Margherita Desy, USS Constitution Curator and Historian and Joshua M. Ratty, USS Constitution Naval Architecture Technician, Boston, MA

USS Constitution is often considered the unofficial flagship of the United States. Launched in 1797, “Old Ironsides” was one of six of the United States Navy’s first ships. It was designed to be a top-of-the-line warship, in order for the United States to show off its newfound independence and curry legitimacy on the world stage. She has an undefeated battle record, with wins in the First Barbary War and The War of 1812. The ship also had stints as a patrolling ship in the Blockade of Africa during the U.S. Navy’s efforts to halt the Atlantic Slave Trade, as a training ship for the US Naval Academy during the Civil War, and as a transporter of American entries submitted to the Paris Exposition of 1878. However, despite her exciting career, the ship eventually fell into disrepair. Congress authorized and funded major restoration and repair in 1925, and the Constitution soon became a museum ship, which she remains today. The ship undergoes regular maintenance and gets around half a million visitors each year. In addition to the ship’s crew of Naval personnel, historians, restorationists, and artisans are responsible for maintaining the Constitution. The ACHP had a chance to speak to Margherita Desy, the ship’s curator and historian, and Joshua Ratty, the ship’s Naval Architecture Technician, who are some of the many people who work to keep the ship in top condition. 

What led each of you to your current position? What led you to this field in general?

Joshua: I did not have a very direct route to the Naval History and Heritage Command Detachment Boston. I ended up here kind of by chance. My background is actually in theater on the technical side, so scenery construction, things like that. I bounced back and forth between that and boat building in different areas. When Constitution was in dry dock in 2015, I was unemployed. I was lucky enough to be hired here as a ship restorer, and I’ve spent the last nine and a half years or so doing that.

Margherita: Luckily for all of us, Josh became the Detachment’s Naval Architect Technician. My background began in the museum field more than 40 years ago. I was fortunate enough to grow up in the portion of Connecticut where Mystic Seaport Museum is located, the outdoor maritime history museum.  I started working at Mystic Seaport when I was in high school, and that led me into the museum field. My background is in museum education/interpretation and curatorial work, and now I combine my background experiences into my role as historian with the Detachment. I have a historic object collection and I work with training the Sailors of USS Constitution so that they can give their tours. I give public presentations, write blog posts, write documentary history papers, things of that nature. 

How does what you do relate to historic preservation?  

Joshua: I think part of what we do here is historic preservation, but we also do restoration and repair work. I think a lot of times we blur the lines between those three. You know, there are parts of the ship that are original. We estimate around 10 percent of Constitution is still original to the 1790s. So, obviously we want to try to preserve those pieces and elements of the ship, but the rest of the ship has to keep working too, so that gets repaired and replaced. I think part of what we're charged with here is keeping the ship as close to its 1812 configuration. We know there are things on board that are not accurate that we would like to change. We don't necessarily have the means to at the moment. But, perhaps in the future, we'll be able to make some of those changes to restore the ship closer to the condition it was during the War of 1812. 

Margherita: The mission for the Detachment Boston is, as Josh said, to restore Constitution as far as practicable to the period of the War of 1812. And “as far as practicable” is a very nice, large, amorphous statement because it does permit necessary changes, which could be life safety changes. Because of the 600,000 visitors that come to the ship every year, it may be that a particular type of gangway is needed to get the visitors on and off safely, or handrails in areas where sailors 200 years ago wouldn't have had handrails when they were going down the ladderways. There are fluorescent lights below, a fire suppression system on board, a generator for the electrical system. So, there are all sorts of modern, twenty-first century elements to the ship. But when you think of the gross structure of the vessel, there is still a portion of it that dates back to its building period from 1794 to 1797. One of our big goals, Josh and myself working together, is to plan for the next restoration, a big restoration and dry docking. That will probably begin in about 10 years, somewhere around 2035. 

Why do you personally think that historic preservation, the work you're doing, matters? 

Joshua: There's nothing else like this ship in the world. The word "unique" gets thrown around a lot, but this is truly a unique situation. There's nothing this old, this active, made of wood, this size, that's in the water for a ship, so keeping that going, I think, is a big deal. And, Constitution harkens back not to the very beginning of the Navy, but certainly the very early days of the U.S. Navy when we became a shipbuilding nation that could defend our shipping. Constitution represents all of that. It represents the history of the Navy. We have plenty of other artifacts that go back to the early part of this country, but to go see most of them in a museum, they're behind large pieces of glass or a velvet rope. Here, people can walk onto Constitution. They can touch a cannon. They can crouch down behind it and look out a gun port and imagine a British warship coming alongside them.

