Save our [GL]Ass™

View from the exte­ri­or. You can see just how large (and heavy) the exte­ri­or doors are. The Ter­ra Cot­ta Lofts across Locust Street are reflect­ed in the glass.

It’s been one of those days around here.

Robert and Vir­gini­a’s place was bur­glar­ized Mon­day night around 10:00 p.m.  Some­body hopped the wrought iron fence, jim­mied the slide lock on the heavy wood exte­ri­or doors, then pro­ceed­ed to chuck a chunk of con­crete through one of the inte­ri­or door glass panes to gain access to our house. They stole the con­tents of the cash box, $98.

The cash isn’t the big loss here; the win­dow is. It dates from the 1880s, so it was prob­a­bly some­thing the Camp­bell sons had installed after their par­ents passed away. For­tu­nate­ly we have two — one in each door — and only one was bro­ken dur­ing the bur­glary, so who­ev­er makes the new pane will have a tem­plate to work from. How­ev­er, this isn’t just any glass. The panes are large — 5 feet tall by 18 inch­es wide — and they were excep­tion­al­ly well-craft­ed of etched and frost­ed glass. (Crafts­men who came by to give us esti­mates were noth­ing short of appalled that work­man­ship of such high qual­i­ty had been destroyed.)

Detail of the bro­ken pane. Note the intri­cate designs and sub­tle frost­ed shad­ing and etching.

The intri­cate design is going to be labor-inten­sive to repli­cate in the same qual­i­ty as its twin. We should have one esti­mate to replace the glass by the end of the day, but we know it’s not going to be pretty.

Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Andy and Board Prez Fritz Clif­ford walked the Muse­um and the grounds on Tues­day after­noon with a secu­ri­ty con­sul­tant to see what we can do to pre­vent this (or worse) from hap­pen­ing again.

Despite such a rough start to the day, we’ve been shocked at the down­right enthu­si­as­tic sup­port on the phone, and the good inter­net vibes from Face­book friends and our fol­low­ers on Twit­ter. You’ve made us feel warm and fuzzy, and today has­n’t been all that bad because of it. You are the mac to our cheese, the peanut but­ter to our jel­ly, and the icing on our cake. Thanks for the vir­tu­al love today.

The foot­ball-sized culprit.

…but back to the mess at hand. We’ll get through this just like every­thing else, but if you have a few bucks to spare, we could sure use a lit­tle help to Save Our [Gl]ass™. If you can, please click our Pay­Pal but­ton below to throw a lit­tle our way. Camp­bell House is a pri­vate foun­da­tion that is not affil­i­at­ed with any oth­er insti­tu­tion, and we oper­ate on a slim (read: no wig­gle room for bur­glar­ies or exces­sive insur­ance deductibles and/or pre­mi­ums) bud­get. We do not receive any sort of local, state or fed­er­al sup­port. Gen­er­ous peo­ple like you who see how his­to­ry can enlight­en, inspire and illu­mi­nate our mod­ern world keep us going.

One bit of beau­ty from today’s mess: a chunk of glass that came out of the door­frame. See how black and sooty it is? That’s years of coal dust and pol­lu­tion trapped on there. Remem­ber, all of our lights were coal gas lights, the fire­places were coal-fired, as was the fur­nace when it was installed.

Thanks again, and we’ll keep you updat­ed on what’s happening.