Queens of King Manor
On the one-hundredth anniversary of American women gaining the right to vote, we celebrate those trailblazers who helped found King Manor Museum, the second longest-running historic house museum in New York City.
In the nineteenth century, urbanization caused by the Industrial Revolution expanded the middle class and decreased the cost of consumer goods.
More and more products were made in factories rather than in the home, which afforded women more leisure time. At the same time, it reduced their role from co-producers in a household to consumers and homemakers. Relegated to a “separate sphere,” women had a moral imperative to their domestic work: create a civilizing haven that would smooth out the roughness and corruption of the outside world in which men worked.
Home was everything to affluent and aspiring 19th-century Americans. At the same time, rapid industrialization meant older homes were rapidly being knocked down and replaced with tenements, flats, or factories. To some women with the money and time to look outside of their own houses, this was a big problem. Were these women particularly historically minded? Some were. Others saw traditional “home” structure being disrupted by urbanization. Still others were concerned with holding onto what they valued in “American” society while that society was rapidly expanding with newly arriving immigrants who brought with them different backgrounds and cultures.
Women from privileged homes became involved in the establishment of local women’s clubs and societies that tried to solve problems they saw in their changing world. Historic preservation societies were one of the organizations deemed “acceptable” for privileged women, as their goal was strongly linked to the home, the “woman's sphere.” These Preservation Societies worked to restore historically significant homes throughout the country, celebrating a quaint reimagining of our “American heritage.” Needless to say, the economically disadvantaged, as well as minorities and immigrants, were left out of the narratives told about American history by most of these early women’s clubs.
This exhibit uses the story of the founding of King Manor to talk about the legacy of women in historic preservation and its lasting impact on the history field today, where diverse histories are only recently being actively discussed and displayed and where, being considered “women’s work,” like many other fields such as teaching and nursing, labor is devalued and underpaid.
Although imperfect, the women who worked in historic preservation paved the way for future women to become accepted into public organizations, which would eventually lead to work outside of the home and a more equal society.
Virtual Tour
Museum Original Labels
The Changing Role of Women
Republican Motherhood
Colonial Revival at King Manor
Legacy
Watch a video of the exhibition with the introduction narrated by King Manor’s own Roy Fox!
Virtual Tour
Use your mouse or finger to move around the exhibit.
Zoom in and out to get a closer look.
Untapped Cities Tour
Join Kelsey Brow and Hannah Winiker for a special video tour of King Manor and the Queens of King Manor exhibition,
originally broadcasted with Untapped Cities New York on March 30th, 2021
The Changing Role of Women
Women’s Clubs and Historic Preservation
King Manor was opened to the public by a group of women one hundred and twenty years ago, who called themselves the King Manor Association of Long Island. These women felt that they were upholders of American tradition, and had their sights set on becoming involved with civic activities while still remaining domestic.
Some of the most famous women's clubs included the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Colonial Dames of America.
Explore the room below by clicking on the objects!
These clubs took on restoration projects of heritage sites across America, promoting themes of American Patriotism through patriotic celebrations, like parades and reenactments, both of battles and of domestic scenes like hearth cooking and spinning wool. By the 1890’s, these events reached their peak popularity, right around the time Cornelia King, Rufus’s granddaughter, and the last King family member to live here, passed away.
Museum Original Labels
In the early days of museum preservation, there were no electronic inventory systems. Most items in the collection had either a handwritten or typed tag. King Manor has some wonderful examples of early labels for many of our objects.
From this sampling we see that many of the objects were gifted to the museum by donors and why those donors thought their item belonged in a museum. You'll note that a lot of them had to do with the American Revolution, though Rufus King himself only played a minor role in that war. There are personal anecdotes about how these items belonged to family members. A few were even handed down from King family descendants!
It is important to keep in mind that the dates and facts on these labels are not always accurate! In the early years of preservation, there was not as much information available, especially understanding the materials and style changes over time the way an art historian or museum professional would today. More importantly, these labels show what items were considered important to collect and preserve the early days of King Manor Museum. Each tag is a clue to what was valued at the time.
Colonial Revival at King Manor
When the 100th anniversary of the Revolutionary War occurred in 1876, America was in the middle of an industrial revolution. Many Americans were inspired by these rapid changes to reflect on the colonial period in an attempt to honor what they viewed as a disappearing national heritage.
