National Trust Lends Support to Bartow-Pell Mansion Museum

Bartow-Pell Mansion Museum today was awarded a $3,000 matching grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation's Elizabeth and Robert Jeffe Preservation Fund for New York City. The grant funds will be used to hold a four-day garden stonework restoration workshop from Monday, August 2 through Thursday, August 5. Bartow-Pell Mansion Museum was among several grant recipients selected in a competitive application process from applicants of all five boroughs of New York City.

The volunteer workshop, Galleting Galore in the Garden, led by master mason Kevin Towle, will finish the restoration of flagstone walkways and steps in the garden begun in the summer of 2008. The work consists of resetting flagstones in walkways and steps, removing mortar between them, and replacing it with small pieces of bluestone known as gallets. Roughly 15 volunteers, from all over the country and even as far away as France, will be participating.

Adventures in Preservation, a Colorado-based non-profit organization, is partnering with the museum to offer this hands-on volunteer experience. Adventures in Preservation supports community-based heritage conservation projects around the world and gives volunteers the opportunity to give back by helping protect valuable cultural treasures.

The formal, walled, and terraced garden behind the mansion was designed by William Adams Delano of the renowned New York architectural firm of Delano & Aldrich and dates to 1915-16 when the newly formed International Garden Club embarked on restoring both the Bartow mansion and its grounds.

The Bartow-Pell Mansion Museum site dates to 1654 when Thomas Pell purchased 9,000 acres of what is now the Bronx and Lower Westchester from the Siwanoy (band of Lenape) Indians. The mansion was built by Pell descendent Robert Bartow between 1836 and 1842. The Bartow property was annexed along with a number of other grand country houses on Pelham Bay by the City of New York in the late 1880s to create Pelham Bay Park. After several decades of neglect, the International Garden Club, now the Bartow-Pell Conservancy, obtained a license from the city in 1914 to use the mansion as its club headquarters in exchange for restoring it. The IGC opened the mansion to the public as a historic house museum in 1946 with a collection of 19th century furniture, decorative, and fine arts.

As a historic house museum, BPMM works to protect, preserve, and restore the site's architecture, landscape, and collections. It also interprets the site's history in compelling and innovative ways and offers a variety of dynamic education programs for school children, adults, and families.

In announcing the grant, National Trust Northeast Regional Office Director Wendy Nicholas said, "The National Trust for Historic Preservation is pleased to lend our support to the Bartow-Pell Mansion Museum's project, which will advance preservation in one of America's most historically, architecturally, and culturally important cities."

Through its Preservation Fund program, the National Trust offers matching grants to non-profit groups and public agencies to support a wide range of local historic preservation projects across the nation.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation, chartered by Congresss in 1949, is a non-profit organization with more than 250,000 members. As the leader of the national preservation movement, it is committed
to saving America's diverse historic environments and to preserving and revitalizing the livability of communities nationwide. The Northeast Office coordinates the programs of the national Trust within the ten northeastern states and provides a wide range of services adapted to the needs of the region.