Age of Restoration: Times Union

This just came out in the Times Union.

(There was one tiny mistake, but it's less than a century long, so... for the record, the house was built in 1780, not 1870.)

From: timesunion.com

Age of restoration Tinsmith Dennis Heaphy is turning a 19th-century house into a workshop

By TOM KEYSER, Staff writer First published: Sunday, November 18, 2007

Dennis Heaphy doesn't require affirmation of what he does as often as most workers do. But every now and then, even for Heaphy, affirmation is nice.

"I was having a glass of wine last night, and the bartender asks, 'How was your day?' " Heaphy says. "I said, 'Well, you know, I'm really enjoying this. I'm laying on the roof, and I'm intent on what I'm doing; I'm scraping off the existing tar on the metal to prep it to be soldered. And then I realize that it's a beautiful day, and I'm looking out on the Hudson from the highest point.' "

From his rooftop perch at Howard Hall Farm, Heaphy can watch the Hudson River hug the bank as it pushes past the village of Athens, near Hudson. A fourth-generation tinsmith, he is restoring the roof of the 1870s house.

A beefy man with flowing hair and a bushy mustache, Heaphy usually divides his time between New York City, where he is resident tinsmith at the Statue of Liberty, and Syracuse, where his great-grandfather opened a metal shop 115 years ago. But for several weeks over the next several months, he will be in the Hudson River Valley helping restore the old Federal-style house and giving lessons in tinsmithing.

Platform for school

Heaphy's participation exemplifies how Howard Hall Farm is a laboratory for "sustainable, environmentally conscious restoration techniques," as its owner Reggie Young puts it. He and his partner, Nora Johnson, bought the house in 2005 as "the platform for a school of restoration that I had fantasized about," Young says.

It was in rough shape -- perfect for what Young had in mind. He's a former restaurateur in New York City and Connecticut who grew up on a farm in eastern Pennsylvania. His parents did restoration work, and he did, too, even while owning restaurants. But he wanted to do more.

At Howard Hall Farm, he and Johnson started by ripping out the electrical system, plumbing, ceilings, floors, walls and siding as well as tearing down all additions.

"We gutted it back to everything that was original," Young says.

That took about six months. Then reconstruction began. Young and his partner are bringing in preservation and restoration experts from around the country to oversee the work and give seminars in, for example, masonry and historic paints and finishes.

The real thing

Young recruited Heaphy this summer after reading about him in an article in a New York newspaper. The article was headlined "The Tin Man."

"He told me the house was built in 1780. That was the hook," Heaphy says. "The opportunities don't come up that often to come in and try to salvage old work.

"This is not theoretical. This is the real thing. You watch some television show, and you can muse about it. But actually to get your hands in it ... "

And Heaphy's hands are full with this project. Standing on the roof, he says: "You're looking at a map of people's mistakes over 200 years."

He has the expertise to correct them. He learned to work with metal from the old men in his family's shop in Syracuse that supported the family's hardware store and heating and roofing companies. What turned out to be a fortunate happenstance started as a nuisance.

"I inadvertently learned a trade that very few people have anymore," says Heaphy, 48. "I really only do work that I find interesting, like this. Having this talent has given me the freedom to do that. But when I was 11 years old I didn't want to be a tinsmith."

He wanted to be with friends. Instead, he worked after school, Saturdays and summers learning to solder, bend metal, corrugate pipe, lay out a job and envision how it would look when finished. By the time he was 15 or 16, he says, he was master of the shop.

"I learned to appreciate the craft," he says, "to love working with metal."

To the statue

He also loves performing, and that led him to the Statue of Liberty. His mother was a singer, and Heaphy, while running the shop, did summer stock and regional theater. Through people he'd met acting, he got a job transforming a room of the Ellis Island museum in New York City into a theater. Then he befriended workers in the Ellis Island maintenance department, the same workers who oversee the Statue of Liberty. He told them about his family business.

"I said, 'So what do I have to do to become the resident tinsmith for the statue?' " Heaphy says. "I'm positive the guy's going to laugh in my face. And instead he goes, 'I don't know. We can probably find you something.' And inside, as a tinsmith, I'm thinking, 'What did he say? Did he really say that?' "

They found him a job repairing the brass windows in the statue's crown. Then he repaired the brass grating in the lobby.

"They kept on giving me different projects," Heaphy says, "and I became the go-to guy."

He also got a job performing, five times a day at the base of the statue, a dramatic re-enactment of how the statue was built. He puts the show aside when there's work to do on the statue.

Bringing it back

He's been the statue tinsmith for eight years, working from April to October and then going home to Syracuse for the winter. Until it snows, he says, he'll continue working on and off on the Howard Hall Farm roof. He's planning on finishing in the spring.

"The tin roof is still intact," Heaphy says. "But over the years people have dropped things on it and punctured it, and they put nails in it to hold it down, or they put tar on it, or they put caulk on it, and when they ripped out fireplaces and chimneys they put aluminum over it."

He is removing as much tar with a chisel as he can, and then he'll have helpers remove the rest with paint thinner. They'll wash it with soap and water, and he'll use a brush to get it as smooth as possible. It will eventually be painted red.

Heaphy will solder the holes and remove any exposed nails. A tin roof like this, he says, should be bent and folded to create waterproof seams. He'll peel the roof back so the soffits can be replaced, and he'll create drains. He'll replace the tin around the new chimneys.

In the process, he'll teach contractors and others about the art of tinsmithing.

"What Reggie's trying to do here is give people a window to the past and the opportunity to get their hands into these processes, to appreciate the original process," Heaphy says. "Happily, these old roofs do exist, and there are people out there trying to keep them."

Tom Keyser can be reached at 454-5448 or by e-mail at tkeyser@timesunion.com.

Classes for restorers

For more information about lessons with Dennis Heaphy or Howard Hall Farm renovation and seminars, call Reggie Young at 945-1945. (or 945-1253)

Upcoming seminars:

Dec. 1-2: Rory Brennan (plasterer from "This Old House"): Lime washes and finishes.

Dec. 2: Brigit Binns, spokesperson for Williams-Sonoma and author of cookbooks: Green-friendly cooking.

Dec. 8 (tentative): Shannon Hayes, author of "The Grassfed Gourmet," "The Farmer and the Grill" and "The Carnivore Chronicles": Cooking class.

Dec. 15: Mercy Ingraham, author of "Open Hearth Cook": Hearth cooking from the Federal era.

Next year's seminars begin in April. Topics include kiln building, Dutch-barn building, historic sash restoration and historic doors.

A green-technology conference, exploring options and costs for restoration, is scheduled May 17-19. Heaphy will give seminars in tinsmithing June 21-22.

All Times Union materials copyright 1996-2007, Capital Newspapers Division of The Hearst Corporation, Albany, N.Y.