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Restoration & Conservation

The work of preserving the building and its precious interiors is never finished.

Historic House Museum

Now a historic house museum in Portland, Maine, Victoria Mansion is one of the most important historic house museums of its period in the nation.

As an example of the finest design created in America in the middle of the nineteenth century, the building and its interiors are without parallel and are therefore of national and even international importance.

It is the crowning achievement of three of 19th-century America’s towering creative talents:

ARCHITECT HENRY AUSTIN, a master of the Italianate style and one of New England’s most productive and imaginative architects. Often regarded as one of Austin’s best works, Victoria Mansion has been called “one of the culminating domestic designs of the antebellum years, and of the Italianate villa in general.”

GUSTAVE HERTER, founder of Herter Brothers of New York. The interiors of the house and their lavish original furnishings are today the sole intact commission by this designer.

GIUSEPPE GUIDICINI, decorator of many grand 19th-century theaters and opera houses. The trompe l’oeil decorative paintings throughout the house are among the last surviving works of Guidicini.

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Conservation & Restoration

Far from being a static museum, Victoria Mansion is a center of cutting-edge preservation and conservation work, where some of the world’s foremost preservation experts pioneer techniques that advance the field. It is an ever-evolving, dynamic study in historic preservation and art conservation.

Exterior

The museum made great strides from the early 1970s through the early 2000s in solving major structural issues and sealing the building’s weather envelope to protect the precious interiors within. As with any old house, deterioration is inevitable, but careful monitoring and maintenance help to ensure that the elements never get the upper hand.

When Victoria Mansion was named a National Historic Landmark in 1971, the building was in trouble. The roof leaked, the roofline woodwork was in an advanced state of deterioration, and several of the building’s projecting brownstone structures were on the verge of collapse.

Significant projects (link to restoration timeline) undertaken over the course of 40 years have allowed us to make great progress. We’re in a far better position thanks to a relentless focus over the last half century on solving the building’s most pressing problems.

To learn more about our organization’s history, visit our timeline section.

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Interior

Victoria Mansion strives to return the house’s interiors to their original 1860 condition while preserving important evidence of its evolution over time. Ongoing efforts to clean and restore paint, woodwork, and furniture allow visitors to see the Mansion interiors in all of their nineteenth-century splendor.

Since 2012, major interior restorations of the Turkish Smoking Room, Vestibule, Pompeiian Bathroom Suite, Reception Suite, and Parlor have been completed. In 2022, we began our most ambitious paint conservation project – a two-year effort to clean and restore the soaring central Stair Hall.

Victoria Mansion is also the steward of a rich and important collection of original textiles, including fabrics, tassels, and trims as well as remnants of drapes, upholstery, and carpets dating to the house’s original 1860 decoration. Following a successful project to faithfully replicate the original fabrics and trims in the Turkish Smoking Room, new efforts to carefully research and replicate textiles in the Parlor and Reception Room are now underway.

The Figured Maple and Rosewood Cabinet has carved, incised, painted, and inlaid ornament reflecting different stylistic influences. The winged females carved on the upper section recall designs of the baroque era.

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Victoria Mansion’s textile collection includes more than 550 original pieces used in the decoration of the house.

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Purchased from the noted New Orleans banker and art collector James Robb, The Iconoclasts, by Emmanuel Leutze (1816-1868) hangs in the Parlor.

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Collections

As an institution, Victoria Mansion strives to return the house to its original 1860 condition while preserving important evidence of its evolution over time.

Thanks to an inventory of the house’s contents from 1893 and numerous historic photographs, it is possible to know with certainty where exactly in the house many objects were placed. This precious documentation allows us to know that Victoria Mansion has over 90% of the objects that were in the house in 1860.

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Caring for a Masterpiece of Architecture and Design:

The work of preserving the building and its precious interiors is never finished. Saving what is so special and unique about this National Historic Landmark always requires devoted champions.

Meet Our Conservators

Victoria Mansion is fortunate to collaborate with many nationally – and even world – renown experts in conservation and historic preservation who help carry out ongoing work at the Mansion. Several have done work for other landmarks such as the U.S. Capitol Building, Faneuil Hall, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and The Alamo, among others.

View a list of our preservation partners

Additional Ongoing Enterprises

Our ongoing research and preservation work help us augment our interpretation of Victoria Mansion to include the broader social historical context of the 19th and early 20th centuries.