Struggling to attract visitors, historic houses may face day of reckoning

The hilltop mansion at Berkeley Plantation has a sweeping view of American history, if you’re still into that sort of thing.

English colonists settled the land along the James River a year before Plymouth and held one of the earliest recorded Thanksgiving celebrations there. The three-story Georgian home, built by the Harrison family in 1726, was the birthplace of a U.S. president and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Taps was even composed at Berkeley 150 years ago during the Civil War, when Union soldiers used it as a base.

There is, then, an abundance of history at the home. Visitors, however, aren’t so plentiful anymore.

Mirroring what’s happening to other historic house museums across the country, attendance is down 20 percent over the past five years at Berkeley Plantation, according to the national historic landmark’s private owner. The situation, he said, is bad and getting worse.

“We’re scrambling right now,” said Malcolm Jamieson, whose late father personally restored the property, about 30 miles west of Williamsburg, then opened it to public tours several decades ago. “I think about the problem all the time. But I don’t know what to do.”

Most house museums rely on admissions, gift-shop revenue and donations to cover operating expenses. A few have substantial endowments or receive government funding. But not Berkeley Plantation, where Jamieson cut his salary and has been hosting more weddings and corporate events to stay afloat.

There are hundreds — if not thousands — of house museums across the country, although nobody knows exactly how many. Virginia is particularly rife with them, given its central role in American history, from Colonial times through the Civil War.

The state has counted more than 100 homes in the commonwealth that are open to the public as historic sites and museums, and it will soon start promoting them: Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) has proclaimed 2013 the year of Virginia historic homes, in part to celebrate the Executive Mansion’s bicentennial but also to call attention to the state’s other house museums.

“We all know of Monticello and Mount Vernon, and they’re fabulous,” said Sarah Scarbrough, who is director of Virginia’s Executive Mansion. “But there are so many other homes in Virginia, and they’ve been struggling. The severity of the problem is alarming.”

A long decline

The issue isn’t exactly a new one for the old homes; most house museums have been reporting slides in attendance since 1976, when America turned 200 and interest in U.S. history spiked.

That year, Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello welcomed a record 671,000 visitors; in 2011, attendance at the Charlottesville-area estate was 440,000.

Stratford Hall, Gen. Robert E. Lee’s birthplace on Virginia’s Northern Neck peninsula, was toured by nearly 80,000 people in 1976, executive director Paul Reber said. In 1991, Stratford’s attendance was 51,000. Last year, it was 27,000. “It’s a pretty dramatic downward slope,” Reber said.

Economic forces are partly to blame. Tourists aren’t traveling as much because of gas prices and shrinking discretionary budgets. School systems — which send kids to historic homes to bring the past alive — aren’t funding as many field trips.