“For decades, since I was an undergraduate here at Penn State, I would drive by (and see) this beautiful Victorian greenhouse just falling down,” Robert Cameron says.
Fast-forward a few years and Cameron is now museum director of the Boal Mansion Museum in Boalsburg, and he’s realizing his dream of giving the neglected greenhouse — located, until recently, on the grounds of Rockview prison — a second life.
“I tried to convince some people to put it up at Penn State,” Cameron recalls.
“Then I thought I better secure it first. And that began a multi-year project. The prison had to go through all types of things, being a state-controlled organization. The greenhouse had to be advertised around the world. It had to be advertised with all the local and all the state organizations, and it finally got to me, and they said ‘OK, you can bid on it, but everyone else in the world can bid on it, too.’
“And I thought, ‘After all this, I’m going to lose out, because the museum couldn’t afford anything,’” Cameron continued.
“It ended up, I was the only bidder, and I was able to purchase it.”
Cameron paid $65 for the greenhouse, which he removed from the prison to the museum grounds last week.
“Yes, not much (money),” Cameron says, “but we’re spending close to $10,000 just to take it down, and then again to put it back together will take more than $100,000, so we have to do a major fundraising campaign.”
Shane Gummo of G and G Earthworks has been volunteering a lot of his time at the Boal Museum, says Cameron, and after the museum rented a crane, Gummo came in as an operator.
“It would have been impossible without him and the use of that crane,” Cameron says.
“Workers from Forefront, another local company, are experts at dismantling buildings, and they’ve also helped out tremendously.”
Cameron’s plans for the greenhouse are to restore the swimming pool area that was at the Boal Mansion, “not as a swimming pool, but rather, the entire greenhouse will fit above it … so we will be able to grow tropical rainforest trees in there, and at the deep end of the pool, there will be a waterfall feature, and then we will raise butterflies. There will be a butterfly vivarium in there, and then around the outside will be a pollinators’ garden. It will form the anchor for the 12 formal gardens we’ve designed on the 48 acres at the Boal Estate.”
Rockview was built as a prison between 1912 and 1915 when the Boal Mansion was “at its peak” and during a period when prisons and mental institutions had huge agricultural areas to make them self-sustainable and provide an activity thought to be good for patients and inmates.
All the gardens at the Boal Museum “are underway in various states of completion,” Cameron says.
The Shakespeare Garden wraps around the theatre. There’s also a sensory garden for the visually impaired, a reflection garden, a garden amphitheater, three miles of trails, and, in Cameron’s words, “lots going on.”
And yes, the Boal Museum at one time had a tropical garden of its own.
“A tropical conservatory was really popular with the Victorians, and Colonel (Theodore) Boal was classically trained in architecture,” Cameron explains.
“And this greenhouse is very European styled with its curves — it’s like Kew Gardens in London, and so I found in (recently discovered architectural drawings of the Boal Estate), it showed the mansion and a tropical conservatory. So where all the guests go in, that was actually a glass house with ferns, etc. But Colonel Boal’s mom complained about it being cold in the wintertime, and we have a letter where he’s explaining the logic of thermal dynamics and how you can’t close the doors, and so forth.
“At any rate, someone then took away all the glass and made it a solid frame. So historically, there was a tropical conservatory there, small, but this is a fitting symbol of what Colonel Boal was trying to put together.”
This story appears in the Aug. 19-25 edition of the Centre County Gazette.
