CHAPTER SEVEN:
The "Complete Restoration" of Valley
Forge (continued)
In 1941 and 1942, the park completed a few scattered
restoration projects with its meager funds. Several replica
fortifications were built, including the structures then known as Fort
Mordecai Moore and its two flanking redans; the Stirling Redoubt; two
redans flanking Fort Washington; and a rifle pit on the inner line
entrenchments. These projects were done without significant preliminary
archaeological research and are now considered questionable, but at the
time the park commission saw that public interest was high, which
encouraged the commissioners in their determination to do more at Valley
Forge. [25]
Fig. 20. Map of Valley Forge in 1941.
(Courtesy, Valley Forge National Historical Park)
(click on map for an enlargement in a new window)
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In 1942, the park commission drew up a new resolution
to restore Valley Forge as a military camp as soon as "the general
conditions permit." This resolution included plans to complete all
entrenchments and forts and to plant ten log huts on each of four sites
where four different divisions had camped. In the area where the
Continental Army had massed their artillery, visitors would find a
colonial blacksmith shop and stable. General Von Steuben's Quarters
would be restored. Guardhouses and picket posts would be added to the
scenery. Field ovens would be built. The "lost redoubt" known as Fort
John Moore would be located and restored, Known redans, lunettes, and
abatis would rise at their original locations. Two projects that had
interested former park commissions would finally be completed: a working
forge would be built, and the Washington Inn would be restored to its
colonial appearance with the hospital quarters and bake ovens it had
supposedly housed during the encampment. For the practical convenience
of twentieth-century visitors, there would be new parking places,
latrines, and recreational areas, as well as improvements to the roads.
The park would have a new administration building and a new observation
tower built of stone. The total cost was estimated at a whopping
$500,000. [26]
The resolution was presented to Pennsylvania's
Governor Edward Martin late in 1942. No immediate action was taken, and
the commission renewed its recommendation in 1943. At that time, the
state was planning the re-employment of its men and women once the war
was over. The park commissioners hoped to do their part by finally
making available the jobs that they had so long wanted to create at the
park. While Governor Martin promised that the matter would receive
attention, again nothing was done, causing the park commission to wonder
whether Valley Forge had become the commonwealth's stepchild. [27] It was May 1944 before the state's
postwar planning commission finally considered the park commission's
extensive plan. In July 1944, General Shannon of the park commission met
with the chairman of the postwar planning commission and returned to
report: "It is likely this important work will be accomplished under the
present administration if the war emergency shall be terminated." [28]
The war ended in 1945, and Valley Forge finally got
some money. In May 1946, Governor Martin visited Valley Forge to confer
with the park commissioners, and in July word was received that Governor
Martin had approved $135,000. [29] This
was good news, but $135,000 was only a fraction of what it would cost to
complete all the projects in the 1942 resolution, which by then carried
a price tag of $650,000. After James H. Duff was elected governor of
Pennsylvania in November 1946, he was quickly invited to Valley Forge to
reaffirm the state's commitment. [30]
Early in 1947 Duff appropriated $140,000. The governor made available an
additional $271,500 from postwar appropriations under Act 83-A. [31]
The restoration at Valley Forge could at last
proceed, but it would not be quite as "complete" as originally intended.
Plans were scaled down to include a new observation tower built of
stone, the rediscovery and restoration of Fort John Moore, a blacksmith
shop in the artillery park, plus seventy-four log huts. Plans for the
tower were subsequently scrapped to release funds for other projects.
The number of huts was later reduced to thirty, and the project of
acquiring the Washington Inn and restoring it to its colonial appearance
was again added to the list.
In October 1946, Norris D. Wright, chairman of the
Park Commission, received a letter from George Edwin Brumbaugh
acknowledging his appointment as architect for the "improvements to
Valley Forge Park." Brumbaugh wrote: "During the coming week I shall
telephone in order to make an appointment at your convenience for our
first conversation. It will be a real pleasure to work with you to
secure the best results of which we are capable, for this most important
historic spot." [32] Brumbaugh was one of
the nation's best-known preservation architects. He had restored or
reconstructed many historic sites throughout the Delaware Valley.
Coincidentally, his father, Martin Brumbaugh, had been one of Valley
Forge's first park commissioners, and later the Pennsylvania governor
who had delivered the acceptance speech at the dedication of the
National Memorial Arch. During George Edwin Brumbaugh's childhood, his
family had rented a summer house on Gulph Road, not far from
Washington's Headquarters. Together with the young son of the caretaker
at the Headquarters, Brumbaugh had amused visitors with informal tours,
which he conducted for a nickel tip. He and his father had often roamed
over the remaining entrenchments and wandered along Valley Creek to the
site of the old forge. [33] If any
architect had a personal interest and a commitment to Valley Forge, it
was Brumbaugh.
