Battle flags, beer bottle caps among ‘historic treasures’ in Michigan Capitol exhibit

When you enter underground Heritage Hall at the Michigan Capitol, it feels like you’ve taken a step back into pivotal moments of state history.

The 40,000 square-foot facility, opened last year, hosts a vast collection of exact replicas or original historical state artifacts – some rescued from the trash or unearthed on the grounds – tied together by large graphics and descriptions.

“Whether it’s architectural salvage that’s come off the dome over the years, whether it’s old iterations of carpeting and chairs that we’ve used in the legislative chambers, or ... it’s pieces of furniture that are from an old space like the state library that doesn’t exist in the building anymore,” said Valerie Marvin, Capitol historian and curator. “We had all these wonderful historic treasures... But we didn’t have a space to show them off and to share them with our visitors.”

As the modern needs of state government began to outgrow the Capitol’s current location, opened in 1879, the brick-lined vaults once used to store important objects within the building filled up, too.

So when Heritage Hall was being designed, Capitol staff saw an opportunity to bring things out of the ever-multiplying storage spaces and onto display for the public to enjoy.

Marvin, along with Capitol Education Director Matthew VanAcker and Registrar Brian Page, were tasked with bringing the exhibit to life.

Among the displays is an authentic vault door used in an office suite when the building first opened. After some repair to remove cardboard and duct tape residue, the antique is now part of the exhibit showcasing what a Capitol office would have looked like in the 1870s.

“This door has probably not been seen in, I would guess, at least 60 to 70 years before this project. Now, it’s all part of helping people understand,” Marvin said on a recent tour.

Related: Crews work to restore ‘heart’ of Michigan Capitol

And, in some ways, anything becomes historical after a while — even trash, Marvin said.

“As we do projects and we’re in parts of the building and we find old things, we save them,” Marvin said. “There’s a tomato juice can, we’ve got some beer bottle caps. But they all become part of the story of the building and of the site over time. So, if it’s old enough, yes, even a Hershey bar wrapper goes in the collection.”

VanAcker recalled a time when he personally dug pieces of sandstone from the ground floor entrance out of a dumpster for the exhibit.

“It took three of us to haul it out,” VanAcker said.

Occasionally, they’ll find more official items, including an 1899 House calendar and an old Supreme Court record. They even came across the spine of a cow when digging in the Capitol lawn.

Marvin joked part of her job has become “hearing people’s confessions” as they disclose the Capitol relics in their possession.

“Sometimes they’ll default how they got it, sometimes they won’t. And we don’t ask questions,” Marvin said. “If you were smart enough to save something that we were dumb enough to throw out 50 years ago, good for you.”

One example? Marble floor tile, donated by descendants of James Appleyard, the superintendent of Capitol construction. According to Marvin, Appleyard first moved his family to Lansing in the 1870s and they remained there for the next three generations. It’s unclear how the tiles ended up in Appleyard’s possession — they may have been extras or rejected due to defects.

One generation used them as cutting boards. Striation lines show where someone cut fruit, vegetables and cheese. “It had another life. So now we get to tell that piece of the story in addition to the fact that this was part of... the set of original construction materials that came in in the 1870s.”

For Marvin, one of the highlights is telling stories of the individuals who have worked in and out of the Capitol.

Most people have an image of Capitol employees historically being white, male lawyers, but this is inaccurate, Marvin said. Harriet Tenney, for example, became the state librarian in 1869, making her the first woman officer for Michigan. Wilmot Johnson, one of the first African Americans to work in the building, was a clerk for the auditor general around the late 19th century, and Marvin suspects he was born enslaved in Virginia.

VanAcker, who has worked in the Capitol for 30 years, said it’s “a dream come true” to see the culmination of years of work by himself and staff come together.

“One of the greatest compliments is when you hear somebody say, ‘Oh, I didn’t know that,’ because they’ve learned something new,” VanAcker said.

VanAcker is leading a “Save the Flags” project. For the first time ever, a special onsite conservation lab in Heritage Hall is streamlining the process to restore the state’s 240 battle flags.

About 30 years ago, the original Civil War, Spanish American War, and World War I battle flags carried by Michigan soldiers in combat were removed from the Capitol rotunda for conservation. They were replaced with copies, which remain, while the original flags were moved into archival storage space in the state museum.

Related: Why one Michigan governor’s official portrait appears forever unfinished

VanAcker said conservation was previously costly and time-consuming. He would make the hours-long drive to a conservator in West Virginia who specializes in flag restoration. Up until recently, he was also responsible for fundraising to restore the flags, as the preservation efforts were not funded by the state.

These days, Heritage Hall visitors will sometimes see two specially trained staff members working on the delicate material in the lab through a viewing window along the exhibit ramp.

They’re now fixing a flag carried by the first Michigan Volunteer Infantry Regiment in the Civil War. It was damaged by a New York woman responsible for repairing flags in the 1960s as a commemoration of the war’s 100th anniversary. Her sewing machine put thousands of holes in the flag, and conservators must remove netting in danger of becoming embedded into the original flag.

“It’s very labor intensive,” VanAcker said. “This is the second flag we’ve worked on since we opened the hall. The first flag we estimate we spent 165 hours, and they removed over 100,000 stitches. Each one snipped individual.”

Since Heritage Hall opened last year, VanAcker said the number of tourists has slowly begun to rise back to its pre-pandemic norm of 100,000 people a year.

Marvin said it’s always fun to see Lansing residents, specifically, visit the building and reminisce about things they may have witnessed on display.

With an abundance of items still in storage, the plan is to continue to rotate exhibit pieces “to give people a reason to not only visit once, but to come back and visit over and over again,” Marvin said.