Exhibit Recreates Daily Life of Former Servants at Lockwood-Mathews

On Wednesday State Senator Bob Duff announced that a new exhibition at Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum highlighting the lives of the mansions’ former domestic servants will open soon.

The Connecticut Humanities Council is supporting the new exhibit with the award of a $9,999 competitive grant.

Entitled “The Stairs Below: The Mansion's Domestic Servants, 1870-1920,” the new exhibit will provide visitors to the museum with insight into the daily lives of domestic servants in the “Gilded Age” of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

“The Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum is one of Norwalk’s very best attractions, and I am delighted to see them awarded support for a new exhibit. The glamour of the Gilded Age was supported by a class of hard-working people whose stories have long gone untold. This exhibit will add an entirely new dimension to the Museum and expand our understanding of the history of Norwalk and our region,” said Senator Duff in a release.

Preliminary themes of the display will include immigration, the role of women, social justice and economics of the servant class. The wealthy elite represented only a fraction of Norwalk's population during the Victorian period, and yet the servants' quarters at the Museum have never been on public tour.

Through text, objects, images, and live theater, the Museum aims to make real the "invisible people" of the era—the women, African Americans, and immigrants—whose own livelihood depended on the fortune, taste, and tolerance of others. Behind the "movers and shakers" and tastemakers of the period stood an army of house maids and lady's maids, coachmen, stable hands, cooks, gardeners, nannies, housekeepers, and butlers that, willingly or unwillingly, all had a defined role and place in the domestic hierarchy of grand houses.

“The Board of Trustees and I are truly grateful to our state representatives and to Senator Duff for their unwavering support of the Mansion, and also to the Connecticut Humanities Council for funding the planning of ‘The Stairs Below.’ We envision this being a very interesting new exhibit that will capture the interest of visitors throughout Connecticut and enhance this national historic landmark,” said Museum Exec. Director, Susan Gilgore, in a release.

A National Historic Landmark since 1971, the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum is regarded as one of the earliest and most significant Second Empire Style country houses in the United States. 

Built by renowned financier and railroad baron LeGrand Lockwood between 1864 and 1868, the Mansion illustrates the beauty and splendor of the Victorian Era, as well as its less glamorous side.