. He knocks on a wall, listening for the hollow sound that will reveal that a door was once there.

The house, built in 1833, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the home of the Rev. William Holmes McGuffey, the man who brought widespread literacy to America with his McGuffey Eclectic Readers.

IF YOU GO

• What: The McGuffey Museum.
• When: 2-4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.
• Where: Spring and Oak streets, Miami University campus, Oxford.
• Admission: Free.
• Information or to arrange a tour: Call the Miami University Art Museum, (513) 529-2232.

The university had earmarked $500,000 to “investigate” the red brick, Federal style house on the campus at the corner of Spring and Oak streets, where Rev. McGuffey taught. When Mr. Kret, who has a background in historic preservation, was hired 14 months ago, plans escalated. Results of the investigation will help the university decide what to do with the house.

“I'd like to find a new way to view a historic house; not just telling people that the kitchen was here, the parlor there,” Mr. Kret says. “This is where McGuffey lived and wrote and taught, so this is a perfect place to explore concepts of literacy. We could have a whole series of exhibitions and programs about literacy, including visual literacy, painting, theater and dance.”

The history of the house is complicated.“The reality of it is that McGuffey only lived here for three years,” Mr. Kret says, “and the house doesn't look the way it did when he lived here.”

Rooms were added, stairways moved, doors sealed off in some rooms and opened up in others. The window frames, although authentic to the period, seem to have been moved from another house. Even the red brick exterior is not genuine. Miami University had the paint stripped off in the 1980s to match the red brick style of its campus architecture.

“It was painted white or some light color for most of its life, though there is evidence that it was painted red at some point,” says project architect Gregory Jones. “The brick is very porous and was never intended to be exposed. It needs to be painted to protect it.”

Mr. Jones is an architect with Architects Four, the Ann Arbor, Mich., firm investigating the McGuffey Museum. The firm specializes in preservation of historic structures, and in the investigative work that helps owners of historic properties decide what to do and what not to do to their buildings.

“It's very much like detective work,” Mr. Jones says. “You're looking at physical evidence. What does this crack mean? What does this bump in the wall mean? There may have been a door or a window there that's long gone.

“What you find raises as many questions as it answers. What is most important? The way the house originally was or the way it ended up? It presents a philosophical and ethical challenge for preservationists.”

McGUFFEY'S CAREER

William Holmes McGuffey (1800-1873), a Presbyterian minister, was professor of ancient languages at Miami University from 1826 to 1836. He then became president of Cincinnati College (1836-1839), president of Ohio University (1839-1843), and president of Woodward College at Cincinnati (1843-1845). He then was professor of moral philosophy at the University of Virginia until his death.
In 1833, Cincinnati publishers Truman & Smith commissioned Rev. McGuffey to create a series of readers for use in schools. He produced four Eclectic Readers of increasing difficulty that taught reading, history, biology, astronomy, zoology, botany as well as table manners, behavior, duty and religious faith.
His brother, Alexander Hamilton McGuffey, a Cincinnati attorney, produced a fifth reader and a spelling book. The McGuffey Readers were used in American schools into the 1920s and are still in print.
Cincinnati Public Schools used them from 1875 to 1900. The Readers have sold more than 122 million copies, but Rev. McGuffey was paid only $1,000 for writing them.

The university has no intention of re-creating the 1833 house, says Miami Art Museum registrar Beverly Bach. “We consider our house itself to be an artifact and, while some 20th-century things will be removed in specific locations, for the most part we plan to keep the house pretty much as it is. It has evolved all these years and has been a witness to over 165 years of Oxford history and Miami University history.”

“In some ways the most important story we have to tell is the evolution of the house,” Mr. Kret says. “What we will do is to try to point out what changes have taken place.”

This is a new approach to historic preservation. In the past, historic buildings have been returned to their original look, even when the restoration was more guesswork than research. The Taft Museum on Pike Street in Cincinnati, for instance, was a Victorian home in 1927 when Charles and Anna Taft gave it to the city as a museum. The Taft's Victorian decor was removed to restore the original 1820 federal style of the house. Today, preservationists might advise against such drastic changes.

“There was a time when we thought that Victorian architecture was excessive and that it should be covered up and simplified.” Mr. Jones says. “But tastes change. Preservationists today are trying to serve history and not taste.”

At the McGuffey house, Mr. Jones says, most of the major structural changes took place before the 1860s, so when restoration is complete, the house will probably most reflect that time period.

The next phase will be an in-depth analysis of the findings. Paint chips will be analyzed to determine the original colors and the sequence of paint layers. Cut ends of boards will be analyzed to determine the age of the cuts. Wallpaper, plaster and other materials will be subjected to scientific analysis. Finally, an overall interpretive program will be developed to determine how the house will be presented to visitors.

Much of the $500,000 cost of the first phase will be spent on “unglamorous” tasks such as roof repair, fixing cracked plaster and reinforcing the foundation, Ms. Bach says.

“This has always been a home, so it was built for domestic traffic. If we expect to have crowds of visitors, the floors will have to carry the weight of a crowd.”

Also to come will be the study of documents, letters, diaries and newspaper articles to trace the stories of the people who lived there.

“We know a lot of it, but there are gaps. From 1926 to 1958 it was the home of Wallace P. Roudebush, Miami's vice president for finance. We have interviewed his daughter, Jane Roudebush Bourne, who lived here as a child, and we're looking for any old photographs that might show us what the house and the other buildings used to be on the lot looked like.

“We are also trying to determine if the house had any association with the Underground Railroad,” Ms. Bach says. “We have it from several sources that it did, but what we need is physical confirmation.”

“We need documentation for everything we do,” Mr. Kret says. “And we have to be sure that any changes that we make are carefully recorded so that, if new evidence in the future tells a different story, it can be put back the way it was. When we paint the house, people will want to know why. We have to be able to show them the documentation.”

When the project is complete, the goal is to have something more important to the university and to the community than a historic house.

STAMP IN LIMBO

Hopes for a postal stamp honoring William Holmes McGuffey have run into a bureaucratic stone wall, says Beverly Bach, registrar at the Miami University Art Museum.
“The McGuffey House Volunteer Group proposed the idea and wrote letters and circulated a petition,” Ms. Bach said. The idea was to honor Mr. McGuffey in time for the 200th anniversary of his birth, which will be in 2003. “The people we've talked to (at the U.S. Postal Service) have been very supportive and understanding, but we have no idea where we stand.
“Now that the U.S. Postal Service is a profit-making organization, they want to publish the stamps that will sell the best, so there is a much better chance of getting a stamp of Daffy Duck than of William Holmes McGuffey,” Ms. Bach said.

Although he only lived in the house for a short time, it was here that Rev. McGuffey wrote his Eclectic Readers. The books were printed at the time when a new printing technology allowed books to be available to a wide audience. Through Eclectic Readers, generations of Americans learned not only reading, but ethics, manners and moral responsibility from the examples in Rev. McGuffey's books.

“The student today is so pressed with new technology issues and expanding world issues it is important to have a firm ground, to know how the progression of literacy has gone, here and in this place,” Mr. Kret says.

“There is a line in the Miami University song that says “Old Miami, New Miami,” Ms. Bach says. “This building truly represents Old Miami. When you stand in this house, you are surrounded by something physical that dates from that historic period, and today it is in the heart of New Miami. So we have a physical bridge here that represents a great deal to the university and to local history.”



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