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Revaz Tideev (background) and Igor Taubkin paint the ballroom of Federal Hill
Rich Baker (left) and Greg Cowan install molding on the exterior eaves of Federal Hill in Fredericksburg.
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Layers of paint are removed from a fireplace mantel and then feathered out to prepare for a new application. Tidewater Preservation, based in Fredericksburg, is renovating the historic home. |
By CATHY JETT
Dr. and Mrs. Charles Maurer knew Federal Hill, the stately 18th-century house they were buying on Hanover Street, would need extensive renovation.
So they began asking people to recommend a contractor who would both appreciate its history and restore the Fredericksburg house to its former glory.
"Virtually anyone who had an historic home or was in historic preservation, one of the first things they said was, 'You need to hire Fred Ecker,'" said Dr. Maurer, a Fredericksburg physician.
Luckily for them, Ecker's company, Tidewater Preservation Inc., is practically around the corner on Jackson Street. The small firm specializes in restoring some of the most beautiful historic houses in the country, including the White House, the Governor's Mansion in Richmond and all the museum houses in Fredericksburg.
Last year, This Old House magazine named Ecker one of the top 10 contractors and builders in the country. Dubbing him "The Curator's Contractor," it said: "Fred Ecker will make your house look like a museum. At least he can if you want him to"
The Maurers, who have three small children, don't want to go that far. But they are respectful of Federal Hill's long history--it was built right after the American Revolution by Virginia's third governor--and want to preserve it so the house eventually can be passed intact to its next owners.
The couple hired Tidewater Preservation to work on plans with their architect soon after putting a contract on Federal Hill in 2004. But they had to wait until a court battle over previous owner Elizabeth Lanier's will was settled last year before the firm could actually begin work.
Already, Tidewater Preservation has restored and primed the house's original tulip poplar siding, replaced the ancient heating system and waterproofed the handmade bricks in the basement to prevent dampness. The remaining work, which includes refinishing the wooden floors, is expected to be completed by next April.
This is the type of work that Ecker's 17-member staff, which works on major projects up and down the East Coast, hopes to do more of here in Fredericksburg. The timing, he said, is right.
"There's an influx of new people buying the larger, old houses downtown," said Ecker, who recently restored the roof on Doris Buffett's house on Caroline Street. "We're gearing up to service that group. I don't want to sell ourselves for museum work only."
Ecker himself grew up in two historic old homes that his parents restored in their free time. When he was ready to buy his own house in the 1980s, he also decided to look for an old one to restore.
"It's interesting to try to figure out the methodology," he said. "That's a lot of the intrigue--how did they do it?"
Ecker and then-wife Page found what they were looking for in Dunnsville, a tiny town near Tappahannock in Essex County. Aspen Hill, as the five-room house was called, had been abandoned for 60 years, but the price was right: $500 plus $15,000 for the land.
At first, he divided his time between working on freelance restoration jobs in Tidewater and the Eastern Shore and working on Aspen Grove. He also started working on a degree in historic preservation at Mary Washington College, now the University of Mary Washington.
Eventually Ecker took a job at the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities' office on Jamestown Island, and was responsible for preserving their 47 historic properties. This included the Mary Washington House, Rising Sun Tavern, Hugh Mercer Apothecary Shop and St. James House, all of which are in Fredericksburg.
"I got my feet wet with them in a professional way," he said. "Historic preservation is a field where you need a Rolodex of good contacts. The APVA fulfilled that for me. It also opened my eyes to the museum house end of the business."
Ecker left in 1987 to start Tidewater Restoration Inc., the first of three names his company has had. He was the sole employee until he got a job restoring the slate roof at Kenmore, the historic home of Fielding and Betty Washington Lewis in Fredericksburg.
"It was the break I was looking for," he said. "The business took off from there. That introduced me to serious preservation architects, who took me on as head contractor at places like Mount Vernon, the Octagon Museum and Poplar Forest. I was in my 20s then and working on some of the best houses in Virginia. It was scary. We just grew incredibly fast."
Today, Tidewater Preservation has three divisions that do everything from consulting on projects to conserving deteriorating stone and paint to preservation construction, which includes such things as restoring old slate roofs. Tony Joseph, who does its computer-assisted design work, can even show clients 3-D models of how the work will look.
"We've used it in a situation where we pulled a facade off a building and found it was from a later period than what was original," he said. "If a client wants to go back to the original, we can show what it would look like or give them options. It streamlines the whole process."
Besides Federal Hill, the company's current roster of clients includes Morven Park, the historic home of Virginia Gov. Westmoreland Davis in Leesburg; the Octagon Museum, the Washington-based home of the American Architectural Foundation; and St. Julien, an 1812 estate near Bowling Green. It also is restoring Robert "King" Carter's marble sarcophagus for historic Christ Episcopal Church in Irvington.
"The structures that we work on are some of the most significant of their era," Ecker said. "They're the best of the best. It's very humbling; it's a serious responsibility that people put in our hands."
To reach reporter CATHY JETT:
Email: cjett@freelancestar.com
