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revealing a glorious past

Phase II Restoration Reveals Original Splendor
of the Moses Myers House

Built in 1797, the Moses Myers House is a time capsule of Federal period Virginia. The House is unique in retaining 70 percent of its original contents—furniture, decorative objects, books, music, and an extraordinary
family archive. Home to one of Norfolk’s wealthiest merchants and leading citizens, the House is also one of the few places in America where one can relive the life of early Jewish citizens. The Chrysler is currently completing Phase II of a three-part restoration designed to return this landmark structure to its early 19th-century appearance.

The walls of the principal rooms of the first and second floor have been returned to their original appearance, with the plaster painted in imitation of the original whitewash and the woodwork restored to pale blue-green,  creamy white, and stone colors. Restoration of the two first-floor  chimneypieces is now complete. Both had been altered by the addition of longer and deeper mantle shelves (to enable them to hold Victorian bric-a-brac) sometime prior to 1891. Cleaning these mantles down to their earliest paint layers revealed both losses and clumsy attempts at restoration. Project conservator Stephen Marder replaced badly modeled, 20th-century foliate ornament on the center tablet of the back parlor by casting an identical leaf that had survived on the drawing room mantle. Curator Gary E. Baker discovered that the other missing elements had survived on a mantle at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and obtained a mold; and thus all of the replacement ornament was cast from original parts.

The drawing room chimneypiece had changed more drastically through the years. Originally, the ornamental plaster overmantle consisted of a large bell-flower festoon and a picture-frame-like leaf border, but the festoon disappeared sometime in the 20th century, and only the top run of the leaf border remained. Fortunately the festoon was well-documented by  photographs, and examples of all the cast elements survived in an  overmantle on the second floor, again allowing the reconstruction to be
made entirely with casts from original parts. Finally, the original gilded surfaces on the mantle itself were conserved with a clear barrier coat, and the losses were restored with actual gold leaf.

The Chrysler is also conserving original furnishings and replicating lost objects. An inventory taken in 1820 establishes that while most of the fine mahogany pieces survive, relatively few of the chairs which once lined the
rooms remain (the inventory listed 94 pieces of “seating furniture”). The drawing room contained “2 settees” and “2 seats for the recesses,” (quite probably the pairs of Greek-taste couches and window benches that survive
today), but the “10 chairs” are long gone. The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation owns a chair that matches the benches and has permitted the Chrysler to copy it in order to reconstruct the drawing suite.

Conservation has also been completed on a number of original objects which include: the widow benches, a claw foot table, and matching pairs of pier mirrors, card tables, and sideboards. Phase III of the restoration project, which encompasses restoration of service areas, improved security, and a fire suppression system, will proceed once crucial funds have been raised.

The completed Phase II restorations will be officially celebrated with the project’s donors and members of the media in early October, but the house welcomes everyone to witness its dramatic transformation. Unequivocally one of the great historic and architectural treasures of the region, the “new” Myers House beckons all with the promise of an engaging experience
and an enthralling glimpse into the colorful world of another time.