Historical Places: Prothro Mansion, 1971, Winn Parish, LA. Submitted by Greggory E. Davies, 120 Ted Price Lane, Winnfield, LA 71483 ********************************************** Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ********************************************** From: August 12, 1971 Winn Parish Enterprise News-American Every Original Detail Done By Hand Prothro Mansion Is Restored By Two Winn Parish Students Not all college students lead the easy life during summer. Two Winn Parish boys left the classroom and took jobs making and remaking a slice of history, and they are doing it the hard way. Danny Erskins, 22, and Ricky Bates, 20, are both graduates of Winnfield Senior High School. Danny is a senior architecture student at LSU in Baton Rouge and Ricky is a sophomore industrial arts education student at NSU in Natchitoches. This summer, both boys took pencil, pocketknife, saw and hammer and hired-on to restore the old Prothro Mansion at St. Maurice. Now, three months later, the restoration work is 80 percent complete, and they have projected September 1 as the finish line. But opening dates mean little to the public, and hundreds of tourists have come each week to tour the mansion, dodging saws and hammers to have a look into the past. According to Bob Smith, Winnfield architect and one of the Prothro Mansion owners, Danny and Ricky have done all the work on the house. The two did all the carpentry, and laid more than 21,000 bricks. In addition, they had hand-hewn timber beams to replace original ones which could not be repaired. They also constructed a 5 ® foot brick arch, and neither boy had ever laid bricks before. POCKETKNIFE ESSENTIAL TOOL Every detail of the Prothro Mansion has been reconstructed using original tools and materials and many painstaking hours with a pocketknife whittling. Every detail has been designed and constructed by Erskins and Bates. Handmade wooden hinges of white oak were sketched and built by the boys. The hinges are pegged with wooden pegs and are identical to those in the house when it was originally built in 1826. The two workers built all the downstairs doors, following original designs. They constructed the hinges, door latches, and locks. In addition, they hand carved locks and carved wooden keys to fit the locks and open the doors. Springs for the locks were improvised, using metal wire taken from the old window shades. Grille work for central air and heating ducts was carved by hand rather than using the conventional metal product. Now, with much of the work behind him, Danny jokes that they spent "300 hours whittling with a pocketknife," but according to their boss, Bob Smith, the number is at least that great. RESTORATION PROBLEMS What are some of the problems involved in restoring a 145 year old house? "Telling of the problems and obstacles would be an understatement, but now we can see the end," Danny says. Rick claims that "each day is a new and different experience" and says that he has learned a lot on the job. "I got the kind of experience I could get on no other job," Ricky says. Then adds, "I hope." But both boys agree, restoration work can not be compared to any other conventional job; every aspect is entirely different. To begin with, the boys had to dismantle the old house, reuse what could be used, repair what they could or build anew piece along original lines "to fit the hole in the puzzle." They say one of their biggest problems was removing the tin roof from a perfectly good wood, shingle roof. The extreme slope of the roof made this task difficult, and extreme heat of the tin was almost unbearable. The front and back porches had to be completely re-floored, and all windows had to be redone on the house. Each window was a different size, and Ricky and Danny had to cut and fit each one individually. MINOR CRISES In addition, all six original cypress columns on the second story front had to be reworked, with new base plates and caps. New handrails had to be built around the porch. While working on the front porch, the two young workers encountered a minor crisis when a corner column fell off the house and landed in a nearby treetop. But it stands as good as new today. Danny and Ricky mixed more than 100 yards of concrete by hand, using sand they dug and hauled from the banks of nearby Red River. When water got short for mixing mortar, they lowered a worker 40 feet down into an open well to dig wet sand. Wood from an old cypress water tank will be used by the two builders for balcony and stair rails. But some of their confrontations are funny now that they have passed. Like the time they dug up a pile of bones, visited the place at midnight to check on ghost stories, and oiled the old windmill since its squeaking was so spooky. Bob Smith says that he was indeed fortunate to get Danny and Ricky to work on the house. And both boys feel they were lucky to get the job. "At first it was frustrating, but now we can see the progress we've made. And we've gained practical experience along with our formal educations," they say with justifiable sense of pride. Both boys look back and thank Henry Bates, Ricky's father, for help and encouragement on the job after they had torn the place down and gutted it to its basic, original structure. They say Mr. Bates was instrumental in helping them to match every detail to the original 1826 design. VISITOR'S VIEW When tourists visit the house today, they witness the building as it was done 150 years ago. After restoration, Prothro Mansion, in its original shape, will stand for centuries more as a landmark in Winn Parish history due to the dedicated work of Danny Erskins and Ricky Bates. And students of the future will study it as an architectural masterpiece built with blood, sweat and tears.