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Photo by pml2008

On Tuesday morning I wandered into the session on the role of interpretation in the master plan of a historic site. I knew little about the two huge 19^th Century stone sites—the Fort Monroe Authority on Virginia’s coast and Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. I learned each has its own unique challenges.

Eastern State is a stabilized ruin, a huge structure that was abandoned in 1971. The museum had to choose what stories to tell and then decide which cells to restore that tell those tales. Sean Kelley, head of the site, told the group that he is now working on incorporating current day issues into the sites tours. Not an easy task!

Eastern State is on the road to developing a strong interpretative plan. The Fort Monroe Authority is really just beginning. The site is a de-commissioned Army base on the coast of Virginia. When Shawn Halifax from the Authority showed us a slide with a list of the stakeholders for this site, I gasped. They ranged from Hampton Institute, a historically black institution, to the Daughters of the Confederacy! Not only that but the board of the site is comprised of political appointees from the Commonwealth of Virginia. That group changed completely from Democrats to Republicans shortly before the Authority was to present its interpretative plans. Add to that some of the historic facts—this site is where slaves were first brought into this country and where Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy was imprisoned after the Civil War. This is only a small part of the story Fort Monroe has to tell!

This session was incredibly interesting since representatives of both sites gave us a clear picture of the issues they must wrestle with every day in developing a coherent plan that will guide interpretation of their sites into the 21st century, more than a hundred years after each of these monolithic buildings was constructed.

Nadine Stewart, 2011 Bruce Craig Fellow, Ellis Island Immigration Museum