Historian Kim Holien points out a hidden insignia on the walls of the former Old Guard Museum.
A Fort Myer building that is a repository for the history of the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment, revealed some forgotten secrets of its own last month when a contractor renovating the building uncovered an insignia for the 16th Field Artillery Unit and painted figures depicting The Old Guard’s history on walls inside the structure.
Post Historian Kim Holien, Old Guard Museum Assistant Curator Lea Davis, FMMC Directorate of Public Works Cultural Resource Manager Kristie Lalire and DPW Architect Suzanne Hren oohed and ahhed over the discoveries Tuesday during an informal tour of Bldg. 249.
Gary Seavey, a Shaw Construction project manager, outfitted the group with hard hats and led them through the building, pointing out hand-colored designs that had been hidden under layers of plaster, paneling and paint.
A wall in former exhibition space that Holien said was likely an old ‘‘ready room,” showed perhaps a quarter of the 16th Field Artillery insignia, with the missing portion either painted over, obscured or destroyed by prior renovations. Holien said the unit was here from 1922 to 1941.
Davis was surprised to see the room bathed in natural light for the first time. ‘‘The windows were all covered up when it was an exhibition space,” she said. ‘‘It’s the first time in decades it’s been seen like this.”
Hren marveled at the building’s solid construction, which was more evident in its stripped down state than when it was occupied. She bounced on the 1903 floorboards, exclaiming, ‘‘It’s solid. You’d think it was concrete but it’s all wood.”
In an adjoining room, edging, where the walls meet the ceiling, hazy painted figures are revealed, Holien recognized them almost immediately as coming from a series of paintings by H. Charles McBarron, the founder of a company of military historians and who was commissioned in the 1950s for ‘‘The U.S. Army in Action” series, which depicts various scenes of military triumph. The illustrations include portions of the paintings ‘‘The Road to Fallen Timbers” and ‘‘First at Vicksburg.” Holien said he would date the cribbed paintings in the room from around the same period, or a little later, when the building was an Old Guard barracks.
The Old Guard Museum in Bldg. 249 was closed earlier this year for renovation. The Old Guard Museum is scheduled to move into Bldg. 243, the current Town Hall building and a former movie theater sometime in the future while a revamped Bldg. 249 will become an Old Guard administrative building.
There are tentative plans to cut out a large swatch of the walls to see if preservationists can restore unseen portions of the crest or reveal more of the historical scenes.
Holien said the discoveries in the former museum are a real coup, particularly with the 150th anniversary of Fort Myer coming up in August 2011.
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