Civil War monuments getting repairs

Hector Abreu found an old copper patch in the cheek of the Confederate soldier atop the 95-foot New York Peace Monument at Point Park this week.

Mr. Abreu, a metalwork artist, is part of the National Park Service's one-of-a-kind historic preservation crew here this summer to give a 100-year makeover to several massive Civil War monuments, including one at Orchard Knob that is missing two soldiers toppled years ago by vandals.

"The patch might have been a repair when the piece was made at the foundry (in New York)," he said after a full height inspection of the statue from the bucket of a 120-foot lift. "Or it could have been a later fix. I'll just have to research it. This (statue) is over 100 years old. We'll want to treat it with respect and try to match the original artist's intent."

The work, handled by a six-man crew from the Historic Preservation Training Center based in Maryland, began this week with an assessment of the Confederate and Union soldiers shaking hands atop the Peace Monument.

On Thursday the crew moved to Cravens House to begin redressing old wounds on the Ohio, New York and Iowa monuments there. After that they will move to Orchard Knob to work on the Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Maryland and Wisconsin statues.

In all they will fix nine of the park's 20 large monuments - half of the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park's large monuments spread over the Chattanooga and North Georgia area.

Mostly funded with federal stimulus money, the inspection, cleanings and repairs will total about $445,000, said Jim Szyjkowski, resource management chief at the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is funding $310,000 of the cost. National Park cyclical maintenance money makes up the difference, Mr. Szyjkowski said.

Park officials hope to get the other 11 large monuments on the Chickamauga Battlefield and Missionary Ridge inspected and rehabilitated next year or in 2012, according to Mr. Szyjkowski. He estimates that could take another $450,000.

Mr. Szyjkowski learned of the special but little-known Historic Preservation Training Center from its recent work at Stones River National Battlefield.

"I was tickled to find them. Not just anybody can work on these things," he said. "These are massive monuments that probably haven't really had much maintenance in the entire time they've existed."

Painstaking work

At another New York monument at Cravens House, Mr. Abreu looked at the bronze plaques with a handheld microscope as other members of the crew began building the scaffolding for masonry and bronze cleaning and repair work.

"I'm trying to pinpoint how far to go down to clean," he said with his eye seemingly glued to the raised lettering. "When bronzes are made from the foundries they apply their own formulaic patinas on them, and the patinas can be any color. I'm trying to make sure that when I clean this I don't go beyond that."

He said the bronze would have been given a particular color by its artist and waxed.

"If you clean it too much, you strip away the artist's intent or a layer of history," he said.

Scott Jones, the Maryland-based historic preservation crew's project manager, said he and his colleagues also will be helping Mr. Szyjkowski with some future plans and guidelines to help local park workers do some cleaning and maintenance of the smaller monuments around the park. They also will help with estimates of future work his team will need to do perhaps next year or in 2012, he said.

"Other large military parks - Vicksburg and Gettysburg - have monument conservation programs of their own, but that's never been done here," Mr. Jones said. "We'd like to help them with that so at least the smaller monuments can get some regular preservation maintenance."

With only eight full-time maintenance workers to handle nearly 10,000 acres, 600 monuments and thousands of plaques and markers in the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, officials here have said they depend heavily on volunteers and occasional donations.

With monument repair price tags previously estimated at $5,000 to $1 million apiece, the 600 memorials make up about $8.6 million of what Park Superintendent Shawn Benge has said is $31 million in deferred maintenance projects at the park.

When this year's stimulus awards to the park were announced, officials said they were a welcome hedge against a deferred maintenance backlog more than 12 times the park's $2.5 million-a-year budget.

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