(bright upbeat music) (bright upbeat music) - "Exploring the Heartland", I'm Fred Martino.

This week a look at historic preservation projects in Springfield, thanks to our partners at the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

The Old State Capitol is where President Lincoln served as a state legislator and where he delivered his famous House Divided speech in 1858.

The effort to restore the capitol's massive windows began in 2023 as part of a larger project.

- [Justin] There are 87 large double hung windows in Springfield's Old State Capitol.

This is the story of how the first 11 of these windows were restored.

(bright upbeat music) - We are doing what would be called the worst case scenario windows in different spots on the building.

The windows as bad as they can look, are excellent candidates for restoration.

(bright upbeat music) They were milled from old growth wood, which is superior and a testament to the fact that they're still there and all of the infirmities can be corrected with a good restoration program.

We are very pleased to have been able to do some work on the Old State Capitol, happy to help save some of the good American heritage that needs to be saved for our children and their children's sake.

(bright upbeat music) - It's truly difficult for us to understand how far we are removed in time and technology from the middle of the 19th century.

The Old State Capitol was one of the largest buildings in Illinois in the middle of the 19th century, so its windows were destined to be large as well.

But in these large rooms, the windows played a very important role, they allowed a tremendous amount of light to shine through and to support the operations of each and every room.

And since the windows were designed as double hung windows, they created ventilation during the warm months of the year.

And on the outside, they give the building order and beauty.

These windows are tremendously important for us to preserve today.

They are a key feature and in the building's preservation, perhaps most important, second only to the roof, in the attention that should be paid to them in order to make sure the building is here and in good health and in good condition for future generations.

- Well, I will do a quick overview, I think.

(bright upbeat music) Structural is the disassembly of the sash itself and the checking of all the joinery.

And then to evaluate the windows as they come in, as to what might be needed.

There could be a muntin bar missing or some very, very severe deterioration that we have to custom mill a new part.

The Light Wave Stripper is the name of the device that does the stripping, it's a advanced infrared technology.

It allows a very quick, easy way to strip.

Within 60 seconds, a swath of wood can be left clean and dry.

It strips all of the old paint off, not part of it.

There's extensive sanding.

It's a five step sanding method that we use, with palm sanding in different grits, down to hand sanding.

It goes into epoxy and that's a three stage program of structural, aesthetic and then we say fine line.

And this gives it a very, you know structurally, makes it very sound.

It's like the Rock of Gibraltar.

All of the holes, gouges, splinters, checking, worn edges, worn profiles, all of that's corrected with epoxies to the 100% level.

The window literally is brought back to the way it used to look.

- The restoration of the windows provided us with an opportunity to improve on the historic interpretation of the building.

In the late 1960s when the building was being reconstructed, they chose a glass for the windows that was a little too distorted, and the building has lived with that glass as a consequence for the last five decades.

This preservation effort gave us the opportunity to go back and make that correction.

It's subtle but we wanted to provide a glass inside the window referred to as a light, which is a little more accurate to what would've originally been in the window in 1840 when the building would've opened.

- The windows we restored, they're going to be dramatically different looking than the windows that are currently in place.

They are pretty needy, they need to be restored.

Those windows are so worth saving and my hope is that when they see the results of a restored window, that it'll register that, "Oh, my goodness, this is what they could look like."

And of course, saves our heritage.

That's important.

Not only the beauty but the original construction, the way it was made, this is really important for our heritage.

(bright upbeat music) - [Justin] It's important that people understand how many steps go into restoring a historic window.

So we were very pleased when we identified Restoration Works.

Gail and her team have done a phenomenal job at every step in the process.

So we're delighted to present this wonderful accomplishment and preservation as part of our ongoing efforts of stewardship at the Old State Capitol.

(bright upbeat music) (bright upbeat music) (bright upbeat music) - Now to another restoration, early in architect Frank Lloyd Wright's career, he won a commission to design a new home for wealthy Springfield socialite, Susan Lawrence Dana.

