There are three types of historic homes. The first is a historic home without historic furnishings, or without furnishings original to the house. The second is a historic home filled with the furnishings that were there when the original or notable owner lived there. The third is perhaps the most rare, historic furnishings that relate to the original family, but a recreated house.

The third is what I found today at the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace near Union Square in Manhattan.

The strange thing about the house is no plans or photographs were available to recreate the house in 1916, but a brothers house built at the same time did remain. What was built was basically a mirror image of the brothers house with simulated moldings, mantles, etc. The why of it all is that they then demolished the brothers house. It's hard to second guess what someone did nearly a century ago, however, but keeping the house that really existed and that Roosevelt would have known would seem the smarter (and less costly) move.

The recreation may be the only example of a "19th Century" brownstone built in the 20th Century, however, and if it does prove anything, it's that you can build them like they used to.

The Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace is operated by the National Park Service. It usually costs $3 to get in, but in celebration of Teddy's 150th birthday, October 26th and 27th will be free and include many activities. For more information call 212-260-1616. Oh, and one of the interesting tidbits you may learn on a tour is that Teddy went out west with a monogramed sterling silver knife from Tiffany's.

I went to the Lefferts Historic House on the east side of Prospect Park last Sunday. It was a delight to see a house with an outdoor garden. Lefferts' first house was burned during the revolution by interestingly American instead of British. The current house or more precisely homestead was built in the 1780's; therefore it has approximately the same age of the Nicholas Schenck's house in Brooklyn Museum.

The construction feature of the Lefferts' Homestead is a typical Dutch Colonial house (more as some scholars call Dutch Farmhouse) with its gambrel roof with flare overhanging eaves. But unlike the Nicholas Schenck's house, whose missing kitchen wing can not be determined as a later-on addition or the part of older house built by Nicholas' father, the kitchen wing on the right side of the house is probably original because the guide said there is an original beam that was laid across from the main part to the kitchen wing. I also noticed the side-gamble roof of the kitchen wing is much less steeper compared to the Dutch house in the 17th century, an evidence that Dutch American adapted the architecture based on the climate.

The walls were built of oak wood beams with straws and mud in between (the same as Schenck's house) and they are covered with clapboards. Clapboards and shingles are typical in New Jersey and Long Island areas because the soil is sandy. Although the chimneys are not original, their positions (on each side of the wall) show that Peter Lefferts still clinged to the Dutch tradition.

But that's almost all that I found about the Dutch identity of this historical house. When I walked inside (awkwardly from the back door), I could only sense English style in their middle or late 19th century. The stairway that runs on the right side of the hallway was a later addition. (Based on the guide, the house had undergone two major renovations, one in 1820's, the other possibly in the late 1890's before it was donated and moved in 1917) The later changes especially the stairway have totally eliminated the earlier floor plan for the back of the house. Even more, the visible exposed beams support the wide plank boards in Nicholas Schenck house which can be traced back to H-bent design of the Dutch houses are totally missing. Kevin Stayton, the Curator of Decorative Art in Brooklyn Museum, said Dutch built houses by layering up while English built houses from box frame. If so, then the inside of the Lefferts Homestead, with its box square looking, shows at least at certain time the house has been anglicized.

Since the Lefferts family was among the richest in Kings County, the hall way is much wider compared to that of Nicholas Schenck. It is understandable that period furniture is not displayed in the wide hall way because visitors pass through inevitably, it is for sure that the hall would be furnished quite well in the 1780's, probably with some chairs, some desk for business etc. The social class difference was much wider than that today and the hallway was probably the only place that low-level guests could see.

The left front room is a parlor, the most formal room of the house. A pair of portrait paintings showed Lefferts likeness in primitive style. (In fact, Peter Lefferts looks quite amicable.) There is also a square piano near the fire place. Pianos were not made in United States before the revolution and most of the firniture downstairs is in the period of the 1820s renovation; although Lefferts's probably could have had an earlier American or European piano. The right front room is supposed to be dining room. (Now it is basically an open space.)

The back of the first floor has no trace of original Dutch design. In general, the back should have three rooms, which are most likely chambers. And it is possible there will be an antechamber connecting the dining room with the kitchen wing. But now the right rear room is represented as a kitchen and the wall between the kitchen and the dining room is totally eliminated and replaced by a Georgian style arch. It is understandable that the house museum opened the rear chamber as a kitchen as a educational purpose (kids love to play with the solid kitchen utensils!) , such a kitchen would for sure take the place in the kitchen wing (where the staff office is) to avoid spreading oder. The present open arch (although I am not sure how early it was reconstructed to look this way) and the plastered medallions on the board ceiling indicate that Lefferts family no doubt readily accepted the newest trend and by doing so like their house they became more American.

