Speaker's House dedication to celebrate Montgomery County's place in U.S. history after years of renovations
In Montgomery County this weekend, the community will celebrate the Speaker's House dedication after years of renovations. The public will be welcomed inside the 18th-century historic home for the first time ever at noon Saturday.
CBS News Philadelphia got a preview of that restoration work, where the United States' first speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives once lived.
"This was one of our crown jewels, really, of the town's history," Lisa Minardi, executive director of Historic Trappe, said.
Rescuing the house from demolition, fundraising to restore it and then actually doing that work has taken some 25 years.
"It's a bigger story than just Trappe," Minardi said.
The home embodies the story of the first speaker of the House of Representatives, Frederick Muhlenberg.
Minardi said that the Trappe local had many jobs in his lifetime, including as a Lutheran pastor and farmer.
"He works his way up from the Continental Congress to Montgomery County to the state constitutional convention to the first speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives," Minardi said.
He bought the house in 1781.
"As we stripped away all the later renovations and changes," Minardi said, "what we found, thankfully, was that previous builders were very thrifty and they saved pieces of original doorframe, chair rail and floorboard."
The current executive director has been a part of this project since she was a junior at Ursinus College down the street.
"It stays in the Muhlenberg family until 1803. They sell it to a piano maker from Philadelphia," Minardi said. "Changes hands a whole bunch of times in the 1800s. There's a doctor who owns it, a senator, various farmers, then Ursinus College acquires the property and the varsity football team lived in the house, used it as their dormitory."
"Then, it was a women's dorm, then World War II came around and all the men were off at war and the college didn't need it, they sold the property," Minardi added. "Then, it went back to being a private house, but then became an apartment building, so it's had a lot of renovations and changes over the years."
Piecing back together the home was no easy task. Minardi likened it to a jigsaw puzzle.
Outside, work also continues on the kitchen garden.
"We had to weed everything and rehab everything," Mike Myers, a Historic Trappe board member, said.
The hope is to use the herbs and vegetables in community cooking classes in the home's fully restored kitchen.
Back inside, Minardi is ready to welcome visitors and share what life was like for one of America's most influential voices.
"This is 2026, the semiquincentennial," Minardi said, "there's not too many historic houses, especially of this importance and this age, that are being restored new and opened for the first time to the public in 2026."
Over the next few years, the goal for Historic Trappe is to add Muhlenberg's general store.
