Environmental Condition Improvement for Historic Houses

FAIN: PG-50086-07

Historic House Trust of New York City (Flushing, NY 11368-4145)
Sandra Elaine Huber (Project Director: May 2006 to January 2009)

Consultation with a preservation expert who will review environmental monitoring data and recommend actions to improve conditions in the Trust's historic house museums. Four properties have been selected for analysis: the Alice Austen House Museum (ca. 1690) on Staten Island with 19th-century contents that document Austen's life as a prolific photographer; the Dyckman Farmhouse Museum (1784), the last surviving farmhouse in Manhattan; Lefferts Historic House, an 18th-century Dutch-American farmhouse that focuses on Brooklyn family life; and Merchant's House Museum (1832), with its 19th-century household and textile collections.

The Historic House Trust of New York City (Trust) is an umbrella organization that supports the preservation, maintenance and interpretation of 22 historic sites located in New York City parks. In 2003, the Trust purchased and installed 100 HOBO dataloggers to measure temperature and humidity in period rooms and storage spaces throughout the collection. Since then, the Trust's curator has gathered the data the HOBOs record on the environmental conditions at each site. During this next phase of the environmental monitoring project, the Trust's curator will collaborate with consultant Steven Weintraub. The consultant will review the data, make site visits, and provide recommendations to improve environmental conditions at the houses. The Trust's curator has selected four houses to focus on, which represent varying types of collections, geographic locations, and standards of heating and cooling systems, but all sharing similar attributes with other houses in the Trust's collection.