Star-Spangled Flag

Saving the original Star-Spangled Flag

by Carl Hartman, Associated Press, July 4, 1997

WASHINGTON (AP) -- It could cost $15 million to save the original Star-Spangled Banner, the huge flag raised over Fort McHenry in the dawn's early light of Sept. 14, 1814. It now hangs in the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History -- 40 feet long and threatening to crumble. To preserve it from time and pollution, $15 million will be sought. Just how to do all that is still under discussion. One problem is keeping the flag on display during the long, high-tech conservation. One idea is to let the public watch at least part of the work. "I think it's our duty to make it available to people for as long as we can," said associate museum director Ron Becker, in charge of the operation.

The flag dates from the War of 1812, when a decisive British victory might have reversed the Declaration of Independence a generation before. Francis Scott Key, a Washington lawyer, was trying to get the release of a fellow-Washingtonian the British had taken the month before when they attacked and burned the capital. He arrived at an awkward time. The British were trying to take Baltimore, too. They kept him all of a stormy night aboard a small sloop in the Patapsco River while they bombarded the fort, which guarded the sea approach to the city.

The rockets' red glare and the bombs bursting in air -- a new invention at the time -- gave Key glimpses of a smaller storm flag above the fort. In the morning Maj. George Armistead, the American commander, raised the big one -- the size of a four-story building -- that he had made the year before. Americans still held the fort.

The flag, which inspired Key to write the national anthem, was kept in Armistead's family until 1907. Souvenir hunters snipped away large pieces of it and persons unknown, for unknown reasons, stitched a red V to one of the white stripes. "We're researching who did that, and why," Becker said. The 15 stripes and blue field are wool. The 15 stars -- two feet across, point to point -- are cotton. Sewn with linen thread, the flag had cost $405.90 by the time Baltimore widow Mary Young Pickersgill and her 13-year-old daughter Caroline finished it a month before the attack.

The museum used to hang a plain cloth hung over it, and raised it every hour so visitors could see it as the national anthem played. But the cloth seemed to give little protection from visitors' breath and fibers in the atmosphere, so the flag is now on permanent show. It got a light cleaning in 1982, but nothing like the preservation effort now planned, said Suzanne Thomassen-Krauss, the museum's top textile expert. "We used a vacuum with very low suction, so as not to remove any of the original fiber," she said."It just took off the same light dust you'd find on your furniture."

Last November, Becker assembled about 50 conservators from Britain and Canada as well as the United States. They met for two days, then broke up into groups available for consultation. Each group deals with a part of the problem -- how to build a showcase and how to control the environment inside. Building a case would require about seven tons of glass. That would be a much more complicated job than making a display case for a small document like the Declaration of Independence. Glass might not be the right material because it scratches too easily. Many problems still need discussion, including how to get it down without damage. It is uncertain just how much the flag weighs. Becker estimated 125 to 175 pounds.