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Hoover Park awards $450K contract to renovate house
by Gregory R. Norfleet · News · April 17, 2024
After spending $1.4 million to fix up three historic houses, the Herbert Hoover National Historic Site will spend about $450,000 on a fourth.
And prepared for some special guests to live, at least temporarily, in those houses.
Walking through the national park, visitors will see two Traditional Trades Advancement Program participants working alongside park staff under Joe Riley, who oversees buildings and maintenance. They stand out in their maroon T-shirts as they try to learn skills and how to use park maintenance equipment.
Park Superintendent Pete Swisher said the interns arrived in March soon after the work on the Staples, Wright, and Miles homes got down to the details, like landscaping and minor concrete work.
TTAP crew members will help with common projects and chores like painting, landscaping, mowing, and sidewalk repair.
Swisher said the park service recently updated some of its equipment, so they will also get to use newer and safer tools.
TTAP workers typically spend 26 weeks at a site in an “immersive experience,” according to the NPS Historic Preservation Training Center.
The primary work on those three houses consisted of lifting them off their foundations so that new foundations could be poured before lowering the houses back down.
Vieco Development and Construction Co, Inc. of St. Joseph, Mo., the primary contractor, took a break over the winter before returning to finish some painting.
Park staff took on landscaping work — regrowing turf — and backyard concrete work as a tradeoff with Vieco, which picked up some minor plumbing work, Swisher said.
The Staples house saw a drastic change to its front side when the 1982 porch made way for two small sets of steps to two separate front doors. Swisher said.
The largest of the three renovated homes, the Staples house’s 1982 porch was “outside the period of significance” for houses built more than 100 years ago.
Swisher said architect Bill Wagner helped create and design the park and conducted historic research on many of the houses. He left behind recommendations for how the homes would look or should look if they existed in Hoover’s time.
However, the park still uses the buildings for offices and temporary housing, so the National Park Service allows for some wiggle room. Oftentimes, that means revamping the front of a home — the most visible part to the general public — even if the backsides look a little more modern.
“Wagner’s direction for us was for us to make the front of the house look more like what Hoover would have been familiar with as a boy,” the superintendent said.
The second stairwell, on the south end of the front, leads to a door covering up stairs to the second floor.
“They’re very inconvenient steps,” he said, and do not help the flow nor function of the house. “We agreed to leave that other door, even though it is not a historically accurate door. The house is still attractive ... which is our ultimate goal.”
The south entrance may also be obscured by vegetation to make it less noticeable.
For now, the steps have shiny aluminum handrails; those will be painted to appear more period-specific.
Vieco recently started work on the Amanda Garvin House, which sits just south of Heritage Square and just north of Swisher’s office — two doors down from Hoover’s birthplace cottage.
According to the sign in front of the house, Garvin bought the lot in 1870 for $90 to build a cottage.
The park service uses the house to hold a small amount of archival material, like photographs and slides and administrative records. Swisher brought out a framed Wester Union telegraph — one of four — and the accompanying quill-tip pen used to sign the paperwork that established the park.
“It will be kind of a cultural resources warehouse,” Swisher said.
It will have a work station but will only be used on occasion.
Vieco has already started pulling out the interior for renovation work.
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