Constitution is a piece of living history that they can really experience. Some lucky people even get to go underway on this ship, which we still do six or seven times a year. To have something that old, that significant, that people can get hands-on with, there's nothing else like it. I think keeping Constitution going as long as practical and possible is really important. 

Margherita: The Navy truly recognizes the ship as a piece of its heritage. Constitution is physically capable of sailing still under its own power, which is all by sail. Constitution has never had an engine. In 1997, for the ship's 200th anniversary of its launch, it was taken up to Marblehead, about 20 miles north of Boston, and sailed for the first time in 116 years, under its own power, for one hour. Now, it wasn't crossing big oceans. It wasn't making a huge voyage. But, the fact that a vessel that was 200 years old could still sail under its own power, puts Constitution into a class truly by itself. Because there is nothing older that can sail under its own power. Constitution occupies a very special place. It's a special place for all of our 600,000 visitors, but it's a truly special place for the United States Navy. 

History with Constitution is still being made in a variety of ways, even the restorations make history. Whatever is done to Constitution in one of the more significant restorations, such as when the ship goes into dry dock, there are, generally, several, if not many several, significant elements to the restoration that will make structural history in the ship's life. And that's what Josh and I are looking towards for the 2035 dry docking - a restoration that will be significant historically in the structural life of the ship. 

I've been working with Constitution’s history for a long time. I find moments like this, when we’re planning for a restoration, which supports the long-term preservation of the ship, is also a time of discovering new history. Josh and I are tucking away the new discoveries, the new history, with the intention that during the restoration, the newly discovered information will be physically recreated on board the ship, thereby bringing it closer to the War of 1812 era.

I have been fortunate to be one of the people that has helped to continuously update, correct, improve, and dig deeper into the history of the ship, whether it's the interpretation history, battle history, physical history, or social history of the crew that lived, worked, and tragically died on board. That's what’s kept me interested in the ship for 27 years. I've been working with Constitution longer than many of the Sailors that are on the ship today have even been alive!

Joshua: If I could add on to that, restoration work creates new history. In the next restoration, we're going to be replacing material that's been a part of the ship for over 100 years. Those pieces have become a part of that ship. They've become a part of that ship's history. It's not just a hull plank that may last five to 10 years. When we start getting into the frames and structure of the ship, we are going to be replacing stuff that's been on the ship for 100 years or more. That becomes significant in its own. Something that's blown me away coming into this naval architect technician position is we talk about how old the ship is, how long it's been around, how much work's been done. There's still so much about Constitution’s structure that we don't actually know. Getting to work closely with Margherita over these last few months, I'm learning how much we don't know. We meet daily and weekly and we talk. It seems like every week we come up with something new, and I raise questions or she raises questions. Either something we thought we knew and now we're rethinking it, or we didn't know at all and so we're digging in and researching it so that we can be as prepared as possible 10 years from now to know that we're doing the right work. That's very important for us here to know that, if changes were made in the past that weren't authentic or weren't accurate, if we have an opportunity to correct that, we need to do our research to be able to justify that and to make sure that we're making the right choices. 

What do you recommend for people who are interested in getting into this kind of work, interested in your field? What kind of courses, what kind of programs do you think they should start out with? 

Margherita: Go out there and find work. Whether it's an internship or just cold calling and seeing if preservation organizations need help. Whatever you can do to get the experience is important. Think of Josh's experience, he mentioned his theater, behind-the-scenes fabrication background.

Joshua: Everything has transferable skills.

Margherita: Yes, transferable skills. None of the vessels that Josh worked on prior to Constitution were remotely like Constitution, but that's okay because he had a sensibility about modern boat fabrication, and that becomes helpful, even with a project like this. Education-wise, mine was also largely through experience. Starting at Mystic Seaport Museum when I was in high school and continuing on there over many years allowed me to see the different departments at a large museum.

Volunteer if you have the opportunity and start as early as high school. If your interest lies in that direction, start maybe even middle school.

Are you interested in the museum studies route? Are you going to go more the historic preservation route? If you are you thinking more hands-on, maybe going to a school like North Bennett Street School here in the north end of Boston for preservation carpentry is your route. There are many different ways, but I would certainly suggest people start as young as they can if they're interested in the preservation field. But don’t forget folks that maybe are fortunate enough to retire at a younger age and have the opportunity to start a whole new career and go down that route as well. They'll bring a life's worth of experience, maybe from another field, to the preservation world that can be helpful within the preservation world as well.

