Hands-on history
Portsmouth's Strawbery Banke seeks to avoid 'velvet-rope' syndrome
"I'm not sure we're supposed to be in here," Jonathan Brown said with a smile as he led the way onto the Cotton Tenant House, an 1830s building now being renovated at Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth, N.H.
One reason for concern quickly came into view: To the left, a doorway opened to a 10-foot drop into the cellar. But Brown, director of visitor services and volunteers for the museum, had already turned right, eager to show off the layers of history in the structure.
The house was built by grocer Leonard Cotton for rental income and still had tenants until at least the 1950s. It will be the 20th of the 37 buildings on the 10-acre museum campus to be restored for the public, but - aside from replacing that missing floor - it's being done a little differently.
"This year with the restoration, visitors will be able to come inside and actually see the ongoing restoration process. . . . while we're trying to decide what time period we'll eventually restore and furnish the house to," Brown said.
Sites around the museum campus expose visitors to everything from Colonial times to the 1950s lifestyle, but this time they'll help make the choice. "We want to involve the visitors . . . and have the visitors have some input as to what goes on here at the museum," Brown said.
The Cotton Tenant House project symbolizes a subtle shift of approach at the museum, which will reopen Thursday for the 50th-anniversary season or the museum organization. For the museum's birthday party Aug. 2, the price of admission will drop from its current $15 to $1, what it was when the museum first opened to the public in 1965.
"Strawbery Banke's is not an easy history to understand," said author J. Dennis Robinson, who has lived in Portsmouth off and on since 1973. "It keeps changing. It's not one simple thing. It's not like, 'The pilgrims landed here, that's it.' "
Robinson wrote "Strawbery Banke, A Seaport Museum 400 Years In The Making," a lavishly illustrated history published to mark the anniversary. But like the Cotton Tenant House, it reveals more than you might expect, including the behind-the-scenes struggles over just what the museum is supposed to be.
The founding of the settlement is shrouded in the harbor mists. British settlers established the site around 1630 and first named it Strawberry Bank for the wild berries growing there, but it later became known as Puddle Dock. By the time the museum organization was founded in 1958, complete with faux-Colonial spelling, the neighborhood was the most run-down section of a hardscrabble port city.
"This is where original settlers landed in Portsmouth. It was a plantation with 75 people and one house; it evolved into one of the busiest seaports in America, deteriorated into what the federal government called a slum, and then that area is turned into a history museum in the same buildings on the same spot," Robinson said. "That's not been done anywhere else.
"The original founders did not intend to tell that full story . . . They wanted to create basically a copy - an imaginary copy - of what downtown Portsmouth was like around 1790. They wanted to tell the story of the glory days of Portsmouth."
The museum professionals and hippie artisans who joined the staff in the '60s and '70s had a different idea, Robinson said: to tell the full story of the site, including unappealing sides such as slavery.
"It was like a cultural revolution happened right on that [museum] campus . . . and in many ways the young people won."
In 2004, Lawrence Yerdon arrived from Hancock Shaker Village, in part to get the museum on firmer footing financially.
"The budget was pared down heavily in my first year. It has come back up - as a balanced budget," said Yerdo, museum president.
The operating budget this year is about $2.4 million, supplemented with project-specific grants, and it covers 22 full-time employees as well as part-time and seasonal staff such as guides.
Recent changes included the 2005 opening of the Tyco Visitors Center and the 2007 debut of the Carter Collections Center, where staff can study and maintain the museum's numerous artifacts.
Many history museums and other venues around the country saw a drop from the combined effect of 9/11 and rising gas prices, and only in the last year or two have started to rebound, said Terry Davis, president and CEO of the American Association for State and Local History.
Strawbery Banke attendance hit a low of 47,000 in 2002, staffers said, but attendance has climbed in each of the last three years, hitting 65,000 in 2007.
"Our numbers are up because our marketing program is better," Yerdon said. "I think we had stumbled for a while about letting people know we're here."
The Cotton Tenant Project is one example of a new approach. "We're trying to move the institution away from the velvet-rope syndrome, where you're on one side and we're on the other, lecturing at you," said Yerdon.
Other programs at the museum are expanding or being altered to offer greater public involvement, including the opening of the Victorian Children's Garden and more hands-on exhibits inside the buildings.
"It's not the same place it was when you were in fourth grade," marketing and communications director Amy Moy tells a visitor who grew up nearby.
"What visitor studies tell us is that the one thing people value most about historical organizations is that they have the real stuff - the authenticity factor - and when they come to a site they want to be a part of it," said Davis.
"It's that 'Satisfy me! Satisfy me!' atmosphere that is out there with tourists . . . They really want to be intimate with whatever experience they have now."
For more on the museum, visit strawberybanke.org.
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