Partial funding for the production of Our Place Our Time is made possible by a grant from the Allison Jay and LOW Parsons Foundation.

It may be Norfolk's best kept historical secret.

Next on Our Place Our Time, we visit a landmark that few locals know much about.

We'll break a secret about a great Civil War photographer and talk with Ken Burns, who is the hottest young television producer in America.

Thank you for joining us for Our Place, Our Time.

I'm Vian Webb.

It just might be the city of Norfolk's best kept historical secret.

Ask even longtime residents about Fort Norfolk and you're likely to get blank stares or questions in return.

Located on the Elizabeth River not far from downtown, Fort Norfolk was built in the 1790s and is considered one of the best preserved forts from that period.

Mike Sinclair captured for us the story of Fort Norfolk.

Fort Norfolk sits in a bend of the Elizabeth River, flanked on either side by boat yards and warehouses.

At the front of the fort, two Civil War canons aim their sights across the river guarding against possible invasion, poised as silent sentinels for a fourth that time has passed by.

Fort Norfolk was built in 1794 to ward off a possible British invasion of Norfolk.

In the war of 1812, the British attacked, but they were stopped at Craney Island and Fort Norfolk never fired a shot.

In fact, the guns of Fort Norfolk have never fired a shot in anger unless you consider the execution around 1812 of Army deserter William Proctor.

Other than that, the guns of Fort Norfolk have stood silent.

The Ford has been occupied by the US Army, the Navy, the Confederate Army, the Union Army, and the US Army Corps of Engineers.

Much of the original Fort remains intact with a few modern editions.

However, little is known about the Fort and remains to this day a puzzle.

The Fort is currently maintained by the US Army Corps of Engineers.

Jim Melcors Chief of the Environmental Planning Branch for the Corps and an expert on the Fort.

How much of it do you actually know as fact and how is it that you know what you know about the Fort?

Well, there's very little formal information on the Fort.

We've had to get most of our information from architectural features and a little bit of archeological work that we've done around the Fort.

You can interpret based on the styles of the buildings when they were built.

Some of the fasteners that are used in the building, you can tell that gives some dating ideas on it.

You can look at early drawings.

There are a few early drawings of the build, of the buildings of the fort that shows the layout so you know how the fort was used at different periods.

The fort has changed little since it was built from these plans in 1794 as evidenced by this blueprint from the 1920s and an aerial photo taken in the 1930s.

The fort is considered by some to be the best preserved 1812 site in the country.

Its design is unique among coastal defense forts.

We're walking along the curved section of the wall right now.

The fort is unique in its design.

It has a very large curved section and then there are a number of sharp angles and straight sections.

There's no other fort with this particular design around.

An interesting feature of the wall of the fort, when we built our new building and moved into it about seven or eight years ago, we were having some pretty severe drought conditions during the summer.

And I was up in my office up on the fourth floor looking out over the wall and I noticed lines along the grass in here that were green.

The rest of the place was dried out, but there was lines in the wall and they looked like little cells.

And in fact, that's what they are.

The wall was built in cells and they were more than likely brick partitions in there.

So if the fort came under heavy gunfire and there was a section of failure, then you would have a massive section of failure of the whole wall if it was just that small area.

At the center of the fort is a large powder magazine.

The magazine has remained unchanged by the years and is an excellent example of military architecture.

Jim, tell me when was the magazine constructed and by whom?

The Navy built the magazine in during their tenancy here about 1850.

They built it as a Naval powder magazine.

It was built from early plans.

If you look at it architecturally it predates the Ford.

It's really early federal architecture, but the fact of it is that it was built about 1850 when the Navy was here.

The building is a powder magazine and it was built heavily to contain an explosion or try to contain an explosion if there were, were one.

The building has a vaulted ceiling as you can see above you and you can see some of the vaulting behind us here.

The vaulting is all brick, heavy brick.

The flooring in the building would be wood.

The columns that you see here and there are stone, cut stone.