The left rear room shows some paintings or pictures related to the family. Like those pictures taken by Wallace Nutting, a braided rug is placed in the center of the room. Although such rugs are actually 20th century invention, because the room is not furnished at all there is no need for historical precision. (Some kids toys were dispersed around the floor when I was there.)

Most of the period rooms in museums try to be a snapshot of a certain period. Even with such an specific intention, curators still have a puzzling challenge: Houses at any time will not only have furniture most up-to-date, they may also have older furniture and some could be inherited from several generations ago. A period-correct presentation of those rooms may not actually reflect what it really looks like the real houses at the time that imaginal snapshot is taken.

Lefferts's house, on the contrary, shows the evolving changes that were inevitable to any houses in history. It is a house with late 18th century Dutch American house frame and an almost English interior. It shows the fading consciousness of Dutch American to cling to their heritage root when a new national identity took place in both their mind and their house. (Peter Lefferts became a delegate to the state convention in Poughkeepsie.) In such a way, it is like a silent film with traces of different cultures and marks of style changes that rolls in front of keen eyes.

Lefferts house does not have additional storage so the rest of the rooms are used as such. It is probably not ideal since the insulation of the old house makes preservation of certain material much harder. Currently, visitors can wander around the rooms (except the parlor and the chamber), a practice that most of the museums abandoned long time ago. I can see the benefit of walking into the rooms, the kind of fulfillment and living experience that I have never had in front of those beautiful period rooms in museums. But as the museum serves as children education outpost within the historical context, there is certain danger that the wood floor may be worn in an accelerated pace. Maybe I am wrong. I heard the rumbling sounds of kids walking and climbing inside the house, by exploring the rooms, they are in some sense reliving the past, a past period that defined the making of a nation.

For more pictures, please visit Eric Miller's photos from here.

The most interesting thing in the study of objects is that not only the styles inevitably change, but also the notions of what that particular object means to people have changed in a dramatic way. The rarity of fabrics in the 17th century made its presentation and preservation (such as linen press or kas) the most important part of home decoration; and now we constantly donate to Goodwill. The Delftware, attempted likeness of Chinese porcelain (that fell short), were still treasured in the Jan Martense Schenck house in the early 18th century; while his grandson Nicolas Schenck, would enjoy quite a large set of British transferware that made for export to the United States after the war ceased. But chairs, among all common furniture, have witnessed the most dramatic changes, as can be seen from Jan Martense Schenck's house and other period rooms in the Brooklyn Museum. To some extent, we understand them so differently from our predecessors that they are almost unrecognizable as time goes by.

Chairs were still associated with aristocracy and royalty in most of the 17th century. Before 1660, even Renssenlaer used pine benches in his council room and had to ask his mother to send him eight chairs from the Netherlands. Those benches or forms, as they were called at that time, unfortunately, didn't survive to prsent day since they are bulky and lack of aesthetic values. In the 1760's, families with a financial standings like Schenck's, would have at most one chair in the house. Chairs made in the Dutch farm land may not be as grandiose or high as those used by the kings and dukes in England, but they certainly bear the same notion: It is more symbolic than functioning and whoever takes the seat takes the prestige that were made within the chairs.

But what a burden for the prestige? Chairs, at that time, were made without consideration for comfort. Maybe the makers knew that comfort comes with a deadly price which cost one easily lose his/her upright gesture (how many times we fall asleep in those monstrous sofa?) that they intended to make them the less ergonomic of all times.

A wainscot oakwood chair in Brooklyn Museum shows a perfect example of a joiner's work that could be bought by middle-classed Jan Martense Schenck. Made between 1650 to 1700, it is fairly high off the ground that one's legs would naturally be placed straight. The back is high and vertical to keep the back tall. The arms are necessary to secure the hands on the top of them. In some degree, these designs are successful in that one immediately knows how he should behave once he sits down.

A joiner's chair is low-tech, but sturdy with a price of being very stuffy and bulky. The back of that wainscot chair is composed of two rails (horizontal wooden slats) and two stiles (vertical wooden slats) joined together with pinned mortise and tenon. (The pegs now protrude--possibly from shrinkage.) Because the wood shrinks across the grain and the grain of a rails and a stile are perpendicular, the joiner's chair can be very sturdy. The wainscot carved board may be bought from a carver (a low imitation of renaissance style chiseled at a very shallow level) ; and there are some turned legs in the chair; but overall, it is the joiner's effort that defined chairs of that period.

