Schneider's Saloon Update - Horse Hair

Paint and wallpaper samples are still in the lab, and a search beneath the linoleum floors turned up nothing. So the mystery remains: what did Schneider's Saloon, the pub in 97 Orchard's basement, once look like? We do know that a staircase once abutted a portion of the north side of the center partition, and that the other section may have been constructed at a different time. To learn more, project manager Chris Neville pulled back a strip of pressed metal wall covering (installed before the museum was established; we're still trying to figure out when), revealing scorched dry wall and plaster studded with horse hair. A fire had burned in the room at some point, damaging the material, and as for the hair - it was mixed in to prevent the plaster from cracking. When we were restoring an apartment once occupied by the Moores, a family of Irish immigrants, our conservationist made sure to follow this traditional practice, using hair from his daughter's horse.


A bag of horse hair was mixed into the Moore apartment's plaster

-posted by Liana Grey