> but then I was told that no, the original color was gray.
> Seems when the Dearborn folk wanted to interest the NPS in the building
> they felt it needed a face lift so they painted it barn red the week
> before the NPS came out to look at it.

Is there no end to idiocy?   It was the best building at the farm when I was
there some years ago, due I am sure, to what, at a casual glance, appeared
the be original paint, sort of greeny-gray and aged like some of the rest of
us! (to which Ralpf will surely insert in bold face "like old cheese?")   It
had a nice ordinary yet vigorous authenticity about it, and if it was
restoration paint, it sure was a fine job.

I envy your opportunity to caress the boards of that lovely building.   Last
winter, I rebuilt the floor of an 1877 building, dismantling and documenting
the four layers of flooring added on top over the years.   When the original
floor was exposed, it yielded all sorts of evidence of furniture and traffic
patterns of the original store.  The second occupancy had been in 1894 when
the place became a home and new owners installed T&G over the whip-sawn
store floor.   Today, I am treating the floor and walls of the store half of
the room as a museum exhibit itself, installing a series of push-buttons on
a barrier railing for visitors to use to turn on spotlights that highlight
and call attention to the subtle discoveries of original layout we made on
those original floorboards.   In this case, there was a real advantage of
being the exhibit designer, industrial archaeologist and restoration
carpenter all in one.   The size of the job would not have paid for three
separate people, but it is ending up with a unique exhibit that unifies the
process of time from original construction to the present.

Question:
Do you know of any other historic building exhibits that use visitor
controlled buttons and spot lights to accompany the presentation text about
items or features in a room?

cp in original (but rapidly decaying) bc

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