AIC 53rd Annual Meeting

In 1940 a member of the Tonawanda Seneca Nation in New York State, Nicodemus Bailey, donated a log cabin to the collection that would become The National Museum of the American Indian.  The cabin was reconstructed on the grounds of the NMAI Research Branch in the Bronx, where it stood for forty years.  In 1980 it was disassembled, and its pieces stored outdoors until 2004 when they were moved to the Cultural Resources Center in Suitland, MD.

Occupying an unusual typological space between a building and a collection artifact, the disassembled cabin also occupied much-needed physical space in museum storage. Research revealed that it was a rare example of a once-common tribal building type. As Revolutionary army raids and subsequent white settlement forced the Seneca into reservations in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the tribal community shifted from living in communal bark and lashed frame longhouses to inhabiting single family hewn-log cabins, whose construction had been learned generations earlier from northern European settlers. By the mid-nineteenth century the log cabin had become an integral part of Seneca life, and a few remain today on reservations in New York and Canada. Concerned about their long-term preservation, Mr. Bailey donated several more cabins to cultural institutions in the New York region. The NMAI cabin represents a significant transitional moment in Seneca cultural and architectural history.

Not useable in its current disassembled and deteriorated condition, the NMAI engaged advisors from the Seneca Nation to collaboratively determine possible outcomes for the cabin.  To make informed decisions, an architectural condition and preservation assessment was required.  This expertise does not reside within the conservation staff at NMAI and required an architectural conservator to determine the condition of the individual pieces, the cabin’s historical integrity (had significant material changes been made in the NMAI restoration?), and possibilities for reassembly and future stewardship. Considering the cabin as a building (albeit one accessioned by and stored in a museum) and based on the condition of the individual pieces, would it be possible to apply one or more of the four approaches set forth in the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties—conservation, rehabilitation, restoration, or reconstruction?  Which of the possible approaches would best preserve the cultural, historical, and architectural values of the cabin, the main goal of any preservation treatment?

This last question was decided in close consultation with the Seneca themselves, after mutual discussion of the condition survey and treatment options.  A nontraditional preservation approach was agreed upon that is somewhat outside of the usual realms of museum or architectural conservation, but that will result in the cabin’s preservation as an important building and part of Seneca culture.

The NMAI Seneca cabin is an unusual artifact that required a collaborative approach, combining various knowledge systems and considerations. Our presentation will discuss the preservation plan for the cabin and insights that came from collaboration between the museum, an architectural conservator, and representatives from the Seneca.