Mount Vernon’s Thomas Reinhart on stewardship: “Proactive, not just responsive.”
Thomas Reinhart is the Director of Preservation for George Washington's Mount Vernon
“One of the things the Jenrette Foundation has helped us with is iterating education into preservation. It fits with Mount Vernon’s mission, too, educating the country and the world about Washington’s life and legacy”
Author: William Richards, Ph.D.
The Jenrette Foundation is pleased to partner with institutions like the American College for the Buildings Arts (ACBA) and historic sites like George Washington's Mount Vernon to advance the cause of stewardship by training the next generation of preservationists. Mount Vernon’s Director of Preservation, Thomas Reinhart, sees challenges ahead for preservation, but he also sees unending opportunities for the students he oversees there working at the forefront of historic carpentry, masonry, and other trades and modern preservation techniques. “My job,” he says, “is to improve the way we preserve these buildings and interpret these buildings, and at Mount Vernon, I want to see us develop more fully our educational mission within preservation.”
What’s the mission when you show up to Mount Vernon each day?
My background is archaeology and then shifted gears into architectural history, and I worked at Maryland’s State Historic Preservation Office, running the architectural research program for 15 years. When I came here, I arrived as the director of architecture—to accelerate our program on how we care for and how we study the buildings. Mount Vernon has a good, long history of providing good stewardship to its resources, but what I found was surprising was there had never really been a serious study of the place as architecture. There was an historic structure report done on the mansion in the 1990s, and it’s solid work, but nobody has studied Mount Vernon in the way that we need to study it—not as a monument, but as a living, breathing place that was home to George Washington and home to many people who were enslaved and don’t show up in the historical record. I brought an archeological approach—let the buildings lead your interrogation. I brought a forensic approach to the buildings.
What’s special about the challenge of this forensic approach to the Mount Vernon estate?
Stewardship is exceedingly challenging. We have 16 original structures from the 18th century, most of them are wood. It’s a race against time. Those structures are not in a museum, but out on the grounds—and we are trying to preserve resources that are degrading. We have to be flexible and responsive. We want to be proactive, too, and not just responsive. I’ve tried to implement a proactive, routine maintenance approach to these buildings—and to do that we have to get over some deficit of care over the decades.
How common is it in historic properties like Mount Vernon to deal with a legacy of best intentions but failed solutions?
It’s a common problem. Part of Mount Vernon's role is, as a big fish that’s high profile with a big, annual budget, is to push the envelope and ask the hard questions. We’re doing the research and we’re trying out new solutions—and we are very cautious about how we try those solutions. The 20th century was the century of miracle solutions. Of course, science is great and science is the basis of all we do. But, science got ahead of logic in some cases and we didn’t think about the repercussions of, say, Portland cement. When you use Portland mortar, you irreparably damage structures—but that’s because for the longest time, we didn’t ask the right questions. So, that’s our job now, is to ask those questions.
What’s your preservation philosophy for Mount Vernon?
The basic philosophy I bring here is reversibility. If you cannot reverse what you’re doing, then you’re damaging the historic fabric. Here we have been moving away from synthetic materials and we have gone back, for instance, for exterior finishes, we use linseed oil. We stuff our cracks with flax oakum caulking and linseed oil putty, then only linseed oil paint. Our testing of that went on for years before we actually rolled it out. But, those really are the best things you can use. We try to use only naturally organic materials that are in sympathy with the naturally organic systems of the buildings.
Are you seeing a shift in the way preservation is taught based on this materials science approach to preservation in practice?
Well, for years, there was the idea of the “clean track” and the “dirty track” in preservation—and, we get a lot of students on the “dirty track” who want to work with processes and materials with their hands. They seek—because we seek—a more authentic, older solution for our interventions here at Mount Vernon. And, I see a lot of students who see that as worthwhile—to emulate that way of working.
One of the things the Jenrette Foundation has helped us with is iterating education into preservation. It fits with Mount Vernon’s mission, too, educating the country and the world about Washington’s life and legacy—and we have strong structures in place to make that happen. For my team—and I have the best people I’ve ever worked with working with me now—but for my team, I would like to see us embrace that mission by training up the next generation of tradespeople and preservationists and historians.