Strawbery Banke Museum
Preserving Portsmouth’s waterfront

By Brian Roche
All photos courtesy Strawbery Banke Museum.

Although not a household name like Colonial Williamsburg, Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth, New Hampshire is in many ways more impressive and more authentic. Known as “the place where history happened,” this 10-acre outdoor history museum features more than 30 original buildings dating from 1695 to the modern day, with a large number of homes from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Through restored furnished houses, exhibits, demonstrations, historic landscapes and gardens and costumed role players, Strawbery Banke interprets the living history of generations who settled in Portsmouth. This past year, Strawbery Banke celebrated its 50th anniversary and after its annual winter rest, will open full time May 1.

“While many historic venues focus on a specific era or slice of history, Strawbery Banke Museum runs the full gamut, telling the story of the people who lived in their waterfront neighborhood from 1623 to the mid-1950s,” said Larry Yerdon, president of Strawbery Banke. “Visitors can stroll the lanes where George Washington and Paul Revere walked, or climb the worn stairs in a tenant house that was home to seamen and immigrants in the early nineteenth century. Elegant mansions, modest working class houses and neighborhood shops have all been faithfully restored, many still standing on their original foundations.”

Some of the many architectural highlights include the Shelburne House (1695), Marden-Abbott House and Store (1720), Penhallow House (1750), Pitt Tavern (1766), Chase House (1762), Daniel Webster House (1785) and the Goodwin Mansion (1811).

The politics of preservation
The name Strawbery Banke conjures up the early English settlers to the Portsmouth area, but for much of its life this area was a rundown waterfront neighborhood known as Puddle Dock. Threatened by demolition in the 1950s as part of an Urban Renewal Project, some local activists sprang into action. In 1957, Portsmouth librarian Dorothy Vaughn addressed the local Rotary Club in what turned out to be a call to arms.

“I decided to lay it right on the line and tell them what Portsmouth was throwing away each time a house was torn down or a piece of furniture was sold out of town,” she said.
A committee was formed immediately with an ambitious plan to create an historic museum through a combination of urban renewal and historic preservation, quite a new idea at the time. The committee pushed to get a state law changed that would permit restoration as part of a renewal project. The new law enabled the Portsmouth Housing Authority to acquire land and buildings, arrange for relocations of residents and handle demolition or removal of several houses dating from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The remaining buildings were deeded to Strawbery Banke and more than two dozen colonial structures were saved. The outdoor museum opened to rave reviews on Memorial Day in 1965.

400 years in the making
J. Denis Robinson, author of the new lavishly-illustrated book Strawbery Banke, A Seaport Museum: 400 years in the Making (Peter E. Randall, 2008) points out in a Boston Globe interview (Joel Brown, April 27, 2007) that the original founders of the museum did not intend to tell the full story of Puddle Dock.

“They wanted to create basically a copy, an imaginary copy, of what downtown Portsmouth was like around 1790,” he said. “They wanted to tell the story of the glory days of Portsmouth.” Robinson explained that the museum professionals and hippie artisans who joined the staff in the 1960s and 1970s had a different idea: 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,” he said.

“Like any living organization, Strawbery Banke has continued to change and evolve during the past five decades,” Yerdon said. “Our goal today is to move the museum beyond the velvet ropes syndrome where visitors are on one side and we are the other side of the rope, lecturing them. Instead we offer the visitors the opportunity to be a part of history and experience it with all their senses.”

The latest addition to Strawbery Banke Museum helps illustrate this view. The Cotton Tenant House was built in 1834 and the emphasis has been on preservation rather than restoration and re-creation. “Right now the home is bare,” said curator Kimberly Alexander. “Visitors will have the opportunity to decide how they would like to see the interior restored, based on evidence provided in binders containing wallpaper samples, paint analysis and architectural drawings.”

Interactive history
Two rooms have been set aside at the 1875 Captain John Wheelwright House for hands-on activities and sensory experiences. “The idea is to engage all the senses,” Alexander said. “Children can try on costumes, savor the aromatic scents of spices and teas and touch reproduction dinnerware and furniture. They can even hear the sounds of Puddle Dock in 1875 – boots on the dock, dogs barking and the cry of seagulls.” The newly expanded Discovery Center in the Jones House (1790) expands on this theme with interactive family activities focusing on the culture of children from 1690 to the present.

“As much as possible, we are trying to replace those ‘do not touch’ signs, with an invitation ‘please touch,’” Yerdon said.

The authentic gardens and landscaping, including a new Children’s Victorian Garden, continue to draw many visitors each year. “Whether it’s a kitchen gadget at the Molly Shapiro House, a World War II victory garden, or an elegant Victorian garden, guests will enjoy the flowers, vegetables, trees and shrubs that actually bloomed in that period,” said John Forti, curator of historic landscapes. The garden at the Thomas Bailey Aldrich House (1797) just celebrated its 100th anniversary; this restored Colonial Revival garden represents a romanticized interpretation of Colonial-era gardening and features a circular grove of native hemlock trees.

Preserving and presenting
Opened in 2007, the Carter Collections Center preserves and presents the museum’s extensive archaeology and decorative arts collections. “The Center’s Rowland Gallery provides an opportunity to make these historic pieces more accessible to the public,” Yerdon said. The outstanding design of the new center earned Strawbery Banke an award from the New Hampshire Preservation Alliance. Future plans for the museum include more living arts, theatre, workshops, demonstrations and retail shopping. “While Strawbery Banke Museum will continue its long-term commitment to preservation, there will be an increased focus on connecting with people in the local community, as well as with visitors to Portsmouth,” Yerdon said.

The fanciful atmosphere and festive programming at Strawbery Banke may help gloss over some of the very hard work that goes into maintaining and marketing such an institution “The financial pressures on these rare collections of historic buildings with their public programs and serious research agendas can be excruciating,’ said preservation architect and teacher Henry Moss. “The complex maturation cycle of individual buildings may begin with purchase and relocation, stabilization, mothballing, research and incremental restoration, public interpretation and end with deaccession with a preservation restriction. This [process] can crawl across for decades.”

Larry Yerdon, who arrived in 2004 from Hancock Shaker Village, has made sure the museum stays financially healthy in these challenging times: “The budget was pared down heavily in my first year. It has come back up – as a balanced budget,” he told The Boston Globe. The operating budget is currently about $2.4 million, supplemented with project-specific grants and covers 22 full-time employees as well as part-time and seasonal staff such as guides.
Strawbery Banke attendance hit a low of 47,000 in 2002 but attendance has risen steadily hitting 65,000 in 2007. “Our numbers are up because our marketing program is better. I think we stumbled a while about letting people know we’re here,” Yerdon said. As Marketing and Communications Director Amy Moy told a visitor, “It’s not the same place it was when you were in the fourth grade.” Plan a visit soon.

Strawbery Banke Museum (Opens May 1 for the season), 14 Hancock St., Portsmouth, NH 03801. Tel: (603) 433-1100 www.strawberybanke.org

Brian Roche can be reached at bsroche@comcast.net