The fasteners and the floor and all the other metal fasteners in the building would be copper or brass to prevent sparking.

The hasp on the doors are copper the sheathings, copper and brass.

All that would be prevent sparking, which you wouldn't want in a powder magazine.

The magazine now houses outdated computers, phone books and old office equipment.

But tradition holds that this magazine once housed the powder used by the CSS Virginia in its battle off Hampton Roads with a monitor and also held the powder used by the Confederates during the Battle of First Manassas.

Above the magazine is a civil war era time capsule that has remained untouched for over a hundred years.

Jim, I'm sitting here in 100 years of dust.

Where am I?

Right now we're in the loft of the magazine built by the Navy about 1850.

It's over top of the vaulted, brick vaulted magazine itself.

I see these huge pine beams that support the, it's a very cavernous room.

How are they put together and assembled?

All right these are roof trusses.

We have 10 sets of trusses up here.

They're massive timber trusses all hand fitted with mortis and tenant joints and then pinned in place.

Most of the artifacts found at Fort Norfolk are typically what we would consider trash.

Old buttons, broken chamber pots and in the loft, the things that the builders felt too trivial to bend over and pick up.

We found up here shavings from where they actually fitted the tennons into the mortises.

We found cutoff pieces of the pegs that pegged the tennons into the mortises.

We've actually found some of the copper roofing nails that were used in pieces of the slate that just left scattered around in the loft that we've collected and, and set aside as a, to preserve them.

Most of the artifacts from Fort Norfolk are on display at the War Memorial Museum of Virginia.

Little serious archeology has been done at the Fort and in fact time and space considerations have caused many of the artifacts to be documented and then paved over.

John Corstein is the administrator of the museum and has drawn up proposals for creating a museum at the Fort.

There is basically a lot of information on the war of 1812.

You have to go and look for it.

And I think one of the problems is, is that Fort Norfolk being hidden away on Front Street, nobody seems to be aware of it.

Once and also I think the War of 1812.

Half the people, if you asked any student graduating from high school and you mentioned the War of 1812, they might say, when was that?

Fort Norfolk is one of the city's best kept secrets.

It is on the Virginia and the National Register of historic places and is open to the public.

Many proposals have been brought forth for the future of the Fort.

Everything from a parking lot to a museum.

However, for now, the Fort will remain under the care of the US Army Corps of Engineers and under the watchful eye of these canons.

We first ran Mike Sinclair's story about Fort Norfolk last year.

And since that time, lots of things have been happening at the old Fort.

The Norfolk Historical Society has renovated the first four buildings and they've even moved their headquarters there.

And so the Fort's going to be open to the public next April.

Not only have we reached the light at the end of the tunnel, we walked out into the light.

We're finished with the tunnel.

That's how the president of the Virginia Opera feels at the close of their two year $5 million fundraising campaign to renovate the Center Theater where the opera performs.

At a reception to announce that the goal has been reached, opera supporters gave special recognition to their primary million dollar donors, Martin and Jodi Grass, who are the daughter and son-in-law of the opera's founding president.

Once renovated, the Center Theater will be renamed the Edith C and Stanley L. Harrison Opera House.

Norfolk owns the building and will match the money raised by donations with another $5 million to complete the renovation plan.

I think that it will be a far more inviting, warm and usable facility than it's ever been.

Built by the Navy in 1943, the lobby was designed for rapid turnover for USO shows, not intermission performances.

The Virginia Opera plans to enlarge and brighten the lobby to accommodate the size of their audiences.

Enlarged restroom facilities, ticket and concession areas are also included as well as a balcony lobby.

Along with the new lobby, upstairs will include a benefactors room, foyer and kitchen.

There will be new seats, wall treatments, and downstairs more dressing room and wing area off stage.

But it is the orchestra pit renovation that especially excites general director Peter Mark.

Well, we can expand our repertoire because we'll have a pit that is the right size for an opera orchestra.

We will have new equipment on stage.

