Object Lesson

Object LessonFiske Kimball and the Restoration of Moors End, Nantucket Marie Frank (bio) Like so many of the endeavors associated with architect Fiske Kimball, the restoration of Moors End (1829–1834), a federal-style house on Nantucket, drew together notable individuals, garnered publicity, and included a dash of intrigue (Figure 1). The Moors End project offered an exceptional opportunity for Kimball: the restoration included not just the house but also the grounds, including a formal garden, and interiors that the client intended to fully furnish with period accessories. Additionally, Kimball took on the project in the spring of 1925, a pivotal moment in his professional career. In those same months he resigned from New York University to accept the position as director of the Pennsylvania Museum (now Philadelphia Museum of Art), where period rooms became a hallmark of his tenure. He was also intimately involved in shaping attitudes in American historic preservation: in 1925 he chaired committees for the American Institute of Architects and for the Virginia Art Commission; the previous year, 1924, he was appointed chairman of the restoration committee for Monticello.1 The work at Moors End therefore offers insight in microcosm into issues of presentation and preservation that preoccupied him for the following decades. But it also offers something else: Moors End was not a museum or tourist destination but a private home. Kimball had to include the modern amenities necessary for the daily life of his wealthy client. At Moors End we encounter Kimball not as a scholar but as an architect; granted, these two roles often intermingled for Kimball but the significance of the restoration rests not so much on his research into the federal era as with his contributions to the colonial revival in his own era. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. A photograph of Moors End, Nantucket, Rhode Island, in 1926 after Fiske Kimball's restoration. Fiske Kimball Papers, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Library and Archives (hereafter, FKP, PMA). The restoration of Moors End allows us to draw together the threads of Kimball's career as a scholar, preservationist, and museum director through the lens of his work as an architect. This article argues that the restoration was guided by a major theme of the colonial revival: the continuing relevance of the classical tradition as an architecture of order and refinement. Positioning himself as an architect, Kimball put his scholarly knowledge of high-style federal architects such as Thomas Jefferson and Charles Bulfinch into the service of modern design. Further, the steps he took to publicize the project indicate his intention to promote it as a model of taste for contemporary viewers. As this case study demonstrates, [End Page 94] Kimball's motivations led him to take liberties with the preservation of historic features. A thorough description of the house before and after the restoration, in conjunction with Kimball's own words from various sources, provides the data to analyze his decisions and choices. The colonial revival embodied a complex set of ideas and cultural aspirations that drove the arts in America well into the twentieth century.2 The nostalgia for an American past spurred the collection and display of period decorative arts at the same time it pressed relentlessly for a modern American architecture of taste and refinement in the present. Kimball's reputation as a prolific writer often overshadows the fact that he was a trained architect—just prior to Moors End he had designed a number of structures at the University of Virginia.3 Kimball received his Master of Architecture from Harvard University in 1912. H. Langford Warren, the chairman of the program and Kimball's close mentor, devised a curriculum that integrated the principles of the École des Beaux Arts with the study of colonial American buildings.4 This effort mirrored the work of McKim, Mead and White, the preeminent firm associated with the rise of the colonial revival in the late nineteenth century. Charles McKim, who attended the École, edited the New York Sketchbook of Architecture in the 1870s, a publication that highlighted both the formal massing and archeologically correct details of colonial buildings. New buildings by the firm, such as the H

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