Monocacy Battlefield's Gambrill House Restored

By Deborah Fitts

FREDERICK, Md. — After more than a decade of work, the National Park Service (NPS) has completed the restoration of the historic Gambrill House at Monocacy National Battlefield.

The Victorian structure, built by James Gambrill in 1870, is the home of NPS’s Historic Preservation Training Center, which works to preserve historic structures at national parks nationwide and to train NPS personnel in preservation crafts and skills.

The Gambrill Mill, nearby, serves as the park’s visitor center. During the 1864 battle the mill was used as a hospital by retreating federal troops.

Tom McGrath, superintendent of the training center, noted that the center moved to the Gambrill House in 1995, after their previous headquarters of nearly two decades, at the C&O Canal in Williamsport, became too cramped for the growing staff, and also sustained damage when the Potomac River breached its banks in major floods that year.

The center identified the Gambrill House as an “ideal location,” said McGrath. It had been vacant for 18 years, since being acquired by the park, and “needed a tremendous amount of work.”

Restoration work, of course, was music to the ears of the center staff. A dozen years later the work is done, and an invitation-only celebration is planned for this October.

The Gambrill House is located uphill from the Gambrill Mill, on Route 355. Although it is not open to the public, battlefield visitors are welcome to walk around the grounds, and a wayside exhibit is devoted to it. The house is listed individually on the National Register of Historic Places.

The staff of the Historic Preservation Training Center totals around 70. Most employees work out of the center’s shop facilities, located at the century-old former Jenkins Cannery complex in downtown Frederick.

McGrath noted that the staff trains individuals in historic preservation crafts and also travels to NPS sites around the country to restore and repair Civil War-era buildings and other historic structures.