We will have facilities backstage that's befitting a company of our quality.

So we'll be able to attract new performers, do larger works, Puccini and Verde and some Wagner, which has all been impossible in our initial 17 years because of the size of the pit.

The familiar art deco exterior of the theater will be wrapped with a new face when it becomes the Harrison Opera House.

A design chosen to be more compatible with the nearby Chrysler Museum.

A design by the city to make Norfolk a cultural hub for the region.

Renovations are slated to begin in the spring of 1992.

I'm Holly O'Neill reporting.

Matthew Brady is a name we've all heard of.

We know him as the greatest of the Civil War photographers.

In fact, whenever we think of photography in the Civil War, it's Brady's name that comes to mind.

In truth though, there were a number of photographers who brave those Civil War battlefields.

And there's an exhibition at the Chrysler Museum right now that suggests that Brady was not the greatest of them after all.

Tim Morton tells us about the exhibition that changes our understanding of American photography.

His name is Alexander Gardner.

By any measure you want to use, the artfulness of his photographs or the number of them, Alexander Gardner, not Matthew Brady, was the great photographer of the Civil War.

The exhibition at the Chrysler is a revelation.

Photograph after photograph shows that it was Alexander Gardner and the photographers who worked for him who best captured the faces and personalities of the war's great leaders and of the war's great horrors.

This shows the ruins of the Norfolk Navy Yard, December 1864.

Brooks Johnson is the Chrysler's curator of photography.

Alexander Gardner was born in Paisley, Scotland in 1821.

And he came to the United States from Glasgow, Scotland in 1856.

What was he look - what was he seeking here?

What does anyone seek who comes to America?

A new life, better opportunity.

And I think in the 1850s, Gardner knew that America was the place to be.

Was he a photographer before he came here?

He was.

Gardner learned photography in Scotland in the early 1850s.

We don't know where he learned it nor do we know how he learned it.

We only know that when he came here and began working for Matthew Brady in 1856, he was a highly proficient photographer.

Gardner brought to Brady and his studio in New York photographic and technological know - how that Brady lacked.

He helped Brady to make the transition from the daguerreotype process to the more modern wet collodian process.

He also introduced what we call the imperial photograph.

Essentially that's just an oversized or very large photograph.That sort of thing was just unheard of in America in the mid 1850s.

And Gardner imported that directly from Great Britain where it was really done the best.

You know the material that you sent me sir does suggest that you believe that Alexander Gardner has been underrated, that perhaps he deserves an equal amount, perhaps even more credit than Matthew Brady.

Correct?

Sure, that's true.

You know, it's, it's amazing to me that there has never been an exhibition on Alexander Gardner before.

He was so prolific and he accomplished so much.

It's hard to believe that a man like this could have been lost in time.

There are several reasons for this.

Alexander Gardner died in 1882.

Matthew Brady outlived him by about 15 years.

In the 1880s there was a resurgence of interest in the Civil War.

Matthew Brady was around to tell the story.

He told his story.

Said, you know, I made these pictures.

My studio made these pictures.

Gardner wasn't here to speak for himself.

Also too, he had completely gotten out of photography by the end of his life.

I don't think that Brady was being dishonest.

He was simply telling his stories.

You know, reporter comes and asks you about the war daddy and, and you tell him.

Johnson believes it was Gardner who suggested to Brady that they document the Civil War.

Brady, who was an internationally known photographer, initially financed the documentation.

Though several different photographers with Gardner worked for Brady, Brady took the credit for the work.

In 1862, Gardner with other photographers split off from Brady and established in Washington a studio under Gardner's name.

From that time on, it became the most important studio documenting the war.

Is there a Gardner style?

We think of photographers today as having a particular style, particular subjects.

Is there a Gardner style?

The message in Gardner's photographs is a moralizing one.

He wanted to improve the world.

He wanted to make it a better place.

He was concerned for people less fortunate than himself.

