Renovation
The Church of the Presidents is the last remaining structure associated with all seven presidents who vacationed in Long Branch. In 1999 the Long Branch Historical Museum Association began fundraising efforts to save the building. The first step was to stabilize the building to prevent it from collapsing. The wood flooring was removed and reinforced concrete was poured to support the building. Steel supports replaced wooden pilasters that had deteriorated. The stained-glass windows, original altar, organ, and handmade pews were removed and put in storage during renovation.
Following the stabilization of the building in 2003, work began on the exterior. The wood frame was repaired, missing pieces were replaced, new gutters and a drainage system were installed, and the belfry was renovated. In 2007, a new cedar shake roof was completed.
In 2007 the Monmouth County Historical Commission awarded a grant to repair the north-facing portico porch. Previous grants from the MCHC were used to install new rain gutters, to restore the Garfield Tea House, the church bell, and belfry.
Currently, the Long Branch Historical Museum Association is undertaking fundraising efforts to finish the renovation before the Church of the Presidents can re-open to the public.
Read more about this topic: Church Of The Presidents (New Jersey)
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“Forgetfulness is necessary to remembrance. Ideas are retained by renovation of that impression which time is always wearing away, and which new images are striving to obliterate. If useless thoughts could be expelled from the mind, all the valuable parts of our knowledge would more frequently recur, and every recurrence would reinstate them in their former place.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“Postmodernity is the simultaneity of the destruction of earlier values and their reconstruction. It is renovation within ruination.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)