By the early 18th century, chairs made by turners became popular due to its easy-to-make characteristics. Since the Jan Martense Schenck's house was reconstructed to the 1725 period, certainly there would be a few turned chairs owned by the family by then. In the museum, such chairs are lined around the walls as they are multi-functioning furniture and can be pulled to different places when needed. Chairs with turned rails and stiles with rush seats, in contrary to the joiner's chairs, were an engineering disaster. Such chairs, still tall and stern looking, are much lighter due to the slat back but more unstable because of the joining technology. Thus stretchers are an important part of the chair for stabilization. Such chairs on the market almost certainly would have some replacement at certain time. (The rush, matt or caned seats are certainly new since they are supposed to be replaced once a while. But back then labor cost can be ignorant compared to material cost; to have someone re-cane a seat is nothing compared to the value of the chair itself.)

An early example of such chair was donated by early decorative art scholar and collector Luke Vincent Lockwood to the Brooklyn Museum. The chair has some unusual wear on the second rail of the back. It is true because woods shrink at different speeds thus no two spindles would be identical. But one can easily identify the replacement by looking carefully of the rhythms of the voids between the stiles of the back. Sadly, the repair which was done later, can seldom both replicate the turned shape of the rails and the void shape between the rails.

By the time of the revolution, cabinet makers provided professional furniture which was much more engineered, more tech-adept than those chairs made by earlier joiners or turners. Chippendale was the dominating style of the period. The availability of chairs means that they were more comfortable (back splats usually follow human forms) and more luxury (mahogany are the preferred wood in big cities, if not then maple can be also selected.) Some chairs could be used for dining purpose, but they were still not the modern dining chairs in modern concept. Chairs, finally began to migrate into what we think of them from then on.

The craftsmanship in Chippendale chairs could and should amaze most of the modern furniture makers. The cabriole legs (formed from one convex curve on top of a thinner concave curve) are not just eye-catching but also mechanically stable. The rails and the styles are still joined with mortise and tenon technology. A horizontal seat frame is used to hold slip seat which usually can be upholstered wither in damask or check pattered fabric. Sometimes glue blocks are used under these frame for further support (which can only be seen when chairs are upside down).

The cabriole legs are extremely sophisticated as for the construction. Unlike some modern reproductions, a cabriole leg carved from a single wood block contains both the leg, knee and the corner part that will join on each side to two knee brackets (which further connect to seat rails ) to form a acanthus leaf carving. Thus the unification of the legs and the rails and the elimination of the seams between vertical parts made them sturdy yet not stuffy.

More interesting, chairs began to reflect the regional differences. All major cities would have their styles which can be summarized into two categories: regional preference and regional characteristics.

Two Chippendale chairs from the Cupola House in Brooklyn Museum vividly show the difference of the cabinet makers between stylish New York and the more restrained Boston.

From regional preference point of view, New York Chippendale chairs tend to be square, heavy, more solid ( or in other words a little bit squat) and more elaborately carved compared to those made in Boston. The puritanical New Englanders favored a more restrained, conservative style (which some people nowadays see as an virtue). In this case, the New York one has a carved splat with a tassel shape in the middle. The front skirt has gadrooning decoration, a reminiscence of dutch Baroque style. The Boston chair, even though from about the same period, still has stretchers even though they are structurally unnecessary.

From a regional characteristic point of view, there are more carving in this New York chair, from the crest rail to the back splat. In fact, the Boston chair is void of any carving in the back splat. But nothing is more evident to show the regional characteristics than the "ball and claw" feet. The New York Chippendale chairs, almost without exception, had talons closely grasping a squarish ball. The balls are in general big and the claw go downward straight. The Boston chair, in comparison, has much lighter and airy feet. The claw is carved more muscular and the tips of the claws clench inward as if the bird is ready to fly. (The Rhode Island Chippendale chairs even have space between the ball and the claw to make them such sough-after masterful looking!)

How could these regional characteristics came into being? Scholars usually relate to the local apprenticeship and workshops. Another possible reason is that by then furniture making had evolved into the primitive streamline manufacturing so that it was possible different cabinet makers bought the pre-made legs from the same famous workshop.

