Victoria Mansion

Victoria Mansion will use grant funds to conserve the original ca. 1860 painted finishes in its bathroom and water closet, which, with the adjacent dressing room, constitute a coordinated suite of rooms intricately decorated in the Pompeian style. Victoria Mansion is a pre–Civil War house, distinguished for both its Italian villa style and its ornate interiors, which were designed by Gustave Herter and embellished by the firm of Giuseppe Guidicini, one of the leading decorative painters of the period. The painted finishes in these rooms, executed in both oil and distemper, are flaking badly and in imminent peril. Treatment will include stabilization, removal of heavy and disfiguring accumulations of grime and soot from the paint surfaces, and inpainting to restore lost designs and colors, returning the rooms to their intended brilliance.