What Should Be Done with the Colonial State House : John Herman

What Should Be Done with the Colonial State House

Posted on November 15, 2011

HMS Resolute Desk, Oval Office

The original New Hampshire State House was built in 1758 as the seat of New Hampshire’s Colonial government, but it now sits in a trailer awaiting an uncertain fate. Different parties have convened to decide what will happen to the remnants of the structure, including a Save the Old NH Statehouse Committee and those funded under a federal $250,000 U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development grant. Recently local coverage of the saga quoted a participant in the process as saying if the structure is not being rebuilt, then “Just burn the damn thing and be done with it and erase it.”

I thought that I would offer another suggestion.

During his term of office, President Kennedy used a special desk gifted to President Rutherford B. Hayes by Queen Victoria in 1879. The desk in the Oval Office of the White House was made from the timbers of the British barque-rigged arctic exploration ship, HMS RESOLUTE. I believe this wonderful historic precedent to take an iconic structure and repurpose it in this fashion should be looked at closely. While there are those that clearly see the value in rebuilding the old State House as a museum piece, I wonder if it would be more meaningful to make it a functional tool of democracy that can be gifted to the office of mayor of Portsmouth, for example.

Citizens can follow the design and construction of the desk through an interactive website that provides the history of the old State House in a dynamic way. There can be a companion children’s book and regional teaching curriculum to foster appreciation. When appropriate, the desk itself can travel across the state for special events, including Exeter’s American Independence Festival.