Met history wrote:

     "Based on an interview with the restoration supervisor, Mr. and Mrs. Recent
     Purchaser have decided that they want to "preserve" the house, and
     "restore" it to its "original condition", even though for the affected
     areas, they have only the vaguest idea of what that original condition is,
     and this restoration will involve wholesale forgery of large elements and
     even entire rooms.  As I walked through the decoration of the 1899 and 1936
     campaigns was being trashed.

     So what they bought was a house with multiple layers of interest and
     complexity, which they are power-sanding out in favor of a uniform finish."

     So what's new?  Mr. 1899 purchaser made changes to demonstrate how much
     money he had. Mr. 1936 purchaser made changes to demonstrate how much
     money, and taste, he had.  Why shouldn't Mr. 1999 purchaser do the same?
     It's the American way.  And it's also continuing the layering of history
     that makes old houses so rich.

     But on the other hand, it's destroying real historic (by someone's
     definition, at least) fabric and replacing it with conjectural restorations
     that maybe will look like the real thing in 50 years (though probably not,
     since I assume the construction technique used will be today's??)

     Years ago I did a thesis on turn of the century restorations of three
     "Great Houses of Virginia" for private owners.  These are much sneered at
     nowadays and all of the houses have now been re-restored, some more than
     once.  A layer of history that I thought important and often beautiful was
     removed in favor of what was at the time a "state of the art" restoration.

     I finally concluded that restoring something "back" to some early period is
     almost never a good idea.  You simply lose too much real stuff in favor of
     too much hypothetical stuff, even though the restoration architects "know"
     exactly what the "original condition" was.

     Needless to say, many knowledgable people disagree, saying that while all
     history is interesting, only some of it is important (or significant, as we
     in the NR biz would say).  Fortunately, I don't have enough money or skill
     to live in a historic building, so I don't really have to put my purist
     theories to the test!

     Marilyn Harper