At the time Brumbaugh began his work at Valley Forge,
there was little evidence indicating exactly what the soldiers' huts had
looked like. Washington's hut specifications were a key source and had
been used when the 1935 hut was built. On December 18, 1777, Washington
had written:
Soldier's huts are to be of the following dimension,
viz: fourteen by sixteen each, sides, ends and roofs made with logs, and
the roof made tight with split slabs, or in some other way; the sides
made tight with clay, fire-place made of wood and secured with clay on
the inside eighteen inches thick, this fireplace to be in the rear of
the hut; the door to be in the end next to the street; the doors to be
made of split oak-slabs, unless boards can be procured. Side walls to be
six and a half feet high. [34]
Brumbaugh studied both Washington's orders and a poem
that had appeared in an 1863 issue of The Historical Magazine.
The poem, supposedly written by the camp surgeon, Albigence Waldo, was
titled "Valley Forge" and dated April 26, 1778, a time when surviving
muster rolls show that such a person was indeed at Valley Forge. The
original copy has never been located, however. Among the poem's
sentimental and florid words, there was a forty-four-line description of
a hospital hut at Valley Forge, but one that had many comfortable
features never specified in Washington's orders, including an oak floor,
three windows, and a separate kitchen. [35]
As for actual physical evidence, there was none. By
the late 1940s, even the structure in ruins on the old road to the river
ford Dr. Burk had named the "last hut" and pictured in his guidebooks
published early in the century was gone. All that remained of the huts
at Valley Forge was, perhaps, a single log. In 1935, the Pennsylvania
Society of the Sons of the Revolution acquired a seven-foot log that was
purportedly part of one of the huts at Valley Forge. It too had inspired
poetry. Frank E. Schermerhorn had written an ode to the log and the
things it had "seen," concluding, "You listened, high in eery-raftered
poise / To starving-tales with deeds of courage done / That turned the
storm-wind's ghostly, rumbling noise / To chants of God who gave us
Washington." [36]
Besides tradition and documentary evidence, Brumbaugh
studied the several log hut replicas that Valley Forge already had, in
addition to the 1935 model. The National Society, Daughters of the
Revolution of 1776 had led the way back in 1905 by building a replica
near the Washington Memorial on the site of an actual hut originally
built by soldiers of the Fourth Connecticut Regiment. In July 1905,
newspapers reported that the structure had been "dedicated in the
presence of a few persons, no public notice having been given of the
event." [37] This organization restored
their hut in 19451946 and again in 1968. Few records regarding the
replica of a hospital hut built by the park commission around 1910 near
the Wayne statue exist. Even this date is suspect, because the
Philadelphia Record carried a story about it in September 1909,
describing its popularity with visitors when park guard James McGroury
played surgeon there. [38] In 1922, the
Washington Memorial acquired a second log structure built by the World
War I survivors of the 314th Infantry of the 79th Division. This was not
really a hut, but rather the regiment's old recreation hall, originally
constructed at Camp Meade and moved to Valley Forge to house the
mementos of these men, most of whom had come from Pennsylvania. Dr. Burk
had welcomed this mini-museum, hoping eventually to incorporate it into
Victory Hall. He patriotically charged the veterans a ground rent of
only one red rose a year. Until death claimed most of the men, the log
structure served as their weekend gathering place. [39] The park also had its guard huts, small
log cabins built as field bases for park guards on patrol. Ten or eleven
of these had been constructed between 1906 and 1911; others were added
in 1939 and 1946. [40]
The 1905 hut, the circa 1910 hospital hut, the 1935
hut, and a copy of the 1935 hut built in 1946 as a guard hut were all
supposed to be replicas of what American soldiers had spent their famous
winter in. These huts all looked very different, however, and the
authenticity of each interpretation had or would come under attack. The
1909 newspaper story about the hospital hut quoted one woman's remark
that this hut was a better replica than the daughters' 1905 model, "as
the latter smacks of a darkey's cabin." [41] The hospital hut would later be
criticized for having too many windows and too tall a door. Brumbaugh
would criticize the 1935 hut for its low walls, windows, and iron
hardware. Washington's orders, which seemed so precise, left a good deal
of room for interpretation.