It was a blank check project for Wright who put his design, not just on the building, but on the art glass used extensively throughout the house.

(bright upbeat music) - Susan Lawrence Dana was born here in Springfield in 1862, grew up to become a socialite, a philanthropist, and a political activist here in Springfield.

People were certainly curious about the house.

It was very different from anything else that was in Springfield at the time.

Very different from things that most people had seen.

This was still pretty early in Frank Lloyd Wright's career.

We do know they marveled at the electric lighting inside the house.

People talked about the beautiful golden light that you could see coming from the art glass transom panels in the evenings.

That may have been intentional as well.

She may have thought about the idea.

What Susan wants to do is inspire people to think differently about the world around them, think differently about women's rights, think differently about how people in the community receive the services that they need.

And she may have thought about this idea, a house that is so different, you come in and you see, if we could change so much about the places we live and the way we design our homes, what other things in our society might we think about changing or doing differently in this new century?

- First of all, it's probably the largest collection of bright glass in any building.

Second of all, it's the most complicated designs in any building.

It's the most unified in the way the chevron designs, the butterfly designs, all of these different designs are mingled throughout the space.

(bright upbeat music) (bright upbeat music) (bright upbeat music) I've had people ask me, "Is this really stained glass?

"It doesn't look like stained glass like I would expect."

And I say, "It's definitely stained glass, "although it's also called art glass."

And the distinction between the two, if it's actually even real, stained glass generally refers to the sorts of windows you found in churches in the 14th, 15th century and then were emulated through the years and very popular for quite some time.

Art glass tend to be far less pictorial and more purely artistic or symbolic.

They can do some of this work but an art glass, a greater emphasis is used on basically being as creative as one can with the media of glass.

(bright upbeat music) Remember Frank Lloyd Wright was an architect, a line drawer, and a phenomenal artist.

He really had a lot of presence of mind of how to draw lines that created the look that he was looking for.

And so, in these windows, three quarters of the glass is clear glass, clear plate glass.

He wanted the windows to be visioned, something you can see out of.

He wanted the stained glass to be elements within the design that brought your attention but gave you a little bit of comfort by the fact that you're not standing in front of this huge six foot by six foot window exposed to the public.

(bright jazz music) (bright jazz music) Stannous chloride was used in a fume portion and sprayed over glass as it came and rolled out on the assembly line from the kiln.

This is a highly toxic material and was very dangerous to the employees that were doing it and the respirator protection they had at the time was pretty much non-existent.

But the iridescing causes a film to chemically form on the surface of one side of the glass that has this almost neon quality that as light reflects from it, it changes colors and moves around on the glass, which creates an interest level that's very exciting because as you walk by, the colors will actually swirl a little bit.

Well, this is something that was never heard of before.

It was a very brand new product at the time.

The second thing that makes this glass really interesting is that when light transmitted through it, on one side it was one color, but when light bounced off of it or reflected light, it was a different color.

Frank Lloyd Wright used this very effectively.

When you get the opportunity to walk through the home with your tour guide, there's a number of things you really wanna look for in the stained glass.

Obviously, the whole house is exciting and it's gonna be overwhelming to see what you wanna look at and focus at next.

But if you're really interested in the stained glass, start out by looking how many different ways Frank Lloyd Wright used a chevron pattern or a sumac pattern or a grid pattern, or the butterfly pattern.

Because they're used in different designs in different places, in different locations, but they all relate to each other and no matter where you walk through the house, you're seeing similar things presented in a new way.

Second of all, look at the colors he's using.

The softness and the earthiness of these colors and how it relates to what you're seeing outside, which is of course, the green trees and the bricks.

The colors are intended not to be dramatic as much as to be in keeping and in context with the environment that you're walking through.

Look at the shapes on the size and the intricacy of these windows.

The more important the room, the more incredibly complex the windows are.

Without a doubt, Susan Dana Lawrence's master bedroom is the most intricate panels you can possibly see.

Look at the grid patterns that are included.