Before he left Scotland, he was involved in a newspaper and also in a utopian colony, which actually was in America, that was for the benefit of people to... In a way it was a socialist type of situation really.

And he got into photography, did that.

And at the end of his life, he eased out of photography and began working with Masonic organizations that were to help again, people less fortunate than himself.

He also became involved in the life insurance business.

Gardner's sympathies in the war were for the union, but in one of his most touching photographs, he showed a Southern spy with her daughter imprisoned in Washington in 1861.

A friend and admirer of Gardner was the poet Walt Whitman.

There are several formal portraits of Whitman.

We also have one picnic scene that Gardner made of Whitman.

It's also interesting too there's one quote from Whitman's memoirs where he says that Gardner believed in leaves of grass and went strong for it.

So we know that Gardner was a very literate person as well.

Gardner first photographed Abraham Lincoln shortly after he was elected president in 1861.

Gardner would make 37 portraits of Lincoln over the next four years more than any other photographer.

His photographs reveal Lincoln's character like no others.

This portrait with son Tad was taken in February 1865, two months before Lincoln was assassinated.

The Chrysler exhibit includes a copy of Gardner's masterpiece.

His two volume photographic sketchbook of the war containing over a hundred images and published in 1866.

With photographs like this one from Gettysburg and coming so soon after the war, the book was not a popular success.

Only about 40 copies of the first edition survived today.

Gardner's last photographic assignment was to document the signing of a peace treaty between the government and Six Plains Indian tribes as in his Lincoln portraits.

His portraits of Indians look beneath the surface and show a deep admiration and respect.

Gardner to the end of his life worked in behalf of people in need.

One of the last pictures of him shows him with other members of an organization which helps feed the hungry, the St.

Andrews Society.

The Chrysler Museum exhibition and enduring interest, the photography of Alexander Gardner will be on display through January 5th.

If you were among the thousands of people who watched the outstanding public television series, The Civil War, you saw a great many of Gardner's photographs as they were used by producer Ken Burns.

That series, by the way, drew the largest audience in public television history and WHRO was proud to bring it to you.

Ken Burns was in Hampton Roads recently on behalf of WHRO and we were able to capture him for an interview for you.

We talked to him at Fort Monroe, a place which in itself played a large role in Civil War history.

Presidents north and south stayed at Fort Monroe.

Inside the East Gate, Abraham Lincoln in May 1862 stayed for four days at the graceful old house called Quarters Number One.

Lincoln and his staff plotted in these rooms the invasion of Norfolk.

Lincoln's bedroom window looked south toward Norfolk.

It was inside a casemate's cell where Jefferson Davis stayed for four and a half months, a prisoner after the war, that we talked with Ken Burns.

This is sort of funny.

I never thought I'd be sitting in Jefferson Davis', lying in Jefferson Davis's bed.

For an acrimonious, mean spirited, horrible war.

Very few people were imprisoned or punished for it besides those who participated in it, whatever punishment is implied by loss and death and sacrifice.

But Jefferson Davis was in prison for a while here in this room.

Could only see what he could see out of this casement window.

And I think it is a tribute to how quickly this reconciliation, the spirit of reconciliation came over us, that he didn't spend too terribly long.

This architect many Northerners felt of the entire fiasco.

What inspired you to do the Civil War series?

What inspired me was a developing sense in the course of many other historical documentary films that the Civil War was the central story of American history, but also something of central importance to how we are as a people.

Each one of the films that I've done can basically be reduced to one simple question.

Who are we?

The Brooklyn Bridge, the Shakers, Huey Long, the Statue of Liberty, each one of these films in its own way attempts to ask that question.

The Civil War better than any other deepens that question, asks it more fully.

Doesn't necessarily always get an answer.

I don't think in essence we're looking for an answer.

We nearly, we merely wish to pursue the question.

But more than any other subject, the Civil War tells us more about who we are answers that question more fully.

The Civil War is in a nine part 11 hour series.

I'm interested in how you organized the work.

It was a math job.

For example, when did you make the decision you needed Shelby Foote?

