Restoring Shakertown: The Struggle to Save the Historic Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill

X. The Deal—II

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CHAPTER X The Deal—II A few days after the official opening of Shakertown, Earl Wallace received a memo from the maintenance department. Headed, portentously , PRIORITIES, this document contained a list of tasks to be performed, “broken down into categories and arranged in the order of their importance.” LANDSCAPING 1. Distribute and lay sod when cut from garden plots. 2. Clean up, grade and seed around north end of East Family House. CARPENTRY 1. Complete installation of blinds on Trustees’ Office. 1. Prepare 1st floor of Farm Deacon’s Shop for snack bar. 2. Trash Yard back of Trustees’ Office. 2. Linen Room shelving. 3. Complete exterior deck—East Family House. 4. Post and rail fence—Farm Deacon’s Shop, east to drive past E. Family Sisters’ Shop. PAINTING 1. Complete North Porch—East Family House. 2. Snack Bar—Farm Deacon’s Shop. 2. Whitewash Linen Room. 113 The Deal—II 2. Louver over doors—East side Trustees’ Office. 3. Fences and trash yard. Such operational details were primarily the concern of Jim Cogar and Jim Thomas, while Wallace chiefly dwelt in the realm of high finance (almost all of it relating to Shakertown, since he had ended his connection with Dillon Read in 1967). The chairman, however, also concerned himself with all aspects of the operation having to do with expenditures, from the largest to the most minute—the best buys in water coolers, the best deals in detergents. At this time he was pushing the Department of Highways to provide numerous signs on all the roads leading to Pleasant Hill, an effort that elicited from the director of the Division of Traffic an agreement to have five signs put up on Highways 68 and 33 and the possibly weary observation that, even though Wallace had asked for many more, “we do believe that the guidance needs of strange motorists seeking Shakertown will be adequately served.” During these same days, Thomas was also dealing with the Progress Paint Manufacturing Company, which was producing a line of “Shakertown paints”—in Trustees’ Office Brown, East Family Blue, Centre Family Blue, West Family Blue, Brethren’s Shop Red, and, for exteriors, Pleasant Hill Shutter Green and Pleasant Hill Yellow—for general sale and for the Pleasant Hill gift shop; Shakertown, Inc., would receive a 5 percent royalty on the distributors’ price. The government loan had saved the Pleasant Hill project, as everyone knew, making possible the Phase One restoration; but “beyond that,” Wallace said, “it was just a continual grind.” Fortunately, “we were able to interest some people that had a certain spirit that I’d never come into contact with before. You don’t work for the Standard Oil Company and Wall Street firms and meet anybody except those who are chasing the almighty dollar.” With Shakertown, however, he had come to know people “that had a different slant on life” from what he had known. Now that he had something to show such potential donors, his method of approaching them involved inviting them to Pleasant Hill to see for themselves the quality of the craftsmanship and the taste shown in the appointments and furnishings. At the executive committee meeting of May 12, Wallace reported that some of these donors had given funds to carry 114 RESTORING SHAKERTOWN out Phase Two restoration of four buildings—the Water House, the West Family Sisters’ Shop, the Meeting House, and the West Family Wash House. The Water House had a special claim to fame as the reputed first waterworks west of the Allegheny Mountains, but the building now seemed to be leaning toward collapse. As Wallace was walking by this wreck one day with one of his philanthropic friends, Pansy Poe, she had turned to him, saying, “I’m tired of looking at it, so you go ahead and have Mr. Cogar restore it before it falls down, and I’ll give you the money.” Work on the Meeting House and the West Family Wash House, Wallace told the trustees, could begin as soon as the needed scaffolding arrived; meanwhile, the plans for heating, air-conditioning, and plumbing would have to be worked out. Now free of the constraints of the Davis-Bacon Act, the chairman recommended that Cogar assign to Taylor a force of carpenters , helpers, and laborers who would work exclusively on this program and that Shakertown make local contracts for the mechanical and electrical installations...