One of the hardest things to do in stained glass is to build something where everything is perfectly perpendicular to each other and rigid as though it was machine drawn.

But these were all hand built and they were hand built many times with tweezers 'cause the fingers were too big to make it.

This is something that is so, so desired to visit by people from all over the world and the enthusiasm, seeing people coming in, their jaws dropping as they look at something that they've never experienced before.

And being able to come through on some of these tours quietly just to kinda see how the tourists are seeing the building and reflect on how proud I was of our staff, how proud our staff was to be involved, how excited they were to tell people, "I worked on the Dana-Thomas windows."

But it was something that individually, everybody was very proud to share with their friends and other people to say, "I had the opportunity to be involved "with this incredible project "that people come from all over the world "to come and look at.

"And when they come, they're awed."

What more can you say to be proud of something you've been involved with?

(bright jazz music) (bright jazz music) (bright jazz music) - To tell us more about these projects, I'm pleased to welcome Justin Blandford, he is superintendent of the state historic sites in Springfield.

Justin, thanks for being here for restoration projects like this.

Tell us how this process begins.

I know that there must be research needed not only on the history, but also on the possible costs involved to create a budget.

- Well, thanks again for the invitation.

It's a pleasure for me to join you and get into the details of some of the work that our agency, the Illinois Department of Natural Resources is engaged in.

The process really begins with observation.

We are monitoring the biggest artifacts we have, which are our historic sites, as well as the artifacts that are cared for within those large artifacts.

And an often unseen, if you will, element includes the windows that are part of the historic sites.

We often see through these components and don't think about the care that must go into them.

So part of our role is to observe the windows of each of our sites and care for them just as we would observe the roof, the walls, the other components that make up the whole of the site.

The windows in these two sites are particularly important for different reasons.

The Franklin Lloyd Wright designed house, that Dana-Thomas House is considered a master work of the Prairie School architecture.

The designs are very vivid and creative, especially for the time, and they require special care and attention.

It certainly matches the care and attention that Wright invested in them initially in the design.

And in the Old State Capital, it's a bit of a different story.

The windows are very large and are receiving just a tremendous amount of force due to their size from the climate, the weather.

So they are buffeting, you know the wind and the rain, and must be cared for in that way.

So we're observing these artifacts, these components of the artifacts and then working to plan, as you mentioned, for their restoration because that's a significant investment of time and resources as well.

The third component would be implementing the restoration.

And that takes great care as well.

We typically work alongside architects and engineers and preservationists of a variety of fields that help us, advise us and help us ensure a successful result because we're dealing with very, very important components in both of these cases.

- So in the film on the Old State Capitol windows, you note that a previous restoration project used distorted glass.

Do we know why that was done?

- So in the late 1960s, the whole Old State Capital was completely taken down and the reconstruction of it re-imagined by three young architects.

And when they put the restored building back together, they chose new window frames and then a type of glass commonly known as seed marine glass, seeds meaning it has small particles that look like seeds, dotting, you know, the light of the window or the glass or the window.

And marine applies to the environment that it would typically be used in such as, maybe a lighthouse or something like that, where clarity isn't incredibly important or the most important component but strength wouldn't be.

And so there's a couple of trains of thought they could have chosen that because it's in a downtown environment and they wanted the windows to certainly last a long time.

But the building from the inside recreates the mid 19th century state house from Abraham Lincoln's time.

And the seed marine glass blurs the modernity of the outside.

So, you know, that's another benefit that they noticed at the time.

Either way, we certainly know now after, again, important observation time that different types of glass that can be more accurate to the glass that would've originally been in the windows in the mid 19th century can uphold and endure the wear and tear, the weather, the climate of the downtown environment just fine.

And in fact, provide guests with a little better idea about the type of glass that would've been used initially in the mid 19th century.

- That's very interesting.

Well, you know, tell me about the balance between historical accuracy and durability.

It seems that in the case of the Old State Capitol, some modern materials were chosen as part of the restoration that are very durable.

