GETTYSBURG, Pa. - The battle that turned the tide of the Civil War lasted only three days. The monuments erected to the fallen soldiers years later were supposed to last forever.
But the ravages of weather and vandals - aggravated by misguided restoration attempts - now threaten some of the 1,300 bronze and granite statues depicting Union and Confederate soldiers, their leaders and horses - one of the largest collections of outdoor sculptures in the nation.
In the decades after the Civil War, veterans groups, mainly from Northern states, campaigned for monuments to honor every regiment that fought at Gettysburg. Fields of the bronze and granite statues rose at strategic battle sites throughout the Gettysburg National Military Park between 1870 and 1920.
Gettysburg Park employees routinely maintain the statues, but a special group of conservators has triaged a dozen monuments that are showing more than a little battle fatigue.
Conservation experts and University of Delaware graduate students from the Winterthur Program in Art Conservation are painstakingly scraping off acrylic coatings applied in the 1980s that did more harm than good.
Across a field below Cemetery Ridge, the Confederate Army made its final push against the North in what would be the bloodiest battle of the Civil War.
It was here that Gen. Robert E. Lee's soldiers met Union forces in Pickett's Charge, the July 3, 1863, battle that halted the South's advance across the Mason-Dixon Line for good. When it was over, 51,000 men were dead - 28,000 of them Confederate soldiers and 23,000 who fought for the Union Army.
The statues mark the Union line along what is now Hancock Avenue, one of the most highly visited areas in the 6,000-acre park, which draws 1.8 million visitors a year.
Two a year
The work started last summer. The conservators hope to average two statues a year.
One monument, to the 42nd New York Infantry, was repaired last year. The team this year is attempting to reverse damage on two other monuments, one commemorating the 1st Pennsylvania Cavalry and the other, the soldiers who fought with the 1st New York Light Artillery.
The Park Service, which maintains on all its battlefields, throughout the United States, the largest assemblage of outdoor sculpture in the world, says efforts to protect the Gettysburg monuments in the 1980s went awry.
A well-intentioned conservator sandblasted the metal and applied the acrylic coating to make the bronze sparkle the way it might have when the statues were erected, say Park Service officials.
"They stripped the metal down to what it looked like when the foundry first cast it," said Dennis Montagna, director of monument research and preservation for the National Park Service. "Now, as everyone knows from watching Antiques Roadshow, you don't strip off history."
Corrosion begins
Montagna said the scraping exposed the metal that had been protected when the statues were installed, and allowed it to corrode. "At the same time, the lacquer coating failed and exposed parts of the bronze to the elements."
Called in to lead the $30,000 project and help reverse the damage was conservator Andrzej Dajmowski of Chicago, known for his expertise with historic bronze and acrylic coatings. "The comparison is to a person who is aging and has plastic surgery. It's like removing a layer of skin," said Dajmowski. "Bronze is like a sponge, it absorbs water. The coating fails and corrosion begins."
Today, conservators have abandoned that aggressive procedure in favor of milder treatments.
"The old method made the bronze look like something brand new," said Montagna. "We want it to look like a historic work that is being cared for."
Outdoor sculpture experts say the learning process continues.
On a recent morning here, shortly before the throngs of tourists arrived, five Winterthur students clad in protective gear and wielding power washers began work on a bronze relief commemorating a New York Artillery battery that helped hold the ground below Cemetery Ridge.
The monument shows members of the unit frantically loading a cannon, a fallen soldier crumpled at its base. The students' work involves spraying, scraping and scrubbing tiny blades of grass, hairs in the soldiers' beards and creases in their uniforms.
The second sculpture depicts a kneeling soldier in the Pennsylvania Cavalry, a unit that included recruits from Montgomery County and lost almost 600 men in the war.
A recent assessment by the Fairmount Park Art Association, which manages a large collection of outdoor sculptures in Philadelphia, found that regular maintenance washing and waxing of the artworks can stave off the ravages of time.
"We found after removing the wax coating that the metal was in exactly the same condition it was 20 years ago," said Laura Griffis, the association's assistant director.
Using student labor at Gettysburg helps keep the cost of the project down, but also gives students a rare opportunity to work with outdoor sculpture. "The experience is so much different than working in a lab," said Nicole Grabow, a second-year student from Wilmington, as she balanced on a scaffold. "It's great to feel you're preserving something for people to see. So many visitors come to this site."