Do you have a personal favorite preservation project you've worked on, on Constitution or outside, and what made it special for you?

Joshua: I have a few. I was very fortunate during Constitution’s 2015-2017 dry docking and restoration to get some of the more interesting projects. I was tasked with rebuilding the quarter galleries. Back aft, there are two glassed-in areas that stick out from the back quarters of the ship. The two quarter galleries got rebuilt almost entirely. Hull planks get kind of dull after a while because the work is very repetitive. There's nothing fancy about planking, but there was a lot of different joinery and different shapes when rebuilding the quarter galleries. There's no such thing as a straight line on a ship. We don't use levels. Everything's got curves to it, and then they all have to line up and meet in tight joints. The quarter galleries was one of the first major projects I did in the 2015 restoration, and that really challenged me to step out of my skill set, really, or enlarge my skill set and step out of my comfort zone a bit to do some joinery and some structural work that I wasn't familiar with. I think the quarter galleries came out really well. They’ve held up really well, and I’m happy with the work I did there. 

On the other end of the ship, at the bow, we have the trailboards, which is decorative carving that runs down the bow, sort of like leafy scrollwork with an American shield motif. Both port and starboard trailboards had to be replaced because they had been on the ship since 1930. I got to replicate the trailboards using modern tools but finished off the carvings with hand tools. I’m really proud of that work and it’s held up very well. It’s one of the things people notice when they come and see the ship, so it’s nice to point it out and say, “I made that.” Hopefully it lasts another 90 to 100 years, but, we’ll see what we do to the ship in 10 years! Maybe we have to take it off again. The quarter galleries and the trailboards are two elements on the ship I’ve had the pleasure to work on, and they were challenging, and they were something different I hadn’t done before.

How do you think the historic preservation work that you're doing helps the community? 

Joshua: USS Constitution is synonymous with Charlestown. When you see artists’ renderings of Boston, like in a cartoonish way, say for a puzzle, or a tourist postcard or something, it's going to have things like Fenway Park and the CITGOTM sign, but it's always going to have a Tall Ship, and whether it looks like Constitution or not, you know it's supposed to be Constitution. As Margherita said, the ship’s definitely a big draw to Boston, not just local visitors, but from all over the country and all over the world. It's synonymous with Boston and it's been here in the Charlestown Navy Yard since 1897. Constitution was built in Boston’s North End. It's as much a part of the city as anything. I think the Charlestown neighborhood particularly takes a lot of pride in having it here and being part of the Navy Yard. I think you'd be up for a real big fight if anyone tried to move it.

Margherita: Actually, there have been, in the long distant past, moments every now and then where someone thought it would be a great idea to take Constitution to another port. And generally, Boston has risen up and said, "no, it was built here." It came back here after every one of its victorious War of 1812 battles, and then it returned here for its 100th birthday in 1897. It has only left the greater Massachusetts Bay once since 1897.

Harvard-Kent School, an elementary school, which is just on the other side of Tobin Bridge in Charlestown, do many programs with Constitution, with the National Park Service in the Navy Yard, and with the USS Constitution Museum. There's that wonderful, natural link with the history of Constitution and the Navy Yard, even with local students, when they're very young and learning local history. Generally, if you're in fifth grade and you're learning American history, many, at least eastern Massachusetts schools, come here for their day-long field trips, visiting Constitution, walking sections of the Freedom Trail, that kind of thing. The outreach of the history of Constitution is really quite tremendous.

USS Constitution contains very little of its original material, but it's still clearly the same ship. How do you understand this kind of dilemma in historic preservation? 

Joshua: The parts of the ship that are still original are very key parts of the ship, specifically the keel, the very backbone of the ship. That's the very first thing you lay down when you're building a ship. Today they'll have keel laying ceremonies when they're building a new ship. It's sort of the heart of the ship, maybe, to still have that be original. Then there are other parts, too. Some of the lower frames that are built off of the keel, some of the other bracing needs and structure at either end of the ship, those are all still original. Those are very key pieces. It's not like there's a little sliver here or a sliver there. So that's how I choose to look at it, by seeing that the most important parts – it's sailed on its own keel which has been around the world – it's toured the three coasts of the country – it's fought these battles all on that original keel. And as long as that keel is there, it'll always be the original ship to me.

