Restoration
On May 14, 2001 the city of Edwardsville held a ground breaking ceremony to officially commence a restoration project aimed at returning the house to the most original condition possible. The eventual goal of the project was to furnish the home circa 1820s and open it as a house museum to the public. The restoration project, overseen by the firm St. Louis Tuckpointing and Painting, carried a price tag of more than $1 million; $150,000 to purchase the house, $725,000 in restoration costs and $215,000 to purchase a nearby gas station. Initially the project was to be completed by December 2003, but by April 2004 most of the exterior work had been finished with interior plastering and wood floor installation remaining. The restoration was nearly totally completed by the time the official dedication ceremony occurred on July 1–2, 2006, more than six years after the purchase of the house by the city.
Read more about this topic: Benjamin Stephenson House
Famous quotes containing the word restoration:
“Men who are occupied in the restoration of health to other men, by the joint exertion of skill and humanity, are above all the great of the earth. They even partake of divinity, since to preserve and renew is almost as noble as to create.”
—Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778)
“In comparison to the French Revolution, the American Revolution has come to seem a parochial and rather dull event. This, despite the fact that the American Revolution was successful—realizing the purposes of the revolutionaries and establishing a durable political regime—while the French Revolution was a resounding failure, devouring its own children and leading to an imperial despotism, followed by an eventual restoration of the monarchy.”
—Irving Kristol (b. 1920)
“The King [Charles II] after the Restoration accused the poet, Edmund Waller, of having made finer verses in praise of Oliver Cromwell than of himself; to which he agreed, saying, that Fiction was the soul of Poetry.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)