Week 10: Servant Spaces

             This week I spent most of my time consolidating all of the information I have discovered about Arthur Laws into a narrative. When Glen Foerd is prepared to introduce new information on tours, the narrative will allow the docents to easily learn about Laws and his role within the household to share with visitors. While writing the narrative, I referred to several “servant spaces” within the household, which will give visitors a visual of how the domestics interacted in the household and with the Foerderer and Tonner families. The significance of including servant spaces on tours has been emphasized by many historians—including Jennifer Pustz—offering advice on interpreting the lesser known, and often less pleasant, aspects of historic sites.

            At this point, several of the most obvious servant spaces are unavailable for visitors to view. The butler’s pantry is one of these unavailable spaces. When Robert Foerderer bought Glen Foerd, he renovated the entire house and added a large addition, including the portions of the house now used as the art gallery, dining room, kitchen, storage, and Glen Foerd staff offices. Foerderer kept detailed plans of the renovation, right down to the type of stain used on the cabinets in the butler’s pantry. These documents allowed me to discover what the house looked like when Arthur was employed there, especially the servant spaces which were not often found in photographs or referenced in inventories.

            The dining room and the art gallery remain as Foerderer designed them in 1903 (at least as far as we know and with what is left of the collection). The kitchen, however, was completely gutted and refinished during the period the Lutheran Church owned Glen Foerd. In redoing the kitchen, the wall that existed  separating the kitchen from the butler’s pantry was knocked down to expand the kitchen space. All that remains to display the location of the former butler’s pantry—where Arthur decanted wine and liquor, cared for the china, silver, and glassware, and prepared the daily dinner menus—is a change in the color of the linoleum floor tiles installed by the Lutheran Church. In Foerderer’s notes on the addition, he described the fixture in the butler’s pantry: “Furnish dresser from Butlers pantry out of chestnut, with closets and shelves above, and drawers and closets below.” There are four large (over six feet tall) cabinets that fit this description remaining at Glen Foerd, two in the basement and two in the carriage house. Perhaps someday the butler’s pantry can be restaged using these cabinets and any other furniture described by Foerderer in his plans.

            The kitchen itself would be completely unrecognizable to former residents and employees of the house, except the placement of windows. Behind the kitchen are several rooms with original wooden floors and a bathroom with tile that looks to be from the early twentieth century. Likely, one of these rooms was used as the servants’ dining hall. Another, perhaps, was the housekeeper’s room. Unfortunately, no plans have been discovered that prove what the rooms were used for during the Foerderer or Tonner eras. From Foerderer’s notes, we know there was once a servants’ porch as well, but no visible evidence of this remains.  The former servants’ quarters, including the narrow stairway up to them, is intact. Today the rooms are used as offices and collections storage, and until the offices are relocated, they could not be included on a tour. The servants’ bathroom also remains, with original floors, tile, and claw foot bathtub.

            The basement and third floors were also once servant spaces. On the third floor, the nurse and the governess each had their own room. The layout of the basement during the Foerderer years remains a mystery. We are sure one room was used as a laundry, but there are at least six other distinct spaces with questionable functions. I’ve been searching for architectural plans or inventories including the basement in hopes of learning the former layout with no luck. I still have five weeks left though, so I am holding out hope!

            The good news for interpreting servant spaces is that several very interesting spaces still exist and can be made easily accessible to visitors. These include call buttons, still visible in most rooms, a push button on the floor of the dining room that was used to signal the kitchen when the party was ready for the next course (which also helps tell the layout of the furniture in the room, as the lady of the house would have been seated where the button is located), and an original annunciator, which connected to the call buttons and pointed to which room rang for help, on the wall of a landing in the front servant stairwell. Each of these objects and spaces would add to a successful interpretation including the domestic workers of the house. Including them would offer a more complete history of the mansion, and those that once lived and worked within its walls. 

Week 9: A Day With The Collection

          Before beginning my post about collections, I want to mention the article "The Particular Puzzles of Being a Small Museum" found in the New York Times yesterday. The article touches on many of the challenges encountered by small museums today and some of the solutions museum professionals are hoping will help the museums survive.

Back to Glen Foerd...

