"Houses from the reservoirs of memory": G. Edwin Brumbaugh and the restoration of early Pennsylvania architecture
Date
2000
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
The professional career of George Edwin Brumbaugh (1890-1983), one of the most important restoration architects in Pennsylvania in the twentieth century, has been only briefly addressed by scholars. Brumbaugh completed over one hundred restorations in the Delaware Valley between 1927 and 1983, many of which are now open as museums. This thesis explores Brumbaugh’s motivations for preservation and analyzes the architectural and historical narratives he intended to tell in his museum restorations at Ephrata Cloister for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in Ephrata; the Gates House and Golden Plough Tavern for Historic York County in York, Pennsylvania; and Wright’s Ferry Mansion for the Louise Steinman von Hess Foundation in Columbia, Pennsylvania. Brumbaugh’s papers suggest that the public or private nature of each museum directed the sort of narrative Brumbaugh could create. The restorations at Ephrata represent the creation of formal, “official” state history. Those at York represent local history, with the purpose of renewing a neighborhood and increasing tourism. The Wright’s Ferry Mansion project represents private history: the story the Louise Steinman von Hess Foundation wanted to tell. The comparison of these three restorations reveals important differences between the private client-architect and public client-architect relationship, as well as the effect these relationships had on the creation a particular type of history. ☐ This thesis reveals Brumbaugh's professional growth as a restoration architect in the second half of the twentieth century. At Ephrata, Brumbaugh insisted on the revival of authentic eighteenth-century, Pennsylvania German craft traditions to complete the restoration, while at York he utilized funds from the Urban Renewal Administration. Increasingly, Brumbaugh mediated the past and the present and learned to balance the historical with the modem. Yet Brumbaugh never strayed from his ultimate educational goal: to inspire visitors with the drama and spirit of American history. By learning from and experiencing the ways of the past, Brumbaugh hoped visitors to his restored sites might leave imbued and fortified with a more noble spirit which they would then transfer to their own lives.