Historic Preservation at Hildene, Part One
Walk the south porch of Hildene, The Lincoln Family Home, on any given Tuesday this spring, and you will see three things at once. New balusters, hand-spun and freshly painted, standing in clean rhythm alongside the new railing. A section of the original 1905 balustrade still waiting its turn, the paint peeling and the wood softening at the seams. And, somewhere between the two, Matt Beattie, who leads the preservation team, considering what to fix next.
This is what historic preservation at Hildene actually looks like. Not a single grand reveal. Not a home closed for a year and reopened with a ribbon. A working balance between what has been kept right and what is still being kept up.
Three master craftsmen and the next generation
The team Matt leads is small but tight. Three master craftsmen - Matt, Travis, and Dennis - who collectively bring over 100 years of carpentry experience to the home. Working alongside them is Griff, a full-time employee in his twenties - an apprentice of sorts - learning the craft from the hands and experience beside him. Together they work on the home the way a 121-year-old home asks to be worked on: carefully, unhurriedly, one element at a time.
Their philosophy is straightforward. Modern shortcuts that might shave a few thousand dollars off the budget are politely declined. PVC is decidedly not on the table. Reclaimed material from the property is preferred when the land can provide. New material is brought in only when nothing on site will do.
"If my name's going to be on it, I want it to be done correctly."
- Matt Beattie
That sentence, more than any other, is the heart of this restoration.
The work that came before
This effort did not begin in 2024. For more than a decade, generous donors have funded a steady stream of improvements at the home, much of it in places guests rarely have reason to see. New mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems. Two new boilers. A new roof on the home and repairs on the annex. A careful restoration of the stucco exterior, using sand drawn from the dene itself so the new walls would match the old. A sump pump cut into the basement floor to address standing water. A new deck on the annex and an ADA-compliant ramp to the Formal Garden. New ADA-accessible bathrooms in the annex. Regrading of the courtyard drainage so decades of sediment buildup would stop putting the home at risk.
It is, in many ways, the truest measure of preservation: work the home needs, made possible by people who care enough to fund it whether or not anyone will ever see it.
What we set out to do
In September 2024, the team turned to the work guests would notice: the windows, the shutters, the south-side balustrade. The scope was already daunting. All 68 windows in the home, scraped, primed, reglazed, painted. All 120 shutters revitalized. The entire south-side balustrade rebuilt, including 168 South African mahogany balusters across 122 linear feet. Another 52 linear feet of roof porch railing repaired. A historic barn on the property electrified, so our master craftsmen would have a workshop on site.
We estimated the cost to complete this work at $186,000.
In November of 2024, our Director of Advancement, Nan Bambara, sent a single email to our community of supporters and asked for help. "This is our crown jewel," Nan often says of the home. "Our donors care about it as much as we do."
The response was immediate. An anonymous donor offered a 1:1 match up to $50,000. Within weeks, the campaign had unlocked the match in full. Within the first year, the community had given more than $300,000 - well past the original estimate, and far enough to allow the team to take on more of the home's needs at once.
Nan still talks about that year with a kind of wonder.
"When I see the work underway at the house - the craftsmen restoring windows and railings, the painters carefully bringing new life to the exterior trim, and the lift stretched high to the third-floor dormers - I'm always struck by the generosity behind it. Every part of this restoration is made possible by people who care so deeply about Hildene and the history entrusted to us. Their support is an act of stewardship and devotion. I like to imagine Robert, Mary, and Peggy smiling as they see their beloved home being cared for once again."
- Nan Bambara
It was the green light Matt had been waiting on.
The home asks for more
As is often the case with restoration projects, the home itself had a few things to say about scope.
Once Matt's team opened up the balustrade, they found more extensive damage than anyone had expected. Section by section, it became clear that a partial replacement would not do. The entire south-side railing - all 122 linear feet, all 168 balusters, all 17 structural boxes - would need to come down and be built back up.
The home asks for more: rotted wood found inside the old balustrade once the team began to open it up.
With the help of the custom millwork shop at r.k. Miles, and the patient hand-spinning of Tyler Gebhardt - first at Windy Mountain, later at Londonderry Builders - the new balusters began to arrive, one stack at a time. Lined up next to the originals, they are nearly indistinguishable.
Hand-spun balusters lined up in the workshop, ready for installation.
Wood from our own land
If you ask Matt how he chose the wood for the shutter repairs, he will smile and walk you out behind the Oscar V. Johnson Welcome Center, into the trees that begin behind it. There, until recently, stood an old berry cage - a simple structure of 8x8 cypress posts and chicken wire that had outlived its usefulness. The chicken wire had rusted through. The bushes inside had not been tended in years. The cage could have been hauled to the dump and forgotten.