            Last week, Erica asked me to help her with collections-related tasks on Tuesday. She suggested that I wear jeans and comfortable shoes, but I had no idea what I would be assisting with. When I arrived on Tuesday, she explained some of the fundamental problems with the collection at Glen Foerd. Because of Glen Foerd’s largely undocumented past, some of the collection is not yet entered into PastPerfect, their preferred museum software program. Many of the objects to have stickers on them with labels, so a cataloguing system certainly once existed, but no one still involved with the house knows how to read the system, which makes it basically useless. Not only do we not know what the numbers signify, but who invented the system is also a mystery. If Florence Foerderer Tonner used the system, it could unlock the mystery of where she displayed each object during her lifetime. Unfortunately it is more likely that either the Lutheran Church or a former member of the museum staff used the system.

            Right now, the number one priority for the collection is to make sure it is safe. With weddings and other events occurring frequently at Glen Foerd, having any of the collection exposed is risky at best. Things could be stolen or broken and, because much of the collection is not entered into PastPerfect, the staff might not even be immediately aware of the damage. The second priority is to enter the entire collection—especially the pieces in parts of the mansion open to the public—into PastPerfect.

            With these two priorities in mind, Erica and I set out to move valuable objects from a broken cabinet on the first floor to a secure china cabinet in the art gallery. Erica knew the objects must be relocated, but finding a suitable place to move them to proved a bit problematic. The collection at Glen Foerd is vast, and every secure cabinet in the house was already full of objects. Further, we had to be mindful not to relocate certain objects that the docents mention in the tour. In the end, Erica decided to move the objects in question to a glass cabinet in the alarm-protected art gallery, and to move the china currently there into the china closet storage space.

            The process seemed simple, but proved a bit more backbreaking than I had thought. We began by removing each object one by one (with gloves on, of course) and giving them a good clean. Whoever placed the objects into the case used museum wax to make sure they stayed put—but went a little (okay, a lot) overboard with the wax. Some of the figurines had wax completely caked all over their bottoms and up their sides. We used an artist’s tool that resembled a letter opener to scrape the wax off. The collection included blue Dutch Delft China figurines, several items carved from ivory—including a calling card case, a picture frame, several birds, and an elephant, a collection of porcelain Greek God statues, and photographs of celebrities displayed in various ways.

            After carefully cleaning each object, we documented their accession numbers. Erica was helpful in explaining different methods museums use to catalogue their collections. We then carried the items upstairs to the art gallery in padded boxes, with just a few items in each box. We each made several careful trips up and down the large staircase and then began the same process for the china we had to move. The china had to go up to the third floor, which meant packing more boxes and making more careful trips up the stairs. I left at three o’clock, having spent six hours working with Erica to document and relocate probably around sixty objects. By the time I left, all of the china was safely in the china closet with its new location recorded. One out of four of the shelves in the art gallery were arranged. Erica finished up placing the remainder of the objects on the other three shelves and recording their new locations to be entered into Past Perfect.

             It was hard work, but I enjoyed it. There is something thrilling about handling the objects (even with gloves on) that everyone else must view from behind glass. And as Erica pointed out, Collections Management is even more fun when you have researched the objects and know the history of the object you are handling. 

Week 8: Interpreting Domestics

         This week I focused on placing the former domestic servants of Glen Foerd into a larger historical context. I read several books written in the early twentieth century intended as guides for wealthy women running a household. The most helpful of these primary sources was Millionaire Households and Their Domestic Economy, With Hints Upon Fine Living, written by Mary Elizabeth Carter in 1903. Carter offered explanation and advice on the duties of each employee of the household, from housekeeper to scullery maid and everyone in between. Of course, I paid special attention to the section on the duties of a butler to help provide general information about Arthur Laws. Carter stated that one of the defining characteristics of a butler was a physical one—height and bulk was a requirement for the position. Since we are unaware of any existing photographs of Arthur, this information (that Arthur was most likely a tall and bulky man), as well as details about common uniform requirements, will be helpful to offer during tours to provide visitors with some sort of mental image.

