Together we’ve raised a new roof over the Webb House!

Members of the NSCDA-CT led the way to a successful replacement of the roof and repairs to the chimneys, securing the building for the next generation.

Contributions stand near $50,000, covering nearly two thirds of the cost of this critical project. As the next bit of good news, we’re thrilled to announce that the National Park Service has awarded the Museum a preservation grant of $223,138 to proceed next spring with restoration of the Isaac Stevens House roof, chimneys, windows, and painted exterior!

Below are some highlights from the project. Some may require a little patience while they load.

Before starting masonry repairs and roof replacement, our staff and summer interns moved collections objects out of harm’s way with careful planning and documentation. Some went into storage and others found temporary homes in other houses. For the first time in a generation, furnishings from the bedchamber General Washington is thought to have used when meeting here with Rochambeau in 1781 were emptied out.

But they stayed on public view as daily tours continued throughout construction. We transferred them to a chamber in the Silas Deane House next door to be sure the story of the Wethersfield Conference wasn’t missing for even a day.

Visitors have been fascinated by the fresh look at this empty room’s remarkably preserved flocked wallpaper, arguably the rarest and most important item under our roofs. Based on a stamp from the 1765 Stamp Act, it seems to have been ordered from London by Silas Deane, who had married Webb’s widow and lived in the Webb House for several years before building a new one next door.

With the bed out of the way, visitors could also see clearly how the doorway was moved around 1820. The room was important enough that the Welles family who bought the house left this old wallpaper in place instead of updating it. Their carpenter simply cut out the plaster and paper in the new door location and inserted it in the old doorway! That insert is now covered by a modern reproduction from Adelphi Paper Hangings—commissioned by our friend Thomas Jayne, a noted decorator, for a private client. It shows how vibrant the original would have been when it was new.

Before the new cedar roof could go on, a masonry crew replaced deteriorated bricks and “repointed” the mortar joints throughout. Repointing is a routine task, but historic bricks like these are softer than modern bricks and they need the right kind of mortar. They should be harder than the mortar between them, so that when both materials expand with moisture, the mortar is sacrificed instead of the brick.

Unfortunately some areas were pointed with modern Portland cement in the 20th century, and its hardness has caused bricks to crumble. Masons ground it out and replaced it with a historic recipe made from lime, sand, and river mud.

We made all of our mortar the eighteenth-century way! First you have to “slake” the quicklime by adding water, which produces heat and turns it into a calcium hydroxide putty. Then you mix the putty with sand. In places like Wethersfield, river mud sometimes found its way in also—so we went down to the Wethersfield Cove and gathered some up from the Connecticut River.

Nevan Carling demonstrated the lime-slaking process during our first annual historic trades day in July—a family event that brought historic craftspeople and vendors to the Museum campus to share their wisdom.

The day the old shingles came off was spectacular—a once-in-a-generation experience! For the first time in nearly 50 years, light poured into the attic through the gaps between the “sarking boards,” the boards to which shingles are nailed.

Wethersfield has more than 200 homes surviving from before 1850, including Joseph Webb’s 1752 gambrel-roofed mansion at the center of Main Street. The fresh shingles, gutters, and masonry we gave it this summer is part of the NSCDA-CT’s ongoing responsibility to preserve this National Historic Landmark for future generations.

The old roof coming off the Joseph Webb House went all the way back to the 1970s, when our predecessors replaced modern asphalt shingles with cedar shake starting with the upper sections. Dr. Sheppard C. Webb, a descendant living on Long Island, sent us these snapshots from 1976.

While the same roof lingered on for all these years, the paint color changed in the 2000s based on a combination of microscopic analysis (which was inconclusive) and an 1836 illustration. Since the existing porch and entry had been added in 1820-21, the light-and-dark color scheme shown in the 1830s picture was deemed more fitting than the continuous oxblood color introduced mid-20th century.

For just a couple of days, the removal of old shingles revealed ghosts of three dormers long-since removed. Can you spot where they originally were? They seem to have been taken off as early as the 1770s, when Joseph Webb, Jr., inherited the house and made alterations. Look closely at the tops of the rectangular openings and you’ll see angled scars where their pitched rooflines once met the main face of the roof.

Have you ever seen a “swept valley?” Today we usually seal the joints or “valleys” in a roofline using a strip of sheet metal called “flashing.” In 18th-century roofing, the high cost of lead flashing caused many builders to create a sweep of shingles across the valley instead. It required calculation and skill to cut and place them effectively.

The new Webb House roof uses the 18th-century technique, seen here in contrast to the roof currently on the Silas Deane House next door.

The new cedar shingles made the house and courtyard smell fantastic!