Crossing the Threshold

What is the future of the AMERICAN HOUSE MUSEUM? Today's stewards set out to ensure that the nation's most influential properties thrive in the decades to come.

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HEATHER CHADDUCK HILLEGAS knows exactly where her love of antiques and period detail comes from. "My parents took us to Williamsburg all the time. I grew up submerged in America's largest living museum," says the Birmingham-based interior decorator and textile designer. So when Chadduck Hillegas was invited to be the 2022-2023 designer in residence at Williamsburg's Nelson-Galt House, she embraced the homecoming. "Only then did I fully realize what a huge influence that early exposure had on me. Whenever I had a question about what to do in a certain room design-wise, I could just look around Williamsburg, and the answers were there." New York-based designer William Cullum traces his affinity for 18thcentury moldings and architectural details to his love of house museums.

"My dad brought me to the Aiken-Rhett [House] when I was a boy," the Columbia, South Carolina, native says of the circa-1820 mansion in Charleston, one of two house museums stewarded by Historic Charleston Foundation and the only one "preserved as found." Its arrested decay enchanted Cullum: "It was like going to the Met. It had this mystery to it that captured my imagination. Those rooms felt alive." Years later, he served as a docent at Aiken-Rhett and wrote his thesis on the evolution of decoration in its double parlors. "I'd pull those big shutters closed at the end of the day-it was magical."