Another helpful point in Carter’s Millionaire Households answered a question brought up by the 1930 US Census. Arthur laws appears on the 1930 Census twice, listed at both Glen Foerd with Tonner family members and fellow servants, and at 1527 Fontain St. in North Philadelphia with his second wife, two children, and stepson. From 1900 to 1940 there are dozens of other servants listed in the Foerder/Tonner households, but Arthur remains the sole employee to turn up on the same census at two separate addresses. Because he is also the only African American employee listed (evidence of other African American employees does exist in an oral history, but they were farm laborers and would not have lived in the main house), I assumed it was uncommon for African American domestics to live with other servants of white families. Carter, however, explained that it was perfectly acceptable for a butler to marry, have a family, and keep a separate home of his own. The employer often kept a room and private bathroom specifically for the butler to use, as they were often required to remain at the house late into the night because of the demanding duties of his job. Other male household employees did not share this privilege.  

Jennifer Pustz, author of Voices From the Back Stairs: Interpreting Servants’ Lives at Historic House Museums provided another explanation to the same question of Arthur’s dueling addresses. She explained that as immigration restrictions were lifted and African Americans migrated North during the early twentieth century, both groups began to dominate the profession. At Glen Foerd, the majority of domestics were German, Swiss, or Swedish immigrants. A few were Irish, one was French, and Arthur Laws was African American. Very few of their servants were American born. Pustz noted that African American domestic workers throughout the United States frequently lived outside the home of their employer, no matter their position in the household. She stated that this tradition echoed traditions found in the slaveholding South, where slaves were housed in separate quarters. As an African American butler, it would have been extremely unlikely that Arthur would have lived at Glen Foerd, which makes the 1930 Census make perfect sense now! These sources, among others, proved helpful in placing Arthur Laws and other Glen Foerd servants into a larger historical context. 

Week 7: New Interpretations

            This week, several articles I read and a guest speaker in my museum studies class at University of the Arts caused me to consider the importance of interpretation in historic house museums. The staff of Glen Foerd is in the process of revamping their interpretation of the house—moving from an object-heavy guided tour to a more personal tour that places the home and those who once resided there into historical context. My main task as an intern is to research the domestic workers that the Foerderer and Tonner families once employed at Glen Foerd, specifically Arthur Laws. By the end of the semester I’m hoping I will have dug up enough information to create a tour that incorporates the formerly untold stories of the domestic staff.

            Dr. Jennifer Janofsky, the guest speaker in my University of the Arts class, spoke to us about her experience as Megan M. Giordano Fellow in Public History. The fellowship is sponsored by Rowan University in partnership with Gloucester County Parks and Recreation Department, and Dr. Janofsky is responsible for both teaching undergraduate courses in public history at Rowan and curating the James and Ann Whithall House in National Park, New Jersey. Janofsky discussed public history within the world of academia, advice on finding jobs, and specific challenges she encountered as the only (part-time) staff member at the Whithall House. Throughout her discussion, I felt like she was preachin’ to the choir (ie. me), and found myself nodding my head in agreement continually for her entire hour-long discussion.

            One specific issue Janofsky emphasized was the need for historic house museums—that have seen a steady decline in attendance over the past several decades—to become relevant again. One of her solutions for the Whithall House was similar to suggestions mentioned at the Small Museum Association Conference I attended in February—to pinpoint themes relevant throughout American history that the visitor can identify with. While conference attendees suggested freedom and immigration, Janofsky considered the universal themes of life and death. As many museum professionals point out, visitors often travel to historic sites to experience what they believe was a simpler time. Janofsky pointed out that life (literally giving birth) and death were far more connected in nineteenth century America than they are today. She planned an exhibit and tour featuring objects on loan from the Mütter Museum that discussed the hardships of, in many ways, the much less simple lives of the Whitall family. This idea appealed to me, and I will certainly be attending the exhibit: “From Midwifery to Yellow Fever: Life and Death at the Whitall House.”

            Several articles I read recently also addressed the idea of keeping house museums relevant through incorporating certain universal themes. I found Adam Steinberg’s “What We Talk About When We Talk About Food: Using Food to Teach History at the Tenement Museum” particularly interesting. To my knowledge, the Tenement Museum has not experienced a pattern of decline of visitation like other house museums, but inventing a tour that uses food to discuss the lives of immigrants who once lived—and still live—on the Lower East Side seemed to be a wonderful and unique way to teach this particular history. Food history seems to be trending right now—Fort Mifflin in Philadelphia has historic foodways symposiums and hands-on historic cooking workshops on their calendar for March, 2013.

            Really considering universal themes identifiable throughout history is going to be an important step in revamping tours at Glen Foerd. I’m definitely making progress with research, and am now trying to consider the larger themes to apply to that information in order to create an interesting and relatable tour for visitors. 