Margherita: Because of Constitution’s history, because of its extraordinary victories of the War of 1812 and its nickname, “Old Ironsides”, which everyone came to know after the end of the War of 1812, the ship truly became an ambassador and is still an ambassador for the Navy and the country. That ambassador role can never really be taken away from the ship, even when the last piece of that 1795 keel disappears. Constitution has been and will always be that icon, that ambassador for the United States Navy, and for the United States of America. In fact, it is America's Ship of State.

The maritime preservation philosophy in Europe, and especially in Great Britain, is sometimes to take their historic ships out of the water permanently. In the United States, we believe for long-term preservation, it's better for the vessel, whether it's a small vessel or a larger vessel, to always be in the water. That is key to long-term preservation. And the Navy is very fortunate that Constitution has remained afloat and can remain afloat for the foreseeable future. That will help to continue its long-term preservation. 

You mentioned that you were part of the ship's most recent dry docking. Can you go into depth a little more about that experience? How did it happen? Were there any specific projects you worked on during that dry dock period? Were there any specific challenges that you ran into during that time? 

Joshua: I wasn't here when Constitution was first dry docked in 2015, but the ship is dry docked about every 15 to 20 years, so, it's on a relatively regular schedule. One of the important but seemingly most basic elements of a dry docking is that with the ship out of the water everything below the waterline is exposed. What you normally can't see, when the ship is floating in the water is that there's 20 feet of ship below the waterline, basically half the ship is below the waterline. And so, every 20 years or so, below the waterline should be examined. And one of the reasons why it needs to be examined is because the ship is covered in 3,200 sheets of copper.

Margherita: Each copper sheet is four feet long, 14 inches high, about a thirty-second of an inch thick, weighs six pounds, and is laid in a fish-scale, overlapping pattern. The copper generally lasts about 20 years. The hull planking behind the copper sheeting, which is the oldest hull planking on the ship, some of which could date to the 1790s, so we definitely want to look at that, to see how that's holding up. Then there's cotton and oakum caulking between the planks of the vessel below the waterline. The old caulking needs to be picked out and new caulking driven in. Basically, you're resealing the vessel so that it will remain watertight when it goes back into the water.

Josh talked about the quarter galleries that are in the back quarter sections of the ship and the trailboards on the bow. The trailboards are mounted on a beak that sticks out from the front of the ship called a cutwater. The cutwater had to be completely replaced, which was an enormous project because the pieces of wood were both laminated and solid. Both laminated and solid white oak, really enormous sections put together like a jigsaw puzzle to create the cutwater. Then fastening this structure to the front of the ship was quite a project. I have many photographs of the guys assigned to that project, endlessly drilling and drilling. The drill bit was 8 to 10 feet long to go through the cutwater and then drill into the bow of the vessel. Then, enormous fastening bolts were driven into the bow and then attached inside, essentially riveted inside and outside. The cutwater was a huge, huge project. 

Joshua: In general, when the ship comes in the dry dock, it gives you access to things that you can’t work on in the water. When the ship is in dry dock, it gets encased in scaffolding and it's much easier. We can go right down the hull and replace hull planks at our leisure. You can really attack the outside of the ship much more efficiently. Going into dry dock allows us to bring on more employees like I was, sometimes just on a temporary status. It allows us to do more work in a shorter period of time and just get as much done as possible. We talked about how in England, they may permanently dry dock historic vessels which puts a lot of stress on the hull. And so we don't want Constitution in dry dock longer than we have to. Being able to just attack as much work as we can with as many people and materials and try to keep that dry dock period as short as possible and get the ship back in the water where it belongs is important. And there were some stern repairs.

Margherita: The stern, the back of the ship, is a flat structure that is very large, very heavily-built. And depending on which way the ship is facing at its dock, the stern is going to be heavily pelted by the weather because it's a really big, flat, exposed section of the ship. There was a lot of rebuilding of Constitution’s stern in the 2015 dry docking and that necessitated what little decoration there is on the stern to be removed. There's a big carved eagle that decorates the stern of the ship. It's not 1812 era, and it's not even accurate to an 1812-era carving, but it's been on the ship a long time. When the eagle was removed in the 2015 dry docking, lo and behold, the date of when it was carved was on the back. And no one here really remembered that that information was there. The eagle was carved in 1907, which was during a very important, albeit cosmetic, but important restoration of the ship because it was the first twentieth century restoration of Constitution. This stern eagle was hand carved by someone here in the Navy Yard in 1907 and finding the date was a wonderful little detail. I wrote a series of blog posts during the 2015 to 2017 dry docking through to 2018 when the ship was completed. One of the blog posts was “hidden treasures.” One of our “treasures” was the eagle with its date on the back. In each restoration you do discover little things. 

