James Madison plantation finishes $24M restoration

Descendants of President James Madison and the slaves who lived on his plantation joined U.S. Supreme Court justices and politicians on Wednesday to celebrate the end of a five-year, $24 million architectural renovation.

Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. said while the home, called Montpelier, was a fitting tribute to Madison, the most prominent memorial is the fact that the United States is "a free country governed by the rule of law."

Historians credit Madison with being the architect of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and Wednesday marked the 221st anniversary of the Constitution's signing.

Roberts said Montpelier "stands with Mount Vernon and Monticello" - the homes of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, respectively - as landmarks to the nation's Founding Fathers.

The brick Georgian home at the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains underwent an architectural restoration to make the structure authentic to the period between 1809, when Madison was elected the nation's fourth president, and 1836, the year he died.

Montpelier changed hands among several private owners after Madison's death and a number of them made drastic additions and renovations to the home, including adding entire wings, moving doors and spreading stucco over the exterior of the structure.

The Montpelier Foundation, which operates the estate, started the restoration in 2003, nearly two decades after the National Trust for Historic Preservation took ownership of the property from the estate of Marion duPont Scott in 1984.

The trust says the project was one of the nation's largest and most complex architectural restorations. After architectural historians uncovered evidence of the old structure from documents and physical imprints beneath renovations, workers removed entire wings added by the duPonts, reducing the structure from 36,000 square feet to 12,261 square feet.

They also stripped off the stucco, rebuilt the front porch and rear colonnade, and replaced the tin roof with a cypress-shingle roof, among other projects.

Madison Iler Wing, a seventh-generation descendant of Madison's sister Sarah, and Raleigh Marshall, a descendant of Madison's personal slave, took turns reading the Constitution's Preamble at Wednesday's ceremony.

Wing's aunt, Margaret Boeker, said that she has been watching the gradual return of Montpelier to the public and efforts to properly recognize Madison. Because of his modesty and shyness, she said he "was always kind of in the background; he never put himself forward."

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James Madison's Montpelier: http://www.montpelier.org/

National Trust for Historic Preservation: http://www.preservationnation.org/

(This version CORRECTS Corrects name of estate's previous owner to Marion 'duPont Scott')