Week 6: Arthur in the News

        Last week, besides attending the Small Museum Association Conference, I attended my first ever museum board meeting at Glen Foerd. Through my experience at Glen Foerd and conversations in my Museum Studies class, I gathered that the board at Glen Foerd was unique. Many of the board members were original members, having served on the board for decades. Continually, all of the board members are local to the area, and most of them actually live within a two-block radius of the mansion. Because the board members have been involved at Glen Foerd for so long, many have a personal attachment to the mansion, and all of them have a vested interest in the area of Northeast Philadelphia, Torresdale, where the mansion is located. From what I’ve witnessed so far, this causes the board to be more hands-on and less diverse than most museum boards. There are certainly both positives and negatives to this specific board—one thing is for certain: this group loves Glen Foerd. The dynamic will be interesting to observe as my internship continues.

This week I have been back on the hunt for more information about Arthur Laws and other servants. I took the advice of an employee at the Urban Archives located at Temple University and searched through the Philadelphia Inquirer online database, available through the Access World News Research Collection. The collection allowed me to access editions of the Inquirer as early as 1829, though I focused my search on the first half of the 20th century. I found dozens of articles about Robert Foerderer, including details about his purchase and renovation of Glen Foerd, his political life, and advertisements for various positions at his factory. This I expected—but any articles mentioning Arthur Laws, I did not. My heart skipped a beat when two articles popped up after searching his name! The first article I opened listed Arthur Laws as a member of the International Society of Waiters and Bartenders, and explained that the membership of the organization numbered over two hundred. The Inquirer printed the article, “Waiters’ Soceity Elects Officers” on October 28, 1900. From census information, I know Arthur was living in Philadelphia and employed as a waiter—it is likely, but not definite that this article referred to Arthur Laws the butler at Glen Foerd.

The second article I read, entitled “They Were Easy: Persons Seeking Situations Paid Money to a Supposed Employer,” was from 1898, when Arthur was relatively new to Philadelphia and working as a waiter. The inquirer listed his name as one of five men who testified against a con man who had “been going around representing that he had been authorized to engage fifty waiters to work at a two weeks’ fair…and from those who accepted his offer he is alleged to have obtained $1.10 to purchase their railroad tickets.” Following their payments, the conman failed to appear at their scheduled meeting time, and the men discovered there was no fair at all. When I read about Arthur, a young man struggling to find work in a new city, being swindled, I felt disheartened for him—until I remembered he ended up as a butler at a beautiful mansion in the suburbs of Philadelphia! He certainly struggled, but (as far as I can tell) things turned out for the best in the end.

Week Five: Musings on Small Museums

      My internship experience with Glen Foerd this week proved very educational. On Tuesday, I attended the Small Museum Association Conference in Ocean City, Maryland with Erica Harvey. The day was exhausting (I had to start my day at 4am in order to meet Erica and make it to Ocean City by 8:30!), but a wonderful experience for a graduate student interested in a future career as a museum professional. As it was the final day of the conference, all of the sessions were fit into two time slots, so Erica and I split up in order to attend the maximum amount of sessions.

The first session that I attended concerned the changing demographics of museum audiences, and how to best handle these changes. The session was run as a group discussion, which I found to be less helpful that I first imagined. Each museum professional had varying issues, but the discussion basically centered on how to involve your particular community and maintain museum attendance. Many of the participants spoke of ethnic diversity new to their communities, specifically the rising Latino population in many areas. To this issue, one individual suggested translating captions, brochures, and other museum literature, as well as incorporating themes that appeal to all Americans—including recent immigrants—such as freedom or immigration. Other museum professionals discussed appealing to the senior community and those with disabilities by making your site accessible. The final consensus reached at the conclusion of the discussion was that focusing on children’s programming was vital, and that no matter your struggles, you should never compromise your mission in order to attract more visitors.

