Restoration and recreation

How much of an historic site needs to be historic?

Our photographer checked another item off his Getting Around To list this past week by visiting Fort Ward.  It is not far away, actually within the city limits of Alexandria, but none of us had been there.  Probably because it’s so easy for us to get to, we hadn’t ever done it.  But he finally did.

Fort Ward was one of a chain of forts built during the Civil War to defend the city of Washington.  There were several dozen of them surrounding the wartime capital, since a Confederate army could have come from any direction.  They were generally of earthwork construction, since masonry forts would have been slow to build and expensive, while earth could give sufficient protection against the weapons of the time.  All of them were considered temporary and not updated as the nineteenth century wore on; indeed, most of the land was given over to other uses and the installations cleared or allowed to decay.

It was only a century after the war that efforts were made to reconstruct Fort Ward and turn it into a museum-cum-park.  There were still traces of the old earthworks to be found, enough to guide the rebuilding of one bastion and the installation of a half-dozen replica cannons. It’s not a complete reconstruction by any means, but it does give some idea of the shape of part of a fortress of that era.  And it serves as a focus for Civil War reenactors and other historical presentations.  As such we think it’s valuable and a good use of land and resources.

But during his visit our photographer noted some limitations of the site.  To a military eye the reconstructed bastion is small, and six guns hardly merit the description “formidable” found in the guide pamphlet.  Neither do they “command” the course of the old Leesburg Pike and other roads in the area; trees entirely block the view, though the traffic noise of I-395 comes through clearly.  We concede, though, that cutting down all the trees to clear the field of fire really shouldn’t happen.  It would make the park quite uncomfortable in a Northern Virginia summer, when one needs all the shade one can get.  (And while the guns could then reach the freeway, they would hardly contribute constructively to rush hour.)

So the installation, like all historical reconstructions, is a compromise.  Like replica old-time sailing vessels with modern automatic life rafts, one makes concessions to the current century, for safety as well as convenience.  And it is well to remember that much of real history was neither safe nor convenient.