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| From Hearth To Heritage |
Southern Hospitality
Jan Alexander
10/01/2005
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Other plantation owners in the area have tried opening
their estates to visitors and found it either too invasive or too unstable as a
business venture. But owners of historic homes who are interested in such a
proposition, whether out of public spirit or entrepreneurship, can seek to
emulate a number of viable role models: the Piatt Castles in Ohio, the Biltmore
Estate in North Carolina and Boone Hall Plantation in South
Carolina.
 According to Max van Balgooy, director of interpretation and
education for the National Trust for Historic Preservation in Washington,
historical home museums are probably the most popular type of museum in the
United States. He estimates that there are 10,000 to 15,000 such preserved homes
across the country, although most are publicly funded. The trust receives
frequent calls from those seeking advice on turning historic houses into public
spaces, and it can offer creative suggestions. “You can make the grounds
available just for weddings, music festivals or school groups,” van Balgooy
says, “or go the wholly commercial route. Donald Trump bought the Mira Lago
estate and turned it into a private club.”
Other considerations
include:
Location
“Instead of saying, ‘We have this house, let’s do tours,’
first find where the market is,” Carter says. The plantation area benefits from
the proximity of colonial Williamsburg, which is just 35 miles from Shirley
Plantation.
Foundation Or For-Profit
Turning the estate into a nonprofit
museum with an endowment from a foundation makes it possible to solicit
donations and run the operation tax-free. However, owners must cede much of the
control to the board of directors. A family business, on the other hand, must be
run by someone willing to be a decisive chief executive.
“Why my family
hasn’t hung me over a tree, I don’t know sometimes,” Carter says. His sister,
Harriet Pittman, kept sheep and collies at the farm. “I realized this is not
really our focus,” Carter says. “I don’t see a lot of revenues from the animals,
so they’re gone.”
Tourism, on the other hand, does produce modest revenue.
“Our business probably peaked in the late 1990s at more than 50,000 visitors a
year,” Carter says. Visits dropped after 9/11, and he estimates there will be
about 45,000 guests this year, at about $10 a head, though Southern decorum
makes Carter loath to discuss revenues. “I think,” he says, “it’s because after
the Civil War so many folks lost so much, it just wasn’t proper . . .
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Invest In History
The plantation showed a healthy profit through much of
the 1980s and early 1990s, but a capital improvement program that includes the
archaeological digging ended this run. However, Carter expects his efforts
to unearth history to yield returns in the future—not only from the tourist
trade, but also in terms of keeping future generations intrigued in a family
business that is so inextricable from the family history. Back to main article: From Hearth to Heritage
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