Instead, the team took it apart. The cypress posts came out of the ground, were stacked, and waited. Months later, when the home needed material for the shutter repairs, those same cypress posts were milled on site by Travis, on a portable sawmill down in the dene. The grain came out clean. The character came out warm. Cypress, primed and painted, will hold its own against Vermont winters for decades.
That instinct - to use what the land has already offered before asking for more - runs all through the work here. The stucco exterior was restored using sand drawn from the dene. The shutters are coming back in cypress reclaimed from the berry cage. "Whenever possible, we use wood from Hildene's land in the restoration. This sustainable approach honors the integrity of the property while making use of our natural resources." That is how we describe it in our own donor reports, and it is also, simply, how Matt and his team work.
Vermont winters do not pause the work
During the fall of 2024 and into the winter of 2025, the team moved the shutters off the home and indoors, where they set up a temporary paint booth. For months, the craftsmen who in summer worked outside on a manlift along the south porch were instead working inside, in respirators and work clothes, scraping, repairing, priming, and painting one shutter at a time. By spring, every shutter that came back up onto the home had been touched by hand and finished by hand.
Inside the workshop: balustrade sections at various stages of restoration.
By the time the leaves turned again in the fall of 2025, dozens of windows had been scraped, primed, painted, and reglazed. The shutters were returning to the home one by one, polished and crisp against the stucco. The porte cochère - the canopied entryway over the front door - had been completed in full, including the extra-large window above its flat roof. And a historic barn on the property had been electrified into a working carpenter's shop, so future custom architectural pieces could be rebuilt on site, in a space the property itself provided.
For the next phase of exterior work, the team next partnered with Grover and Son's Painting, LLC, a local professional painting company, to tackle the second floor and above - the windows, fascia, soffits, and all the trim woodwork, work that was completed during the spring.
Carpenter to carpenter, generation to generation
A few years ago, during a repair on a pocket door in the dining room, Matt's team pulled the door apart. On the unpainted wood above it - on a stretch no guest would ever see - they found a name, and a date: 1904. Right next to it, a second name from 1978, added by someone who had spotted the first signature decades earlier and decided to leave their own.
Carpenter to carpenter. Generation to generation. Evidence of care.
And the chain has not broken. Inside one of the new balustrade sections this spring, on a stretch of unpainted wood no guest will ever see, Nan left a note of her own. "April 2026," it reads. "We raised this money to restore the Balustrade. Our Donors are amazing." She drew a small heart, and signed her name.
Nan Bambara's handwritten note inside one of the new balustrade sections, April 2026.
Someday, when the next generation of carpenters opens up this railing to do their own repairs, they will find that line waiting for them.
It is the kind of detail that tells you everything about how this home has been kept. By people who could have done less, and chose to do more.
Built to be cared for
The home was completed in 1905. Robert Lincoln took an active hand in its construction. There are rare photographs of him at the marble quarry in Dorset, choosing the stone that still anchors the home's exterior today. Stucco from Vermont. Marble from Dorset. Mahogany from across an ocean. Even at the start, this home was built from a careful mix of what was nearby and what was worth bringing in.
We are holding to that standard now.
By the time of our Donor Appreciation Garden Party on June 10, the south-side balustrade will be nearly complete. Windows will likely still be in progress. Scaffolding may still be up in places - and we think that is exactly right. Preservation is not a moment. It is a rhythm. Guests who walk the grounds this summer will see new railings standing next to old ones still waiting their turn, and that comparison tells the truer story of what it takes to keep a home like this standing.
"The iconic Lincoln family home is a living testimony to over a century of history. I want to be a part of restoring the home for the next 100 years!"
- Anonymous donor, November 2024
Come see the work
If you would like to be there when we raise a glass to this phase of the restoration, consider joining us at the sustaining membership level. Members at that level receive an invitation to the Donor Appreciation Garden Party on June 10 - a chance to walk the grounds, see the home up close, and meet the team behind the work.
The crown jewel is being kept up. We hope you will come see it.
What comes next
This is the first installment in a new quarterly series we are calling Historic Preservation at Hildene, where we will check in across the seasons on the work going on around the home, the grounds, and the buildings that make up the property. The next installment will look at sustainability and the materials we draw from the land itself - the portable sawmill in the dene, our forest management practices, and the long view of stewardship at a property whose mission, Living the Lincoln Legacy, asks us to think in centuries.
Preservation here does not end. It changes shape with the weather, with the priorities, with what the next round of inspections turns up. There is a story worth telling in that rhythm, and we would love to have you along.