Fig. 21. Replica hut built in 1935 by
the Pennsylvania Society of the Sons of the Revolution, who hoped to
inspire other groups to erect similar huts. (Courtesy, Valley Forge
National Historical Park)
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Fig. 22. Replica hut designed by George
Edwin Brumbaugh for the "complete restoration" of Valley Forge. It is
located near the 1935 hut and shot from a similar angle, but is
significantly different from that hut. (Courtesy, Valley Forge National
Historical Park)
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In response to the park commission's exhortation that
the "huts should be authentic in every particular," [42] Brumbaugh drew largely on Washington's
orders and his own considerable knowledge of early American log
construction and local precedents. He employed John J. Rogers as a
general foreman and set up a log hut workshop in the former dining room
of the old Washington Inn, which had finally been acquired by the park
in the late 1930s. There Brumbaugh designed a sample hut to teach his
twentieth-century workers some long-forgotten skills. His original plan
was to build each hut in the dining room, then knock it down and rebuild
it on site. His first huts were to be erected near Washington's
Headquarters, where the commander-in-chief's guards had been housed. All
workers were ordered to inspect these initial huts frequently. [43] Brumbaugh's specifications, including
requirements for wooden hardware, handwrought nails, and fireplaces made
of irregular local stone, showed his mania for detail. Logs were to be
cut from trees in the park and to be "handled and shipped carefully to
ensure minimum damage to the bark." [44]
The huts were to be located throughout the park at
the places where soldiers had originally built them. A few huts each
would mark the positions of General Maxwell's New Jersey Brigade,
General Varnum's Rhode Island Brigade, General Woodford's Virginia
Brigade, General Poor's New York and New Hampshire Brigade, General
Muhlenberg's Virginia and Pennsylvania Brigade, General Learned's
Massachusetts Brigade, and General Wayne's Pennsylvania Brigades.
Muhlenberg's Brigade would have the largest number of huts, and it was
hoped that eventually some officers' huts, a hospital hut, and a shop
could be added at this location. The huts were to be positioned
according to the Duportail map, which implied that eighteenth-century
soldiers had neatly aligned their huts in orderly company streets.
As the first huts began to appear, they generated
much public excitementevidence of America's continuing interest in
the history of the common experience. Previous generations of visitors
to Valley Forge had been greatly moved by Washington's Headquarters;
modern-day visitors found the huts where ordinary soldiers had been
quartered equally inspiring. Valley Forge even made the New York
Herald Tribune when a reporter mused, "The visitor wonders what the
ragged troops, as they erected their huts in the snow of 1777, would
have thought if they were told that some day men would build a monument
to themnot of stone, or bronze, but of the same rough local tree
trunks, shaped to form reproductions of those crude shelters they were
building." [45]
Hut-building went slowly, causing Brumbaugh to feel
some pressure from the park commission. Brumbaugh reported delays in
getting good labor, and in May 1947 the park superintendent, Milton
Baker, expressed his concern that if the huts were not erected quickly
enough the state government might take the park's appropriation away. "I
am certain that Mr. Brumbaugh is a well qualified architect and will do
a fine piece of historical research but I am fearful that he does not
recognize the importance of the time element in this project, Baker
wrote. [46] Brumbaugh's difficulties
continued, and by July only one complete hut was visible on the site of
Washington's guards' quarters. [47] In
October, Brumbaugh reiterated his labor problems and also mentioned
problems getting materials and equipment. Other, more interesting delays
were encountered. Bones were found at the excavation for one hut
foundation, which stalled the job until they could be examined by an
anthropologist to determine whether they were human remains. They were
not, and building continued.
In November 1947, Milo F. Draemel, then secretary of
Pennsylvania's Department of Forests and Waters (the park commission's
parent organization), stated Harrisburg's desire to see "some real
accomplishment on the Restoration Program." As a result, the park
commission awarded Edwin H. Hollenbach a contract to build twenty of the
log huts. [48] Brumbaugh's painstaking
technique of building and rebuilding each hut was abandoned. By
December, huts were finally appearing, and by July 1948 they were
completed. The park had its monuments to the common man.
The techniques Brumbaugh instituted resulted in
uniform huts, regularly placed. While Brumbaugh built the huts,
Americans were rushing out to purchase new tract houses of uniform
design in planned suburban subdivisions. It almost seems that Brumbaugh
was unconsciously creating a "Log Levittown" for the ghosts of Valley
Forge. Naturally, this was nothing remarkable to Brumbaugh's
contemporaries. Only after look-alike tract homes went out of style and
were attacked as symbols of the stifling conformity of suburban life
would Brumbaugh's huts be criticized. [49]
Fig. 23. Brumbaugh's huts were later
criticized because they were too uniform and too regularly spaced. In
this photo, they resemble cookie-cutter tract houses built in suburban
communities of the same era. (Courtesy, Valley Forge National Historical
Park)
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In fact, the park commission wanted to go Brumbaugh
one better in copying suburbia by landscaping the huts. In July 1948, at
the suggestion of Norris Wright, Park Commissioner Norman Randolph and
George Edwin Brumbaugh met with a landscaper to obtain an estimate.
Although Randolph strongly felt that military exigencies would have made
the eighteenth-century encampment a very barren place, he described what
General Washington might have wanted "had it been possible." This
included stone walks to the entrance of each hut, shade trees between
the huts, and low shrubs around each hut "to keep down the dust in dry
weather." [50] Fortunately, these highly
inaccurate finishing touches never materialized.
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