Joshua: There was an old Reader's Digest magazine from the 70s, I found that in a quarter gallery, along with a few other smaller items. 

Margherita: It was almost like a little time capsule, when Josh found those objects. We didn't put the Reader’s Digest back into the ship. I now have them in the collection where they will be preserved. The ship has some little secrets still, even after all this time, and even after all the many rebuilds and restorations, there are still some little secrets, some that we eventually learn, some secrets are never revealed. But, we’ll keep looking for who knows what secrets Constitution gives up in the next dry docking? I'm kind of excited.

What makes working on Constitution unique compared to working on other ships? How is it different from the ships of today? 

Joshua: I think one of the things that struck me when I started, and again when I started the ship was already in dry dock, and something that I think scares people away from wanting to work here is the sheer scale of it. It's hard to comprehend, we just discussed seeing it in the water, you're only seeing half the ship. When you have a chance to see Constitution out of the water and actually walk under it, it towers over you when you stand in the bottom of the dry dock. And you're looking up four stories, it's a tremendous scale. There are boat building programs, and there are restoration carpentry programs, and there are people that do timber framing. To work here you have to take a little bit from each of those crafts. You see boat shops maybe in down east Maine and two people steam a little plank and they pull it out and they carry it over to the boat and they put it on. A hull plank for Constitution might weigh half a ton. They're 40 feet long and steam to become flexible for seven hours. And we can't just take the plank out of the steam box and bring it to the ship. We have to do everything differently than what you would do on pretty much any other vessel.

As Margherita mentioned, I've done other things. I've worked on fiberglass boats which are built differently. I've also built large mega yachts out of steel and aluminum and those are built in sections and then assembled later. But, just the size and scale of what we do here for Constitution, a lot of the wood we use now has to be laminated because we simply can't get timber in the sizes needed. Back when the ship was built, timbers from large trees was more common. Even in the 1790s, the timber cutters went through tremendous efforts to gather the large live oaks for the ship’s frames or ribs. That's something we're starting to look into now, logistically, to try to figure out for the next restoration how to get wood of the size needed for Constitution. For me, what really sets it apart is just the scale of the individual pieces and the scale of the ship as a whole. All of our equipment is scaled accordingly. When people that know woodworking or boat building come into our shop, and if I'm giving a behind-the-scenes tour, and they see the scale of the saws that are being used, the planers that are being used, it’s all amazing to them. We use equipment that almost isn't even made today, or it's made for the big timber industry, but not really for the boat industry because, you know, the boat industry is smaller than Constitution.

Margherita: “Frightening” is the term used by the original timber cutters in 1794 when they were sent from New London, CT to St. Simons Island off Brunswick, GA to cut the live oak. The timber cutters were sent patterns, which they called molds. Essentially, they were big wooden flat patterns of the sections of the ship. When the patterns were sent down to John Morgan in St. Simons, he wrote back and said, essentially, “I am frightened at the size of the patterns,” because the size of the pattern meant that the tree cut had to be bigger than the pattern in order to cut out of the tree what you needed according to the pattern size. When Constitution was built between 1794 and 1797, it was the largest vessel, whether warship or merchant ship, up to that point in time, that had ever been built in Boston. And so, as Josh said, when you're in the dry dock today, in a modern restoration, and when you stand on the floor of the dry dock, Constitution towers four stories above you. When Constitution was being built on the waterfront of Boston’s North End, it towered over everything, all the buildings, with the exception of the steeple of the Old North Church, where the lanterns had been hung for Paul Revere on April 18, 1775. Warehouses in the 1790s were three stories, if that tall. Constitution was the skyline. When this vessel came to be launched, it truly struck awe in the viewers. It was an awesome sight when Constitution eventually launched in 1797.

What makes conducting historic preservation with the Navy unique? What is the difference between that and a lot of other historic preservation experience you've had? 