Public commemorations celebrated anniversaries of historic moments in American history such as George Washington’s inauguration, Columbus’s “discovery of America,” and the founding of Plymouth Colony. Women’s historic preservation societies aimed to teach new immigrants about these aspects of American history to help them assimilate into their new home at a time when conformity, not diversity, was celebrated.
Slide the bar to see the room recreated today!
King Manor Museum Library, early 20th century
This outburst of feverish patriotism inspired a new trend in interior design: a mashup of 17th and 18th-century furniture styles later called the “Colonial Revival” style. The Colonial Revival looked to the aesthetics of handmade furniture at a time when many household goods were made by machines. (Sound familiar?)
The women of King Manor decorated the museum with a mix of furniture and decorative styles from nearly two hundred years of history.
Although not “period rooms” as they are today (historically accurate recreations of the rooms to reflect the way Rufus King would have used them), the women honored King Manor in the best way they knew how.
Click on the objects in this period room to learn more.
Colonial Revival Collecting
At the height of the Colonial Revival’s popularity at the turn of the twentieth century, the women of the King Manor Association gathered furniture and decorative arts from early America. Some items were saved for their supposed associations with known American patriots, while others were preserved because of their age.
Click on the objects to learn more!
Through affluent, 19th-century eyes, it was easy to have a romanticized view of the colonial era. Despite the many atrocious realities of early America, such as slavery and poverty, patriotism was their interest and focus.
At the turn of the century, racial segregation and class disparity were normalized, and it may not have occurred to many of these women to consider these problems in their interpretation of these collections. Intersectionality and inclusivity in historical thought did not yet exist. You’ll notice bias and even underlying racism in some of these objects.
Republican Motherhood and the Cult of Domesticity
Despite increasing freedoms, women were still tied to the home in their gendered roles as wives and mothers. Activism in historic preservation was a way for women to be civically engaged while still remaining acceptably domestic. These projects mostly dealt with the restoration of historically significant American politicians’ homes (the women who saved George Washington’s Mount Vernon directly inspired the King Manor Association). Historians have called this cultural fixation with the “home” as a moral space the Cult of Domesticity.
Mourning Picture, 1801 silk, watercolor, x1995.115
Like any cult, the Cult of Domesticity was entered into involuntarily and is hard to leave. Society at large viewed men and women as separate and unequal. We still see the effects of the Cult of Domesticity today: women’s work outside the home is underpaid, and women’s work inside the home is undervalued. Motherhood was an important part of the 19th-century woman’s role, and the connection between women as mothers and women as guardians of the home and family morality goes back even farther, to an idea called “Republican Motherhood.”
Click on an object in the image to learn more!
This range of items made by and/or featuring women shows that domesticity was a deeply embedded cultural value that was reflected in the tangible world of 19th-century America.
Create Your Own Berlin Woolwork
The domestic art form of Berlin wool work was a widely popular pastime for women to do from home during the Victorian era. Pre-made patterns were available in books, magazines, and handbooks so everyone could make their very own piece of Berlin woolwork art. Designs with famous paintings, genre scenes, landscapes, biblical, and floral motifs were popular. The pincushion from the King Manor collection uses a floral pattern.
Click the pencil icon in the corner of the image to begin.
Follow the pattern sheet or make your own design!
Click here to print the pattern guide and blank template to complete offline.
Legacy
The story of King Manor’s founding has large parallels on a societal level. The women who started the King Manor Association were able to do so because they had money. Even while historic preservation professionalized, it remained (and still does) an underpaid field because it was historically practiced by women who did it as a “passion” and didn’t “need the money” because they had husbands to support them.
What other “pink-collar” jobs that are typically underpaid and performed by women can you think of?
Why are men always the ones “manning” the grill or doing yardwork?
As gender roles and the definition of gender in American society continue to change, where will the different dolls be in the dollhouse of the future?
While the women of the King Manor Association literally worked inside a home, their dedication and that of other early women historic preservationists helped bring women’s activism to the social forefront, winning the right to vote, at least for some women, in 1920.
One hundred years later, women’s history is at the forefront of the national conversation: the #MeToo Movement and other contemporary women’s rights movements are shedding light on the ways women have been treated and governed by society, sometimes as victims of unconscious bias, but often as targets of discrimination. Much more so for minority women.
Although women are no longer officially relegated to the domestic “sphere” in America, the legacy of the cult of domesticity remains.