The Architecture and Historic Preservation Department, located in the basement of the duPont era Pony Barn, is an interesting space full of architectural material, tools, and currently boxes. That is where you can find me, Tessa Honeycutt, the architectural technician here at Montpelier. Some days you can find me sitting on the floor with a dozen stacks of architectural records spread out around me, organizing each paper according to its topic. Other days you can find me tucked behind my computer screen, tagging hundreds of photos or manipulating the 3D model of the main house. During the past few months, my main focus of study is an important event that took place not that long ago, the restoration of the Madison house.

During the early 2000s, the then duPont Mansion went through an extensive restoration to return it to the Madison house we see today. At the time, no presidential site had gone through a restoration as extensive. In fact, it was initially a controversial decision to restore that required a thorough investigatory phase, which revealed a substantial amount of original Madison material. Upon completion of the investigation and with funds provided by the Mellon Foundation, work began in 2003 to restore the 55 room duPont Mansion back to the 22 room Madison house. After years of research, investigations, documentation, and restoration work, the project came to an end in 2008. As a result, everything including videotapes, field notes, pictures, floppy disks, and many other types of records were packed into boxes and sent to live out eternity in a local storage facility.