By the late 18th century, Philadelphia was the richest and the most sophisticated city in the United States. (Brooklyn Museum does own several Philadelphia made Chippendale chairs, but they are too special to be tugged into a corner of a period room with dim light. The fifth floor - American Art- features an exemplary Philadelphia chair. ) No other city can boost more elaborate carving than Philadelphia at that time when the city can afford to import the first rate carver from Europe. The claw-and-ball almost has a sculptural quality, with the most finely articulated talons. The Acanthus leaves or other carving that are featured in New York chairs to distinguish Boston preference are much shallower compared to those from Philadelphia.

But interestingly the most easy-to-identify feature of Philadelphia Chippendale chairs is not the carving or feet, but the universal through mortise joining technology. From the back of the chair, one can see the tenon from the side rails. It is not something that customers pay attention to; nor something that regional cultural and social influence have an impact. Such feature has to be related to some cabinet makers. But Philadelphia at that time featured so many local and foreign furniture makers and in general it is not possible to trace back who made them. Possibly because of the easy access of local examples, those that made the best sell were finely studied by others. When such imitations were voiced in a large scale, the personal preference eventually became a regional construction style.

Chippendale is not the first type of chair when style and comfort, instead of clashing against each other, come to play together harmoniously. Earlier Queen Anne style chairs, with its smaller frame and beautiful curvy form, show the first sign of airiness, sleekness and elegance, the same characteristics that we tend to associate with modernity. The cabriole legs, lightly resting on pad feet, have a perfect balance between the charm and the intimacy.

The Brooklyn Museum has a set of Queen Anne side chairs which are not only best for their pristine condition and marvelous design, but also brings scholars with intriguing conflict between its regional preference and regional characteristics. These chairs are the original furniture to the Porter-Belden house in Wethersfield, CT and now displayed in the parlor room.

First, the set is a fine example of the Queen Anne style. Pad feet, cabriole legs, both splat and stiles are spoon-curved with the crest rounded to conform a natural smooth design. The splat, the most fashionable part of the chair, is formed by two different-sized vase shapes with the smaller one upside down and connected with bottom one through a ring shape. From the side view, the two side stiles are slightly forward compared to the splat so that the sitter can fee a little bit embraced by elegance. The pad feet are oval shaped, not as prominent as feet in later Chippendale style, but they sprawl outward with a candid openness. Inside the original seat is dried marsh grass, which is common in New England area. Such grass when dried can be very dense, thus it is not a bad alternative to the horse hairs.

Though we do not know who is the maker, his craftsmanship was admirable through quite a few construction details. A close examination may also reveal that in order to match the front cabriole legs, he chamfered the back legs so that they look almost rounded. Even more, to transition the semi-rounded legs to the square frame, he added an s-shaped triangle block to smooth such transformation. Also each seat is supposed to perfectly match each chair by means of a simple marking system. Inside of the front rail of one of the chairs, he carved three dents. The bottom of each seat (with its original canvas straps) also bears a number. Unfortunately such details were buried in the daily household life after years' usage. Not surprisingly some number three seat was placed on number two chair since stacking seats together for cleaning is common and the wives or housemaids would seldom think of the underlining matching system for the set.

Secondly, the chairs, though lack of any written record, speak to themselves through a seemingly conflict between the regional preference and the regional characteristics. The chairs were made of cherry, the kind of wood that would not be favored in places like New York or Philadelphia. Cherry wood is commonly used for country area, such as Connecticut. Its simple and refrained shape also shows the puritanical regional preference. But the chairs all have the through mortise, a branded characteristics of Philadelphia makers. The museum scholar has thus conjectured that the maker was once apprenticed in Philadelphia. While he could bring the regional characteristics of the big cities to the countryside (since buyers would probably not notice such details), he could only make furniture that appeal to the local tastes.

Today, we sit on the chairs everyday, enjoying the comfort and seldom think they were once such a rarity. To some extent, we are both lucky and unlucky. The abundance of merchandise and materials have greatly reduced the cost of chairs. We can all be called "chairman" by the old standards. On the other hand, although furniture makers have been striving to make chairs cheaper, more stylish and more comfortable before and after the mass-production era, chairs have lost their distinctive hand-made characteristics. We look at the chairs in the museums, each of which epitomizes the craftsmanship of the maker's predecessors and his own intelligence. Each one is unique in that the magic subtle human touch and handling. Sadly I don't feel it on the super sleek IKEA chair that I am sitting on.

Ironically, the American Period Rooms now displayed and treasured in the major art museums were born with little anticipation of being appreciated in themselves as art. Yet, even the notion that the period room was introduced as backdrop for displaying antique objects is not totally correct. In most cases, the silent rooms, dimly lit, cannot speak for themselves. Visitors, who step into the well or the corridor, can always be satisfied by narrowing in on something that ineterests them. In such a warm homely ambiance, one may easily forget to ask such an important pro-curatorial-perspective question. "How and why were these monstrous rooms moved into the museums?"

