Who Gets a Memorial? Thinking About the Restored Iron Fence

By Kai Walther, Development Manager

If you’ve walked by the museum recently, you may have noticed that our garden fence is a little different. After 130+ years, the original iron fence needed a full restoration to repair peeling paint, rust spots, broken or missing pieces, and other damage. It was removed, stripped, sealed, and repainted, and reinstalled last week by G. Krug & Son Ironworks, established in 1810 and the oldest continually operating blacksmith’s shop in the US.

 

The original fence was made by the AF Jorss Ornamental Ironworks Company. We don’t know the exact year, but know it was in the early 1900s. (“The Work of Local Builders,” The Washington Times, March 2, 1903) Jorss Ironworks was founded in 1891 by Amandus F. Jorss, a German immigrant to DC who would go on to be a very successful entrepreneur. Sound familiar? 

Both Christian Heurich and Amandus Jorss were German immigrants who completed apprenticeships in Europe before immigrating to the US and building very successful businesses in DC - Heurich as a brewer and Jorss as an ironworker. The two men were well known in their time. The Chr. Heurich Brewing Co. was the largest non-governmental employer in DC and one of only two local breweries to survive Prohibition. At the same time, Jorss Ironworks took on various prominent projects including the silver vault at the United States Treasury, doors at the Lincoln National Bank at 17th and H Streets NW, the fence around the Mary Washington Memorial in Fredericksburg, VA, and many more (“A.F. Jorss Iron Works Inc. Doors of Lincoln National Bank,” photo by Theodore Horydczak via Library of Congress and “History of A.F. Jorss Ornamental Ironworks,” Evening Star, March 22, 1908).

Christian Heurich has a whole house museum named after him. Jorss doesn’t.

The writer of one 1908 Washington Evening Star article would probably think that Jorss should get a memorial. Referring to Jorss, he notes:

“‘Tis mighty nice to have such a reputation for doing things in the best way they can be done and making the best things out of the best materials that even the most subordinate employees in the building or monument or whatever it is in which the work is installed know it by tradition and usage to be of unquestioned and paramount excellence.” ("History of A.F. Jorss Ornamental Ironworks," Evening Star, March 22, 1908)

Evidently, Jorss’ work preceded him. Should we think of the restored Heurich garden fence as a memorial to him? Is that why we raised money, sent the fence to Baltimore, gave you updates on the process?

That could be part of it! However, Jorss would not have enjoyed the success he did without the labor, expertise, and skills of employees in his shop.

Workshops like that often had a small group of employees who were European immigrants skilled in metalwork. As part of the process, there would have been architects and draftsmen to create designs. Then, blacksmiths used techniques like bending, twisting, and hammering iron parts into ornamental parts. Welders would put all of the pieces together. It was also typical for apprentices to be involved in this type of workshop.

The fence would likely have been transported by teamsters to the construction site where workers would install, finish, and paint the final product.

In the past, the Museum was referred to as a memorial to Christian Heurich. So, can the Museum's wrought-iron fence serve as a memorial to Jorss and the many workers in his shop, whose names we continue to search for?

We don’t have to rename the fence or add a plaque to it. It doesn’t need its own historical designation. But next time you’re in the garden, take a moment to think about the hours it took to put all 154 feet of the fence together (then and now), the sweat of the people working, and all of their own trajectories that led them to work on this particular fence at that particular time, in Washington, DC. And then the choices you made, and the steps you took, to be admiring the very same fence, 130+ years later. 

Our restoration project is not only aesthetic, but is part of a larger goal: to prompt visitors to remember the labor of many people from the mid-18th through mid-20th century DC. These include household staff members, women in the family, brewery workers, and, most recently, the craftspeople who built and designed the Heurich house. Learn more about that research here!