Careful renovation breathes new life into hallowed ground
 The new museum has galleries that focus on many particular aspects of the historic three-day battle and the soldier's lives and equipment. (Scott Lewis for the Boston Globe) |
This is consecrated ground. It has been for nearly 145 years, since before Abraham Lincoln recorded the fact for posterity in his Gettysburg Address.
Over the intervening decades, commercial development has encroached on the fields and hills where the pivotal battle of the Civil War was fought over three days in July 1863. A stony crop of monuments to the many heroic deeds that were done here began to sprout not long after the fighting ended. More recently, an unsightly observation tower rose and fell and plans for a casino were beaten back.
But for the nearly 2 million people who come each year to the Gettysburg battlefield, the experience of visiting the place where more than 160,000 Union and Confederate soldiers fought and more than 50,000 were killed, wounded, or captured - and where the nation, perhaps, was saved - has been basically the same for generations.
That's all about to change tomorrow, when the $103 million Museum and Visitor Center at Gettysburg National Military Park opens to the public as a handsome, high-tech portal for exploring and understanding the impor tance of what happened here all those years ago.
"Our entire focus has been on getting people out on the battlefield with a better idea of what they are actually seeing," said Robert C. Wilburn, president and chief executive of the Gettysburg Foundation, during a pre-opening tour of the new facility. The private, nonprofit foundation partnered with the National Park Service to build the museum and visitors center, which will also provide a permanent home for the spectacularly restored "Battle of Gettysburg" cyclorama painting set to open in September.
The complex is the centerpiece of a sweeping $125 million rehabilitation and construction campaign designed to restore key portions of the battlefield to their 1863 appearance and enhance educational opportunities for visitors. The effort was launched through the adoption of a new park management plan in 1999.
"The goal for both of our major initiatives - bringing the battlefield back to its appearance at the time of the fighting, and the new museum exhibits - is to improve the visitor's understanding of what happened here in Gettysburg in 1863, and why it's important in American history," said John Latschar, superintendent of the military park.
The commitment to that goal is evident before even entering the new facility. The old visitors center, which started as a private enterprise in 1920 and was purchased by the park service in 1971, was a cramped, musty structure located in the area of Ziegler's Grove, where many men fought and died. The new building is in an area where there was no combat. "It's not hallowed ground, although it was important from a logistical standpoint," Wilburn said. Once the old visitors center and the nearby former cyclorama building are demolished in the next two years, that area of Ziegler's Grove will be restored.
The new structure, which has 24,000 feet of exhibit space and a geothermal heating and cooling system, also incorporates many recycled materials, Wilburn said. Perhaps most important to the large tour groups that descend on the park over the busy summer months, the visitors center lobby has commodious and easily accessible restroom facilities.
The lobby also offers a continuously screening orientation theater and large topographic map, along with information desks and counters where one can book tours by licensed battlefield guides, which come highly recommended. Nearby are a bookstore and museum shop and a Refreshment Saloon with an outdoor dining area that features offerings from the 1800s - hardtack and peanut soup, anyone? - along with more standard fare.
Visitors enter the museum proper through a rotunda that serves as a gateway to the Gettysburg experience. Photographic murals depict the town and the battlefield as they were in the 1860s. Historical artifacts, part of the museum's collection of more than 300,000 objects, are on display in storage cases in the lobby area just beyond the rotunda.
Most visitors will want to view a new 22-minute feature film, "A New Birth of Freedom," narrated by the actor Morgan Freeman, that provides a powerful synopsis of the events leading up to the battle, the conflict itself, and the aftermath. Two 150-seat theaters will be screening the film during peak periods. Visitors who buy a combination ticket will then ride escalators up to the viewing gallery to take in the restored majesty of Paul Philippoteaux's Gettysburg cyclorama painting.
The installation of the massive, 377-foot circular artwork, which was painted in 1884 and depicts the culmination of Pickett's Charge on the third day of the battle, was still a work in progress on our tour. David Olin, the chief conservator on the project, said parts of the painting had been lost, cut, and damaged over the years and reassembling it resembled "a jigsaw puzzle that you had to make some pieces for."
Olin's workers have restored the painting's skyline, which had been cut off, and are reinstalling the canopy and three-dimensional diorama, which had been missing for more than 40 years. When fully reassembled, the cyclorama painting, which weighs more than 12 tons, promises to regain the title of "the
But the heart of the museum is contained in the 11 galleries that explain the events that sparked the Civil War, how that brought about the Gettysburg campaign, and the aftermath of both. The exhibits were designed by Gallagher and Associates of Bethesda, Md., which also created the popular International Spy Museum in Washington. They mix audio, video, interactive maps, and artifacts in a manner designed to intrigue and educate visitors with varying levels of knowledge and interest. "We call them the 'streakers,' the 'strollers,' and the 'studiers,' " said Wilburn.
A youngster on our tour was fascinated by computer displays that allowed him to find various monuments on the battlefield and to track the movements of individual units during the three days of fighting. He was also amazed by a hands-on display that demonstrated the effort needed to lift the combined 40-pound weight of a rifle and loaded backpack that Union troops carried into battle.
Each of the galleries is identified by a memorable phrase taken from Lincoln's speech, which he made on Nov. 19, 1863, at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery (now the Gettysburg National Cemetery). Gallery 6 - "Now We Are Met on a Great Battlefield of That War" - is divided into five sections that focus on the battle itself. One of the most compelling exhibits in this gallery was in the area that dealt with the third day of the battle. In a series of three display cases, the viewer is presented with an increasing number of bullets and shell fragments representing the intensifying hail of lead faced by the 12,500 Confederate soldiers who participated in Pickett's Charge as they covered the 1,000 yards to the Union lines. The contents of the third case make it seem miraculous that anyone survived the charge.
The museum does an outstanding job of detailing the world-altering events that took place at Gettysburg and placing them in the context of the Civil War. "Studiers" who want more information can use the computers in the resource center or make an appointment to visit the library and reading room on the lower level of the complex. The climate-controlled storage area on this level represents a big improvement in the effort to preserve the historical artifacts and 700,000 documents, maps, and photographs that make up the Gettysburg collection.
We decided to take our newfound knowledge out to explore under the guidance of Renae Mac-Lachlan, a licensed battlefield guide who has been conducting tours of Gettysburg for seven years. As we crisscrossed the sprawling military park, she pointed out the places that have been restored recently as part of the battlefield rehabilitation.
One of the most striking areas is east of Warfield Ridge, up through the Devil's Den. With nonhistorical trees cleared, visitors now can see clearly the obstacles the attacking Confederate soldiers faced: the immense boulders, the dense woods at the fringes of the Wheatfield, and the dominating height of Little Round Top, where Union troops were rushing to meet them.
The results of rehabilitation appear more obviously in other areas of the battlefield, such as the additional fences now in place that the Confederates had to clear as they marched up to Cemetery Ridge, or the reinstated farm lanes that allowed Union gunners to move cannon into the fight more efficiently. But it's the individual aspects of the rehabilitation throughout the park that, taken together, make the greatest overall impact.
On what will always be hallowed ground, change is evident today across the fields of Gettysburg, one of the country's most important - and most visited - historic sites. What's old is new again, and what's new is most impressive.
Doug Warren, a freelance writer in Austin, Texas, can be reached at dwarren003@austin.rr.com.
