Tom Calarco
North East magazine
April 2003
As I pulled onto the dirt road I came upon an old house wrapped in plastic – like a body on its way to the morgue. This old house, however, was not about to be buried. It was destined to be raised from the dead, brought back to life by a master of his trade, a man who restores old houses for a living Michael Kelley of Niskayuna.
“There’s nothing like taking a building apart from its tiny component pieces to learn how it’s built,” says Kelley, who’s been fascinated with old houses since he helped restore an 18th century farmhouse when he was 16.
Kelley was documenting dissected parts when I walked inside and saw the skeletal frame that remained. He was numbering, describing, and cataloguing them for future restoration with the help of contractor Dave Snook, who works with him on all his projects. They were joking about the many rat carcasses they had found in the basement along with two pieces of the characteristic Dutch blue delft tile. This was no ordinary job.
This rare structure, known as the Daniel Peter Winne house, was not merely being taken apart and boxed up for a move to another location. It was being moved to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to be reassembled and take its place as one of the showpieces in its new American Wing, which should be completed sometime within the next three years.
The Winne house had remained anonymous because of the renovations that had taken place over the years. Slingerlands attorney John Breeze was the first to realize that it might be important and contacted Kelley. Among the clues that revealed its true identity were the roofline that been lowered from its original high-pitched Dutch style to Greek Revival style, causing it to lose its classic Dutch look. Changes to the windows and addition of siding had masked it from those would be able to recognize its true origin.
Other clues Kelley found were the moved anchor beam used to support the roof and evidence of a jambless fireplace that was used in such houses prior to 1750. This medieval style did not use jambs but had a huge, thick masonry hood suspended above on timbers that expelled the hot air into the ceiling.
Also of interest was its unique construction, which had been dictated by the builder’s personal sensibility of the world. It was a great discovery to find such a house, Kelley said, because not much is written about them, and it provided an opportunity for him to learn about it first hand.
Peter Kenny, curator of the Met’s American Decorative Arts and administrator of its American wing, said he learned of the Winne house from a friend who knew about a 1709 house in New Paltz that Kelley had restored. The Met was interested because it doesn’t have a house in this distinctive early Dutch style with its more open and higher ceiling.
The only concern was bringing its 23-foot beams up to the third floor where the house will be exhibited, but that was quickly solved by the museum’s architects. Kenny also was intrigued by the original approach to its design and aesthetic, and its “extremely pleasing and wonderful patina of aging,” some of whose parts were never painted.
At present, the Met plans to exhibit the house’s groote (great) chamber with the big fireplace and preserve its back, bedchamber for possible future exhibition.
Though the Met doesn’t have such an old Dutch house at present, they are relatively prevalent in the Hudson and Mohawk Valley because of 17th Century Dutch settlement of the region, and are well known to Kelley, a native of this area. He’s been to Holland to study architecture and has restored a number of 18th century Dutch houses and barns. He credits his meeting with Don Carpentier, the historic preservationist who developed the renowned Eastfield Village in Rensselaer County, as the turning point of his career.
Used as a training center for people serious about learning the arcane crafts, Eastfield attracts instructors in historical preservation from around the world.
At the time of their meeting, Kelley was working for the phone company as a manager and restoring houses in his space time. He began taking classes at Eastfield, and along with trips to study architecture in Europe, began collecting a huge reference library.
Reading about historical preservation and taking classes in it is good, Kelley says, but they don’t take the place of working in the field. “It’s like a surgeon reading about how to perform an operation.” He also began working with Carpentier, who encouraged him to go into the field full-time, and also helped him move a number of his historic houses to Eastfield.
In 1988 Kelley took Carpentier’s advice and “followed [his] bliss.”
He said he was frightened by the prospect of being unable to get jobs, but thanks to referrals from Carpentier, the work started coming. In 1989, he collaborated with Carpentier in documenting and dismantling four Dutch barns; in 1990, he restored, moved and rebuilt a 1790’s Dutch barn in Old Chatham, New York, converting it into a high-tech space; in 1993, he dismantled significant Shaker storage building, reconstructed it in an agricultural setting, then designed and built a 16,000 square foot state-of-the-art sheep milking and research facility using Shaker design in the same location.
One of his best known works came shortly after when he renovated a house in Columbia County that became known as The Old Chatham Sheepherding Company Inn, which has been widely written about, including an article in the New York Times.
It’s not as easy as it sounds.
Restoring old houses to their original state, or deconstructing them as is the case with the Winne house, requires an enormous breadth of knowledge. The preservationist must be familiar with the materials used during the period the house was built – what kind of wood, copper, or stained glass. But even when using the same type of wood, there can be differences because of variations in the conditions when the trees were grown.
For example, the white pine used 200-300 years ago was older, denser, and consequently more durable. Also, different tools were used and people had different sensibilities about proportion and aesthetics depending upon their period. At the same time, preservationists must combine 18th century aesthetics with 21st century comforts and safety. People today won’t live without plumbing or electricity, and there are building and fire codes to follow. Unavailability of materials, which is not, as one expects uncommon, can be another problem.
No matter how knowledgeable the preservationist, the process of deconstruction is complex and tedious. Some Georgian houses Kelley has reassembled contained thousands of pieces. Hours of intensely concentrated effort and observation are necessary.
During the six weeks of deconstructing the Winne house, Kelley’s whole world became one obsession, to dissect the house piece by piece and layer by layer in order to determine what was part of later renovations and what was part of the old house.
In many cases, parts were missing and Kelley was forced to look for barely discernible markings and imprints that told him where, for instance, the once prominent staircase was positioned, or where the original nails and floor joists lined up. Sometimes, he was forced to state at sections for hours and wait for just the right light to see the markings.
“The house isn’t going to reveal its secrets by shouting at you, it’s going to whisper,” he says, “and you have to listen very carefully.”
At times, he also was forced to set pieces aside because he could not readily determine if they were part of the original house.
In the Winne house, a boxed stair panel was found to have been used later as part of a sub-floor, but that one piece had enough markings to reveal information about the original staircase. These markings were important to recreating parts of the house that no longer exist, and the reason why he needed to peel away the plaster layer by layer. “The trick is to make it look like you were never there,” Kelley says of his restorations, “to use a light hand, and a subtle touch. Its getting all the details just right, you don’t settle for close enough.”
Kelley says he often feels subtle connections with the people who lived in the houses on which he works. During periods of reflections, after everything is cleaned up, he sometimes notices nuances of wear in the houses.
In the Winne house, he became fixed upon the floor that had surrounded the fireplace. He observed imprints and gradations indicative of constant activity by people around it, and it caused him to imagine what their life had been like.
As marvelous as his own skills are, he marvels at the skills of the artisans of days gone by. “When you have an appreciation of these skills, much of the reward when you finish a job is knowing that it’s being preserved,” he says. Now that the house is deconstructed, documented, and boxed up for future restoration, Kelley and Kenny will examine other similar old houses in the Hudson Valley and compare them with the Winne house, looking particularly at items like their doors – the original front door of the Winne house was missing – and their staircases, whose design in the Winne house they were able to piece together from markings they found, but about which they still have questions.
Kelley relishes his work. It’s so much more to him than a way to make a living. You could say he is performing a kind of miracle, bringing something back to life, perhaps not as exactly as it was, but as close as is humanly possible. His work is truly something that reaches deep within our psyche: the longing to preserve what and who we are as long as we can.
As he says, “It’s part of the history of the country. Once it’s gone, it’s gone, if no one’s there to preserve it, to record it accurately.” That’s what Michael Kelley lives for.