Vanderbilt Mansion National Historic Site: Cultural Landscape Report Volume 2, Landscape Preservation Treatment Recommendations, Vanderbilt Mansion National Historic Site, National Park Service

O'Donnell, Patricia; Wilson, Barbara; Viteretto, Peter

This Cultural Landscape Report for Vanderbilt Mansion National Historic Site, Volume 2: Landscape Preservation Treatment Recommendations, presents an exploration of primary preservation treatment alternatives for the Vanderbilt Mansion National Historic Site (VMNHS). A “primary” preservation treatment is one that provides a broad philosophical framework within which preservation treatment decisions for individual features are made. In this document the four possible preservation treatments-Preservation, Restoration, Rehabilitation, and Reconstruction-are evaluated for the VMNHS landscape, and their potential effects and impacts are assessed. A number of assumptions were made at the outset of this project and are relevant to the exploration of all preservation treatments. First, as presented in the CLRs VMNHS, Vol. 1 the property’s periods of significance include the Hosack through the late Vanderbilt periods, from 1828-1938. Therefore, it was assumed that changes made to the site between 1940 and the present, during the National Park Service stewardship, are not of historic value and may, in certain instances, negatively affect the site’s historic character. Some of the treatment alternatives consider the removal or relocation of these changes. Second, although the site’s overall integrity is quite high-much remains of the imprints of previous owners- over the past 50+ years a significant amount of deferred maintenance and deterioration has occurred. Reversing the cumulative effects of this deterioration, which began with resource and staffing shortages experienced during World War II, will require significant interventions which go beyond preservation, maintenance, and repair. Third, all alternatives were explored within the context of the site’s enabling legislation and most recent master plan from January 1976, the Final Master Plan, Vanderbilt Mansion National Historic Site. These documents state that the site was given to the United States for “preservation as a memorial” to Frederick W. Vanderbilt. The Final Master Plan further states that the purpose of the park is threefold: to explain the significance of these wealthy Americans and their historic era; to inform future generations of the estate lifestyle of the Vanderbilt’s and other wealthy people; and to illustrate a phase of human interaction with the environment. Within this mandate, the 1976 Final Master Plan states that the treatment of the site’s historic resources will be “aimed at preserving and/or restoring the historic buildings, their contents, and the grounds, and at recreating the environment which Mr. and Mrs. Vanderbilt knew.”

Vanderbilt Mansion National Historic Site: Cultural Landscape Report Volume 2, Landscape Preservation Treatment Recommendations, Vanderbilt Mansion National Historic Site, National Park Service

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