Historic sites, historic houses, and house museums are often distinguished by distinctive architecture, decoration, collections, signage, or even scent. These varied places tend to elicit strong responses from visitors and passersby. Some are drawn in, others repelled, in part because they hold histories and project narratives that can be deeply intimate, subjective, or troubling. They have been witness to real lives and events, and yet the sum of the quotidian experiences of the people who inhabited them nods to something bigger and more complicated.
The Power Of Place: Revisiting Historic Sites, Historic Houses, and House Museums
David Hartt, Brent Leggs, Victoria Munro, Caroline O'connell, Gretchen Sorin
Alice Austen and her friend Trude Eccleston, August 6, 1891; Alice Austen, courtesy of the Alice Austen House
The enduring presence of historic homes and sites in the United States, the fascination with them, and questions about what to do with them serve as the premise for this dialogue among professionals whose work intersects preservation, art, community, and scholarship. This conversation considers the limits of terminology; reimagines thematic, structural, and narrative future(s) for these spaces; and reflects the sense that historic sites, historic houses, and house museums are alive and brimming with narratives yet-to-be unearthed for new audiences. It also captures frustrations and hope for the ways in which public history can be re-conceived through material culture.
CAROLINE O’CONNELL What is a memorable experience you each have had at a historic site or house?
BRENT LEGGS Beloved in my memory is the home of Madam C. J. Walker, Villa Lewaro, in Irvington, New York. It’s on the same street as Jay Gould’s Lyndhurst Mansion and three miles from the John D. Rockefeller Estate Kykuit. Walker was a Black woman who became America’s first self-made female millionaire and had the gall to integrate the most expensive zip code in the country. She partnered with the first Black licensed professional architect in the state of New York, Vertner Woodson Tandy, to design this grand Italianate mansion. Walking through the iron gate, the hairs on my arms stood up because I realized the quiet power of historic preservation. It helps keep her remarkable life real.
VICTORIA MUNRO I just came back from a meeting of a branch of the National Trust— the Historic Artists’ Homes and Studios. We were hosted at Manitoga, the estate of designer Russel Wright, in Garrison, New York. Homes that are artist-built as complete environments are really inspiring. Manitoga was designed around ideal ways of living, and was influenced by so many different cultures.
GRETCHEN SORIN When my son was sixteen years old, we took a trip with the 1772 Foundation to Charleston, South Carolina, which I recall with almost photographic memory because it was so powerfully upsetting. We walked into an outdoor room at a historic property that was surrounded by hedges with the grass cut to about an inch, and the guide said, “Imagine the ladies with their beautiful dresses playing croquet on this.” I had a splitting headache because nobody ever mentioned who cut the lawn. And as we went through the house, the guide kept referring to the “servants,” never once mentioning that they were enslaved people. From there, we went to Daufuskie Island to tour broken-down former slave quarters and sharecropper shacks, where there was no furniture and the grasses were so high the guides warned us to be careful of snakes. It was the best experience to be able to see these buildings, even in their unimproved state, and to show my son that this is where his people would have lived. Not to have a fairy tale presented at this elegant historic site that actually tells an inaccurate story.
Excerpt from Making Home: Belonging, Memory, and Utopia in the 21st Century, (Cooper Hewitt | The MIT Press, 2025) published in companion with Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial (New York, Nov. 2024-Aug. 2025)
