A Presidential Fixer-Upper in Virginia

Somewhere beneath the dirty squares of white and brown linoleum, wooden floorboards were laid in this room, cut from the forest of hardwood trees that still towers on the land outside. Behind one wall of cracked plaster, the frame of a door built 250 years ago survives intact.

With its dirty walls and exposed pipes and a lone lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, the 19-by-24-foot space seems more the stuff of tenements than presidential estates.

But for 30 years in the early 19th century, this was where Dolley Madison, the vivacious grande dame of first ladies, had her bedroom and two dressing rooms. Here at Montpelier, a Virginia estate 90 miles southwest of Washington, she and her husband, James Madison, lived and entertained streams of friends.

In the 1820s, these rooms would have been furnished with sofas, French chairs, a four-poster bed, sewing boxes and dressing tables lighted by oil lamps.

Today, such a scene is hard to imagine, given years of neglect and 20th-century renovations that carved the wing into a hallway and service kitchen for the duPont family.

But after a decade of painstaking investigation, the curators of Montpelier have plans to restore Dolley Madison’s inner sanctum to its original state.

“You’re going to walk in here and be able to say, ‘We’re standing in a room where Dolley was in her underwear!’ ” said Lee Langston, Montpelier’s curator and resident sleuth for Madison memorabilia. “It’s definitely a place where Dolley was herself.”

Montpelier recently received a $1-million federal grant. And as it prepares to assume ownership of the house, the Montpelier Foundation has a campaign to raise a matching sum. The funds will launch what could be a $20-million-plus effort to restore the Madison home to its early 19th-century character.

The house has been open to the public since 1987, and its owner, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, has invested millions of dollars in structural work. It has installed electrical upgrades, a new copper roof, a sprinkler system and waterproofing in the basement.

Now the peach-colored brick-and-stucco home overlooking the Blue Ridge Mountains is ready for full-scale restoration.

Those working to preserve Montpelier have big dreams.

An archeological excavation is planned at the nearby site where James Madison’s grandparents built the first family homestead in the 1730s. Walking trails, a road and a parking lot are under construction to allow visitors to drive onto the 2,700-acre property rather than arrive by shuttle bus.

The trust, which inherited the home from Marion duPont Scott in 1984, announced its intention in October to hand off the property to the new Montpelier Foundation, which now must cover about $2 million in annual operating costs. And that’s without the $400,000 a year the trust used to provide.

The foundation hopes to make ends meet with private contributions and the $7.50 entry fee that about 40,000 visitors a year pay.

“We have, frankly, struggled with [Montpelier] for a number of years, as it didn’t have the endowment to support the restoration and upkeep of the place,” said Richard Moe, president of the National Trust. “There’s a long way to go.”

But with major maintenance projects completed by the trust, Moe said, “Montpelier has turned an important corner, and we can see that it will be financially self-sufficient.”

Montpelier is a rarity--a Founding Father’s estate with few rooms open to public view. Most of the house has been stripped of furnishings and valuable artwork.

Over the years, additions were made by the duPont family, which bought the home in 1900. Even the bedroom where James Madison died in 1836 has disappeared into a hallway.

Dolley Madison’s ground-floor wing, scheduled to open in 2003 or 2004, will cast light on the couple’s domestic life.

Dolley Payne Todd Madison was the Jacqueline Kennedy of her era, setting standards for fashion, entertaining and redecorating in the White House.

When the couple returned to Montpelier in 1817 after two terms in Washington, Dolley Madison entertained many female friends in her bedroom. There she also wrote poetry, stitched pincushions and did other needlework, Langston said.

“He was the thinker and she was the doer,” said the curator, who is piecing together what the original Dolley Madison wing looked like by reading letters, wills, probate records and gossip columns of the day.

The next hurdle will be acquiring furniture.

Next to nothing remained at Montpelier when the National Trust took over, and the challenge will be to persuade private owners, antiques dealers and other historic sites that pieces in their possession belong at Montpelier.