Past Restoration Work
Current Restoration Work

The Joshua L.Chamberlain House was sold out of the family by Chamberlain's granddaughter, Rosamond Allen, in 1939, to a local landlord who converted it into apartments.The building served as an apartment house from the 1930's through the early 1980's, when it suffered from extensive neglect. Since rescuing the building from planned demolition in 1983, the Society has raised in excess of $500,000 to retire the purchase debt and to restore this landmark structure. Because the building was in a state of near collapse at the time of purchase, much of the restoration has focused on structural repairs, including extensive work on the foundations, sills and support members. While most of the exterior and many interior areas of the building have been restored, there remain a great number of challenges before the building can be "finished".

To guide this work, the Society in 1994 commissioned an historic structure report on the Chamberlain House. This 150-page study took stock of all the work that has been done to date, and using input from engineers, historians, architects, conservators and preservation contractors, provided the society with a sort of "road map" to the completion of the project, along with anticipated costs.

1996 restoration

When the Society purchased the building, it was an all-volunteer organization with three historic structures to manage. In order to help finance the purchase, the Society has maintained four apartments in the rear ell of the Chamberlain House, converting the front of the building to the Joshua Chamberlain Museum. One of the Society's primary goals is to reduce or eliminate the apartments in the Chamberlain House, as money can be raised for the endowment to offset the income they produce. Other goals include replicating the original wallpapers, restoring the building's extensive masonry, and completing some of the interior rooms which have suffered greatly from deferred maintenance prior to 1983.

Past restoration activities have included the dramatic reinstallation of the cross-motif chimneys that formerly graced the building. These Chimneys, completed in July, 1996, have changed the appearance of the structure, bringing it closer to the way it looked during the 1870's. More recently, the Society engaged the services of Farmington, Maine - based decorative painter Tony Castro to restore the extraordinary illusionistic painted ceiling in the Chamberlain parlor. Completed in April, 1997, the ceiling features a painted center medallion and trompe l'oeil borders, which give the illusion of plaster moldings. Other 1997 restoration has included the partial restoration of the Chamberlain dining room and the conversion of a former apartment into a museum gift shop. Much of the 1997 restoration efforts were made possible thanks to generous grants from Society member Douglas Chamberlain and the Davis Family Foundation, of Maine.

In 1998, the Society completed restoration of the Chamberlain parlor, recently restoring the dramatic two-toned floors. Hidden for years beneath a thick coating of black varnish, the floors of most of the ground floor of the Chamberlain Museum are made of alternating strips of walnut and birch, creating a series of alternately-colored stripes of light and dark. The parlor was, for many years, an apartment, and several areas of the floor showed damage from holes cut for pipes. Tony Castro solved this problem in an unorthodox fashion, cutting small pieces of wood to patch these areas from the bottom of existing floorboards. In this way, he was able to patch the floor using original wood, maintaining the original integrity of the project. The floor project was completed thanks to grants from Society member Douglas Chamberlain and a generous matching gift from the 20th Maine Regiment re-enactors of Bangor, Maine.

In 1998 Tony Castro recreated the original faux rosewood graining and restored the painted walls in the dinning room. During the spring of 2000 the restoration was completed. Castro installed ceiling paper recreated by Waterhouse Wallhangings, Inc in Boston based on fragments of the orginal. The paper is an exact reproduction of the original, in 7 colors, 2 of them metallic.

The long-term goal to replace the unsightly hedge in front of the Chamberlain House with a reproduction of the cast iron fence that stood in the General's day was completed in 2003. By a remarkable chance, the pattern books of the Philadelphia company that made the original fence still survived in an iron foundry in Alabama. We were able to have new molds cast to copy the fence exactly as Chamberlain himself knew it. Thank you for your generous support.

Through the generosity of a special friend and member, Miss Helen Johnson, restoration specialist Tony Castro returned to the Chamberlain Museum to work on the Longfellow Parlor. This second-floor room of the Chamberlain Museum is named for its connection to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The noted poet and his first wife lived in this and two other rooms of the house from 1830-32, almost three decades before the Chamberlains moved in. The room was restored to appear as it did around 1875, shortly after the General had the house raised to add a new first floor.
Castro analyzed wallpaper remnants and conducted paint tests to determine how the room should be restored. Previously we had only a small remnant of the original wallpaper. Removing a door frame uncovered enough to piece together a full repeat: a gray-colored daisy chain pattern with green flowers at the apex of the swag. Equally exciting, written and architectural evidence together suggest this is the same paper Longfellow hung in 1832. Chamberlain, apparently proud of the room's association to the famous writer, retained the paper at least until 1875.
Castro completed the first phase of the project in July 2001, returning all of the woodwork (shutters, doors, trim) to the 1875 colors. Paint layer analyses revealed that in 1871 the edge of the parlor floor (i.e. not covered by the area rug) was a dark brown and the entire mantle was painted black. The complete reproduction wallpaper was hung in 2004, changing the room dramatically. Waterhouse Wallhangings of Boston, the same firm who made the dining room paper, produced the Longfellow Parlor wallpaper.

RESTORATION CHALLENGE!

We have come a long way, but any visitor to our buildings can see that we still have some distance to go before our work is complete. You are welcome to assist in the Chamberlain House restoration effort through direct, tax-deductible contributions, gifts of appreciated stock, a bequest in your will, or through any one of a variety of other methods. Contributions are tax deductible, and if you specify that your contribution is to go toward the Chamberlain Restoration, 100% of your gift will be used in that project. We do not deduct for "overhead" or "indirect costs" -- it all goes directly to the building.

Please contact our offices at 207-729-6606 or by email for more information on how you can help to save a true American landmark.

Library circa 1870s
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