The Field House Museum, located at 634 South Broadway, is set to reopen to the public on Sunday, May 18. Built in 1845 in an area of the city known as “Walsh’s Row,” the house has been closed for more than two years following extensive water damage stemming from a burst pipe.
Eugene Field, who was born in 1850, spent his childhood in the Greek Revival rowhouse. He is known as the “Children’s Poet” and widely recognized as the “Father of the Personal Newspaper Column.” His father, attorney Roswell Martin Field, is credited with formulating the legal strategy that placed Dred Scott’s lawsuit for freedom before the U.S. Supreme Court.
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“I’m very excited and happy that it’s finally going to be reopened and our history can be shared again,” says executive director Stephanie Bliss. “It’s definitely a key piece of who we are.”
Bliss, who spearheaded the lengthy project, was at dinner with her family on Christmas Eve 2022 when she received a call that motion was detected inside the house. “I thought something had fallen from the wall, but you have to go down and check it out every time,” she says. Bliss recalls walking through the addition, past the museum exhibits, and into the house, where she was faced with a cascade of water.
“It was devastating,” she says. “But you’re thinking you have to call the fire department to make sure they come out, and you have to call board members, and then start saving whatever you can.”
Workers later determined that a pipe burst in the sprinkler system that spans the length of the attic, sending water mostly down the middle of the building and sparing many of the contents of the house. In fact, most of the core collection survived. “The hardest hit items were some of the toys in our collection,” says Bliss, noting that Field was an avid collector and that the museum has, over the years, amassed a number of toys in his honor. Frigid temperatures in the days following the pipe burst– “Alaska weather in St. Louis,” as described to Bliss by one of the technicians–prevented mold from growing on the artifacts. “We could get them out and dry them off and preserve them. We were lucky in that respect,” she says.
Still, walls had to be replastered and woodwork refinished, the latter completed by noted decorative painter Charles Blood. “He did a wonderful job,” says Bliss. Carpenter Alex Mattan, owner of Ambacht, had been working on a historic window restoration project encompassing 17 windows before the incident took place. He completed two of them just days prior to the accident and had to rebuild them.
The unexpected nature of the event fueled the challenges. “We had to find people who could fit us into their schedule,” says Bliss. One of the biggest hurdles was sourcing the right people to either match or custom make a replica of a yellow-striped wallpaper and border dating back 150 years. “Normally, you have all these things picked before you go forward and that was not the case with this project,” says Bliss. “It was a lot of hitting the ground and, luckily, we have the internet to help us find things and [we] talked to individuals within the preservation community,” she says.
With a sample of the first-floor wallpaper, Bliss visited various stores throughout St. Louis before finding a close match–Graycott Stripe from Cowtan & Tout–at Reineke Decorating Center on Manchester Road. “They’re really well versed on what their vendors have when it comes to wallpaper,” says Bliss. The delicate design is a similar match to what was previously in the parlor rooms. The border, however, “was not something that we could find anything close to, so we did have a company out in New York create it.” The work was custom printed by Joseph Gornail at Fine Print NYC. “They did an amazing job of recreating our border on the first floor,” says Bliss. The second floor features a painted white wallpaper. “This was a technique used in the 1800s, as plaster walls would crack, and this would easily cover them,” says Bliss. The wallpaper border, (Deer & Rabbit Ceiling Border in Autumn), was purchased through Bradbury and Bradbury Art Wallpapers.
The years-long undertaking taught Bliss a lot about historic projects. “You have to be flexible and you have to pivot because even if it’s something that might not be what you thought of originally, it can still turn out great.”
As for historic house museums, she thinks everyone should visit each of the historic houses in St. Louis at least once. “We have such a rich history here, and our history is what has made us great,” she says. “One of those sites is our site; it not only made St. Louis a better place because of the individuals who lived here. Those individuals helped mold our nation.”
