Original Lincoln Home Cottage to be Reconstructed

[Norm Hellmers]

Hello Anita! Thanks for the welcome. I don’t care for the term “sleeping loft.” The HABS drawings refer to these upstairs rooms as bedrooms. Half-story houses were very popular in Lincoln’s time—and are still today! Generally, modern houses have dormers in the upper level. In the Lincoln cottage, the walls would have extended above the downstairs by three or four feet. (That dimension is known, but I don’t know it.) The walls would then have followed the roofline. At the top, there would have been a flat ceiling about three feet wide. This was probably the only space in which the nearly six-foot, four-inch tall Mr. Lincoln could have stood upright. To me this explains the Lincolns’ early desire to add a downstairs bedroom, which would have allowed Lincoln the luxury of standing upright throughout their bedroom.

Upstairs in the cottage, there were three bedrooms, one each above the parlor and the sitting room and one above the kitchen wing. You can see these bedrooms on this HABS drawing:
https://www.hellonorm.com/cottage/1844-1846_web.jpg

Furnishing the cottage as it may have appeared in 1844 would be highly conjectural. The furnishing of the Lincoln Home today is based on a considerable amount of evidence. No such evidence would be available for the cottage. Furnishing the cottage with little evidence would be a disservice to visitors. How the cottage would be used would be a decision that the National Park Service would have to make, if they were forced by law to accept it. Guided tours would be unlikely, since there is so little that could be said. Also, guiding visitors through the upstairs bedrooms would present physical challenges because of the lower ceilings. Guided tours would also be a considerable expense. You speak of learning about the “early years.” Remember that the Lincolns lived in the original cottage for only two or three years, and there is not that much to tell. Robert was just a toddler. The births of the youngest boys and the death of Eddy were all after the cottage had been enlarged. Even an experienced interpreter would find it hard to use the cottage to tell a story of any significance associated with the Lincoln family. See this section of my online comments about interpretation in our National Park System:
https://www.hellonorm.com/cottage/index5.html

I would encourage everyone (if you haven’t already done so) to watch a tour given of the Lincoln Home by the current Curator, Susan Haake. She has the time to tell more about the Home than is possible on a regularly scheduled tour. The video is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiAe1ndrmJ8

Your suggestion for using “current technology” is intriguing. Mike Jackson, who was the chief architect for the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency for more than 30 years makes a similar suggestion. In his opinion piece, “Why we don't need another replica historic place,” he writes:
“If the Abraham Lincoln Association wants to do something new to better explain Lincoln's life through the places that represent him, there are better ways to do this than recreating the early version of the Lincoln home. The use of virtual recreations through modern architectural rendering tools and information software could put the ALA at the forefront of virtual historic interpretation.”
His piece is here:
https://www.illinoistimes.com/springfiel...d=13909061

I remain opposed to the construction of the cottage, primarily for two reasons. One is the cost of operation and maintenance, but more importantly, I believe there is no universal truth to be conveyed by it, and after all, that’s what the mission of the National Park Service is all about.