Preservation at the Shadows
"My interest in The Shadows as a national monument is purely that of a private individual--yet it would seem that only infrequently can an antebellum mansion be found that is preserved and documented in such minute detail...Material of this type is the essence of history." -Vernon Tate, Chief, Photographic Research, The National Archives, to Ronald Lee, Supervisor of Historic Sites for the National Park Service, December 15, 1941
Soon
after Weeks Hall's, the last private owner and fourth generation of the
Weeks Family to live at The Shadows, return from studies abroad, he hired
New Orleans preservation architect Richard Koch to repair and restore
the house and to add the necessary electricity and plumbing without compromising
the integrity of the structure so that the house "...should remain
one of the few perfectly restored examples of its period as an architectural
survival in a section rich in historical interest but fast losing that
character...for the path of Progress is every bit as destructive as the
Path of Decay."
When Weeks Hall bequeathed the Shadows-on-the-Teche to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, he was well aware that he was entrusting his ancestral home and the product of his life's work to the nation's premier preservation organization. When Hall died in 1958, the Trust was merely a decade old and had fewer than 5,000 members compared to today's membership of nearly a quarter million. Four other historic houses had been accepted by the Trust into its collection-three in Washington, DC area and one in California. Embodying the architecture of the pre-Civil War south, the Shadows is one in a collection of nineteen historic sites owned by the National Trust.
As the historic preservation movement has grown in the last half century, so has the mission of the National Trust and the attendant mission of the Shadows as a museum. When the Trust was chartered by Congress in 1949, its specific mission was "to receive donations of sites, buildings, and objects significant in American history and culture [and] to preserve and administer them for public benefit."
In
1992 the Trust's mission was re-crafted to embrace the challenge of how
historic preservation can improve the quality of life where it practiced.
In the spirit of reaching to make this historic site meet its full potential,
the Shadows own mission was re-examined in a year-long study of our interpretation-of
the story we can tell. The work that we all do is directed toward this:
The purpose of the Shadows-on-the-Teche is to preserve the buildings, landscape, collections and historical integrity of the site; to research and interpret through education programs a 19th century southern Louisiana plantation economy and community and their evolution; and to encourage an appreciation of and interest in historic preservation.
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