And when did you make the decision that you were going to use photographs as the basis of the visual part of the program?

Well, I have a history of making documentary films for 10 years before the Civil War and the hallmark of those films is the animation of archival material photographs as opposed to newsreels.

That's what, that's the style that we evolved.

So I knew going in that that's what we would use to tell a story.

Fortunately, since there's no footage from the Civil War period.

Robert Pen Warren, the late poet laureate of our country and a mad gotten to know as a result of the Huey Long documentary he made called me up one evening and said that I would be an idiot not to talk to Shelby Foot.

This was early on.

So the first roles of film we exposed were the interview with Shelby Foote.

That was a great beginning.

And basically the rest of the process is sort of the collecting of raw material, old photographs on the one hand.

First person quotes on the other.

Live cinematography of the now quiet battle sites on the third, writing good narration.

And then sort of coming into this process that we call editing which is this long involved sort of horse trading between these elements, music, the sound effects, the voices, the narration, the photographs, the paintings, the lithographs, the live cinematography.

And really having a kind of spirited vociferous argument among ourselves about what works.

This fall you've got a new program.

Tell me about it.

Is it finished?

What stage is it in?

We've Just finished editing and are now in the process called sound cutting of a two hour film called Empire of the Air, which is a triple biography of three men mostly unfamiliar to the public.

Lee DeForest, Edwin Howard Armstrong and David Sarnoff.

Sarnoff might be well known as the head of RCA and NBC.

These are the men that for all intents and purposes made radio in this country.

Now normally what we get is a dose of the rather nostalgic thing called the Golden Age of Radio.

What we chose to do was tell a much more complicated and darker story of the man whose inventions and genius helped to make this happen, but whose envy and greed and ambition and ultimate tragedies put a kind of eerie spin, a familiar kind of 20th century spin on the story.

And I think give backbone spine to what would otherwise be a kind of fluffy golden age kind of nostalgia.

It's not atempting to be a history of radio.

It's attempting to be a story of these three men.

Burns has also been discovering since the Civil War series the problems and pleasures of being a celebrity.

He admits he likes the role but says he isn't yet comfortable with it.

He prefers holding up in his small town New Hampshire home and production studio working and being with his wife and two children.

Burns' next project will be a history of baseball.

He's already shot archival material and scores of interviews.

He is aiming to have the history finished by the time of the World Series 1994.

I played Pony League and Little League and until I got interested in girls baseball was the biggest thing in my life.

And I think that for the purposes of American history, it's a wonderful yardstick of where we've been in many ways where we've been since the Civil War.

It tells us a lot about who we are.

It tells us what kind of people we are, good and bad.

Baseball players aren't unique.

They reflect us.

They have problems with gambling and drugs and have all through their history and so do we.

They reflect the greed of a particular era.

When I was growing up, I collected baseball cards not because of their monetary value, but because the people on those cards meant something terrifically important to me.

Now you find kids disinterested in anything but the monetary value of the cards which is an inevitable BIPOD act of the kind of emphasis we placed in the 1980s.

Baseball's a barometer of who we are.

Our Place Our Time will not be seen next week.

We at WHRO have some holiday specials we want you to enjoy.

But when we come back in two weeks, we're going to tell you a story about how they've gone and gotten religion in Williamsburg.

We'll explain then exactly what we mean.

We're also going to meet some artists who do work in prisons and then we're going to enjoy an actor by the name of Jack Nelson who in the twinkling of an eye becomes Mark Twain.

I'm Vian Webb.

Thanks for enjoying Our Place Our Time.

I hope you'll be with us again in two weeks.

Partial funding for Our Place Our Time has been made possible by the Arts Commission of the City of Chesapeake with additional support from the Arts Commissions of the Cities of Virginia Beach, Newport News, Norfolk, Hampton and Williamsburg.

Partial funding for the production of Our Place Our Time is made possible by a grant from the Allison Jay and LOW Parsons Foundation.