- That trade off in the Old State Capitol was based on the notion that the original fabric of the building by the 1960s was depleted.

You know, so the original material was in such bad condition or had been removed in earlier maintenance efforts and in earlier efforts to preserve the building itself, that new materials needed to be introduced.

So that is a trade off that we have to walk through in every scenario, not just the windows, but we need to make sure that the building is maintained, that the building is safe and secure and that whatever item it is that we're talking about, whether it be a run of gutter or a window or a doorway or a doorknob, that it's able to endure and to play its role in daily use and in daily life and still communicate a historical theme.

Even in our own homes, things wear out, so occasionally, we have to invest in new.

- Yeah, speaking of durability, we noticed in the Old State Capital video, some of the old windows were really in terrible shape.

Tell me about the work being done to ensure there are maintenance budgets for these historic sites for restored and non restored parts of the structures.

- Well, that's really one of the exciting, I think, turn of events.

There have been changes in recent years moving us from being in a smaller state agency, solely focused on preservation into a larger agency, the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

And we have found great success in being in a larger agency where more resources are available, more advocacy is available, and we've been able to successfully engage in several preservation projects.

So important that we wanted to capture them on film and be able to share them with people.

But critical to this success is the Pritzker Administration's emphasis on a capital bill.

And that is an incredibly important tool that utilizes bonding to provide funding for everything from roads to bridges to museums and historic sites.

So we're very thankful for those capital funds that can give us the resources on the scale we need to address those problems.

And when those resources don't exist, you can see the condition that things can fall into if maintenance funds aren't available.

- It's a powerful statement.

Well, for the Dana-Thomas House, I was really surprised to hear there are 550 art glass elements.

I am guessing this must not only attract fans of Frank Lloyd Wright but also people interested in art glass.

- It sure does.

It attracts artists from a variety of areas from all around the world.

Not just Midwestern or national but it's an international attraction and I think that's very important for our guests to realize how fortunate we are in Illinois to have such a treasure, not only of architecture but also of art in the capital city for all of us here to enjoy.

- It's beautiful, I've always admired art glass in older homes.

What is the history of using this material?

Was it considered a sign of wealth?

- Well, even a window is considered a sign of wealth.

So we can go back hundreds of years and you know, to be able to have a window to bring in that natural light is certainly a luxury and it still is today.

All we have to do is look at the expense of replacing a window in our own homes and know that this is not something that's typically very, very affordable.

It's something that is costly.

So it plays out the same way in a large mansion that's over 12,000 square feet like the Dana-Thomas House.

But what was even more important is what Susan Lawrence Dana wanted to show off, and from the inside that was electricity.

So the windows are beautiful, they certainly were a luxury to be of that size, unheard of really, but she was sharing something through that window that was even more dramatic and that was the lighting of the house.

It would've been one of the earliest homes in the capital city to be electrified.

And certainly, with the quantity of lights that are included in the Dana-Thomas House, it would've been unheard of at the time for anyone else to have that level of lighting available to them.

So it was quite an attraction both in the window and in what the window shared.

- Well, the house is a work of art.

It's just amazing, it's surprised me to hear that that project for arc glass restoration took nine years to complete.

I am guessing several budgets were involved in this project.

- That was a tremendous effort in planning demonstrated in the initial restoration.

And we have to think that way still.

When we do restoration on the windows,, it's very costly and we're using taxpayer dollars, which we're very thankful for.

That's why we're so excited to share these videos with taxpayers so they can see the good value that they're getting.

And the videos are also invitation to all of our guests and viewers to come to Springfield to enjoy these wonderful historic sites because they're owned by the taxpayers of Illinois and they're being cared for by future generations for all of us to share, not only with our residents, but with our guests who visit us from around the world.

- All right, well, Justin Blandford is superintendent of the state historic sites in Springfield.

Justin, thank you so much for joining us today.

- Thank you.

- Thank you at home as well.

For all of us at WSIU, I'm Fred Martino, have a great week.

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