Joshua: There are a lot of participating historic organizations in the Charlestown Navy Yard. At the Detachment Boston, our job is to maintain, repair, and restore Constitution, to take care of the ship in a physical sense, but the Detachment Boston doesn’t control the ship on a daily basis. Constitution has an active-duty crew: a captain, an executive officer, and enlisted Navy crew. They have their mission to conduct events and Constitution has to be accessible to the public for tours. And we have the National Park Service as the “landlord” of the Charlestown Navy Yard and a partner in interpreting the Navy Yard’s history. So, you have these different organizations with different priorities, and we all have to get together and cooperate and work through challenges, and I think that makes it unique. In the summer, Constitution is only closed to visitation on Mondays, and that's when we have a chance to catch up on restoration work without tourists on board. We coordinate with the Navy, which hosts military retirements, military commissioning ceremonies, and naturalization ceremonies, which are all great uses of the ship. But, the public events sometimes take away from the time we have to restore and preserve Constitution. It's just striking a balance between all the challenges.

Margherita: As Josh just mentioned, the naturalization ceremonies are extraordinary. We've had several of the ship’s Sailors over the years become naturalized citizens on their own ship, on the deck of Constitution. It really is quite moving and quite beautiful and the naturalization ceremonies really get to the heart of America's Ship of State, which is fantastic.

The Navy committed in the early twentieth century to maintaining and preserving Constitution, which meant that the money for restorations was going to be there. Is it as much money as is needed? There's as much money as you need for that restoration project, knowing there's always more to do.

Regarding of the artifacts you work with, do you have any favorite artifacts?

Margherita: There is a magnificent object, partly because of the material it's made from, that is an 18-karat gold round box that was presented to Captain William Bainbridge, who was Constitution’s second War of 1812 captain. Bainbridge was successful with Constitution against the British frigate HMS Java on December 29, 1812. The City of New York was proud of this victory for the United States Navy. Bainbridge was presented with the Freedom of the City. It was kind of like today when a mayor gives someone the key to the city. The Freedom of the City was a calligraphy scroll, documenting Bainbridge’s victory. The gold Freedom box was presented to him as well. The inside lid of the gold box has a beautiful inscription, "From the City of New York to Commodore William Bainbridge." When William Bainbridge died, he left this box to his daughter, Susan. In his will, he called it his “snuff box.” We presume that's how Bainbridge used it, that it held his snuff tobacco. So, here is this Paris-made, magnificent box with beautiful engraving and fabulous geometric designs on the outside and Bainbridge used it to hold snuff! The Freedom box is quite an amazing object. 

Think of how soldiers and sailors often take battlefield souvenirs. After HMS Java was captured by Constitution, Java was so badly shot up, it couldn't be towed or sailed to the U.S. to be refitted and put into the United States Navy. After Java’s dead were buried at sea, and the prisoners of war were put on Constitution, Java was blown up the next day. But before Java was blown up, Constitution crew took souvenirs from Java. One of the souvenirs removed was a King James edition of the Bible. The person who took the Bible wrote an inscription on the Bible’s flyleaf.  Because of the inscription, we know that that Bible was an eyewitness to one of Constitution’s bloodiest battles of the War of 1812, a true touchstone to history.   

The ACHP's mission is about preserving American heritage. Can you give an example of how your community here is preserving its heritage? 

Margherita: When the Charlestown Navy Yard closed in 1974, the National Park Service stepped forward to maintain a portion of the yard as a historic site. They took stewardship of the 25 to 30 acres that were originally purchased in 1800 to be the Charlestown Navy Yard. The Detachment Boston is in a building that's within the original land purchase in 1800. The rest of the Navy Yard, the other 125 acres or so, which goes to the Mystic River under the Route 1 Tobin Bridge, is owned by the City of Boston. The buildings have undergone tremendous mixed use, including Massachusetts General Hospital with schools, laboratories, and classrooms. Several of the buildings have been renovated to become apartments or condominium complexes.

The Friends of the Charlestown Navy Yard, people that live here in the Navy Yard, make certain that there is sympathetic reuse or mixed use of the Yard buildings, and they also enhance the Yard with interpretive signage. Even as visitors walk through the yard, if they're just taking a stroll along the waterfront, the Friends of the Charlestown Navy Yard and the City of Boston have done a really great job in interpreting the history of the Navy Yard. When the Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital opened in 2013, they created an extraordinary campus, which they use for physical rehabilitation for their patients, but they, too, chose to interpret the ground on which the Spaulding Hospital was built. Spaulding’s campus signage reflects the history of the area going back thousands of years, highlighting the changing geography and topography, the indigenous peoples that were here, the changing European populations, and the physical changing of the Navy Yard, such as the tremendous filling in of wetlands and shore line to increase the Navy Yard’s waterfront, just like the way Boston’s Back Bay was filled in.