It was not accidental that the birth of period rooms coincided with the beginning of the Colonial Revival in the 1910's and 1920's. On the one hand, the great war had crashed the ideal images of old civilization in general American public. For them, the hierarchical societal system crowned by aristocracy and nobility upon which the culture and moral standards are based disintegrated with bullets, bombs and gas. The tastes, matters and characteristics of Europe after the great war evolved in such a mad speed that went beyond of the grasps of ordinary Americans. Thus for such a period, Americans either lost interests or couldn't keep in emulating the cross-Atlantic life style, which provided a unique opportunity for them to look back with ease at their own cultural ancestry.

Such an examination of the past didn't come in an objective way considering the social milieu which witnessed the foregone of an agricultural country. First, the kindled interest in colonial American at that time bears a tint of Romanticism reminiscence of the past. Citizens in industrialized metros longed for the missing notions that males took the challenges to civilize the wilderness while females stayed home from the colonial period. The symmetric and orderly of early American homes was an outlet for them to seek the missing “kindness, comfort and safety” in their real life. Second, patriotism played and obvious but important role in such a movement. Americans not only began to take the pride of the cultural past but also took the notion of supremacy and glory in Colonial period.

When the influx of new immigrants came to US at the turn of the 20^th century, Colonial life-style was asserted as superior in that it advocated hardworking and home-centered family standard while the repose of the architecture commanded respect and obedience of social conduct.

In particular, two important milestone events laid the foundation for the birth of the period rooms. Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876 showed two period settings. The Connecticut Cottage and the Old Log Cabin New English Kitchen. (An early similar setting happened in Brooklyn at the Sanitary Fair, a romantic nostalgic way of raising money for the Civil War. A wonderful print is still available from BMA’s library.) After the exposition, furniture makers saw a great opportunity of showing furniture in a historical setting for promotion. Such practice even was introduced into the department stores in big to create a homey ambiance.

By the beginning of the 20^th century, Americans had gotten used to accepting period settings for their inherited nostalgia and sentimentality of the past, but not aesthetic values. However, the experimental Hudson-Fulton Exhibition in 1909, for the first time, featured exclusive and comprehensive American Art in an American art institution, thus completed the notion that period rooms are the assembly of higher morale standard, pure and unpretentious life style, glorified past and beautiful artifact. It is true that there were other events or museums which preceded or contributed the concept of period rooms; but none can match the far-reaching influence of these two events which attracted so many audiences.

Most of the early 18th century period rooms in Brooklyn Museum of Art, to my surprise, are displayed without evidence of human presence. This casts a striking contrast with the rooms of later period such as Milligan's library with Nora's Ark.

In the 18th Century American period rooms, furniture, mostly chairs and tables, are placed along the wall. Considering most of the these rooms are sparsely furnished, such deployment has nothing to do with the uncluttering practice which has been done before to de-colonial-revivalize a “misinterpretation” from the early 20th Century.

In the book "American Interiors New England & The South" published in the 1980's, parlor rooms (which are desirable for collection) are described as multi-purpose in the 18th century. Such rooms could be used for entertaining, receiving, dining or business. Such activities required different objects and furniture was moved from room to room or even house to house as seasons changed.

The Twentieth Century associated permanence with functionalities. A table in the dining room or a sofa in the living room (which rarely existed in the 18th century) put viewers in a position much more favorable toward in-use furnishing. True, such ambience seems warm compared to sparsely-furnished rooms, but the simplicity and more or less practicality are the essence in an authentic interpretation of early American period rooms.

Interestingly, when I finally moved to New York, those functional associations began to disintegrate. After all, there is no room for a separate dining or a separate office in most of the New York apartments. Futons are generally used at least to serve as a second bed; fold-ability or “nesting” are other common tricks to save space.

The early New Englanders made furniture mobile because it was expensive; (mahogany furniture was essentially the same as cash, even more desirable) nowadays metro residents are forced to favor multi-functionality because of space limitations. But looking around the apartment furnishings in the Park Slope neighborhood house tour didn't inspire me as much as the barely furnished rooms in BMA did. Even in some most fancy and well preserved brownstones, there lacks a sense of historical integrity, not to mention quality of furnishings that match the price and reputation of the homes. (In general, those brownstones are more cluttered than my two-room apartment!) I was told that New Yorkers move too often to keep good furniture; maybe they should all go to see how Americans did it more than 200 years ago.