I found the second session I attended to be more useful than the first. This session focused on the topic of how to capture a new audience through socially engaging programs. Three museum professionals from the Delaware Art Museum delivered a presentation about their success with new programming that attracts new audiences, retains those audiences, and thus sustains their future. Through several programs, including “Art is Social,” “Clay Date,” and “Sunday Studio Program,” the museum staff has successfully attracted a new audience. Partnering with local artists (especially bands and DJs) and liquor stores, advertising in local magazines and through blogs and social media, and charging a small fee have all helped draw these new crowds. The key to their success seemed to be socially engaging programs—whether essentially throwing a party in the museum, offering date nights in their studios to create your own art, or family friendly arts and crafts on Sundays, each program maintained a social aspect. The most interesting thought the presenters shared was that the museums once offered similar programs free of charge, and had little turnout at each event. Once the museum began to charge, only $5 for the “Art is Social” and Sunday Studio Program, their visitors felt the program had some value, and many events sell out. Though their ideas may not be possible at Glen Foerd at this time, they are certainly something to consider in the future.

Week Four: Archives and Wills

          This week I spent my ten hours working remotely. Tuesday I used the Preservation Alliance of Greater Philadelphia’s inventory of African American Historic Churches in the City of Philadelphia, available on their website, to narrow down possible churches Arthur Laws may have attended. The work was time consuming—I couldn’t devise a better system than simply cross-referencing the addresses and dates on the Preservation Alliance’s list with Arthur’s addresses according to censuses using Google Maps. I’ve narrowed the list down to nine possibilities, with three that are much more likely than the others. Unfortunately most of the nine churches are no longer in existence, and the inventory listed no records remaining in existence. If possible, I will contact the churches that retained their records for any information on Arthur Laws or his family members.

Thursday I spent most of the day at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania doing research. I learned that the HSP holds the collection of Percival Foerderer—son of Robert and Caroline Foerderer (Caroline first employed Arthur around 1910) and brother of Florence (who continued to employ Arthur through at least 1930). The collection contained “The Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Robert H. Foerderer,” delieved in the House of Representatives April 10, 1904. Reading the sentiments of several United States Representatives proved slightly helpful in learning about Robert Foerderer’s early life, as well as his industrial achievements. At some point this semester I would like to take a break from Arthur Laws research and attempt to research Robert Foerderer’s company and leather factory. As I am focusing on working class history, I would specifically research the lives of the factory employees.

Much of Percival’s collection was made up of his daughter Mignon Foerderer’s scrapbooks, containing newspaper clippings about the family and society event invitations, as well as photograph albums. Unfortunately much of the collection focused on the years after Arthur’s employment with the family (and probably after his death). Still, I found the information useful in providing a background and personal information about the family who lived at or frequently visited Glen Foerd. Incorporating interesting information about the lives of those who once walked the halls of Glen Foerd could provide a more exciting tour, placing the objects in the home into context for the visitors.

While I was researching, I couldn’t help but consider the difficulties historic sites encounter because of the wills of those who once occupied the locations. Take the example of the story of the Foggs-Rollins House in Exeter, New Hampshire. In their article, “Does American Need Another House Museum?” included in the Summer 2004 publication of AASLH History News, Carol B. Stapp and Kenneth B. Turino described the story of this specific historic site. The last owner of the Foggs-Rollins House, Beatrice Rollins, formed a trust to turn the house into a house museum upon her death. Unfortunately, while Rollins formed this trust, she left the majority of her financial assets in a fund to her cats. This left the property in Exeter without enough funding to maintain it, and left trustees of the estate, as well as local historians, with the question of what to do with the house.

Though a much less severe problem, the wills of the Foerderer family members have left Glen Foerd in an interesting position. A religious woman, Florence Foerderer Tonner left Glen Foerd to the Lutheran Church upon her death in 1972. She also stipulated that the house be left to the local community, should the church no longer be able to maintain it. This transaction occurred in 1988, when Glen Foerd was put in the care of the Fairmount Park Commission. Though the house became property of the city, the Lutheran Church still owned its contents, which over the years had been moved, both within the house, to other structures on the property, and to unknown locations off of the property. This movement and loss of Florence Foerder’s property has caused a difficult issue for the staff of Glen Foerd the museum. There are no known plans of the original furniture layout of the entire building, so what objects were central to the home, where they belong, etc. remain questionable. This makes it difficult to know if the set up is historically accurate. Not nearly as difficult a question to answer as the Foggs-Rollins House, but certainly a challenge as the question of what to do with the excessive collection remains. I suspect in the next few months, a solution for this question will be offered, through research in the archives of Glen Foerd, as well as advice from historic architects.