Progress is on hold on renovations at the Harriet Tubman Home, a site that a travel industry expert has said badly needs improving.

A sign greeting visitors at the home currently states attractions include the Home for the Aged, Tubman's Home and the ruins of the John Brown infirmary. But while people are allowed to tour the Home for the Aged, Tubman's home is not fit for tourists (people can look in the windows), and the ruins are not included in the current tour.

The current visitor experience is supposed to change. The Harriet Tubman Home Inc. has taken the first steps to restore the brick house Tubman lived in and the barn behind it. The work, however, is on hold right now as the organization's leaders contact firms for an assessment of hazardous materials removal, site manager the Rev. Paul G. Carter said.

Officials want to restore the property's structures, and create an attraction people can tour inside. The site's leaders also aim to make other improvements such as creating interactive displays, refurbishing the exhibits, showcasing information about Tubman's life, and including more about her dealings with local people.

A tourism site survey by the Randall Travel Marketing Inc. researched attractions around Cayuga County in 2006. These were compared to another regional market research study in 2001.

In 2001, the research team reported their experiences at the Tubman Home as “the worst museum visit experience we have had in 20 years experience in the tourism industry.”

The team went on to report they could not recommend the site.

In Randall's 2006 assessment, the researchers said the photos and other wall hangings needed improved interpretations. The report stated it had “great potential” but needed help from people who understand interpretations, tourism and creating an experience for visitors.

Cater said there have been changes made after these reports, but referred specific details to board president and chief executive officer Karen Hill. She, however, referred questions to Carter.

Tax records for the year ending Dec. 31, 2005, report only three of the 37 directors live in Auburn or Syracuse. Ten directors live out of state. Hill has a Westchester phone number, and lists the Tubman Home as her address on the form. According to the records, she worked 40 hours per week and was paid $50,000 in 2005.

While Carter hasn't received any feedback from the community about planned renovations for Tubman's home and continuing reconstruction for the Home for the Aged, the organization is planning an outreach to draw local people in and bring the home to the forefront in the community. However, he could not provide details as to how or when he would try to enlist more local help.

“I don't think there's a lack of interest. At the time of... the formation of the incorporation, the (former director) decided to use the people he had in his network,” Carter said.

Other local attractions have taken the opposite approach. The Cayuga Museum of Art and History, which contains the Case Research Lab, has a list of board of directors that consists of all central New York residents, with the majority from Cayuga County.

When Theodore Case gave the lab to the museum, he simple walked away leaving his correspondence, research, instruments, and work behind, Executive Director Eileen McHugh said.

Patrons who ask for a tour of the lab. The nonprofit museum doesn't have the staff to keep the lab open, so people have to ask for guided tours, she said.

Thousands of people come to the Genesee Street location just for a glimpse at the laboratory, McHugh said.

Outside events have also sparked interest in Case. The National Film Registry added one of Case's test films. And there was the release of the DVD “Jazz Singer,” which contains a documentary pertaining to the struggle to combine sound and film and heavily looks at Case.

Similarly, Doris Kearns Goodwin's 2005 book titled “Team of Rivals” caused an awareness of the role of William Seward, whose Auburn home is also a museum.

“Something like that spills over to other sites,” McHugh said.

As visitors trickle in, they ask about other attractions in Auburn.

“All of us are very conscious of cross promotion,” she said. Visitors will tell other people about their experiences when they go back home, she added.

All of the organization have the same basic goals - to educate.

Patrons of the Harriet Tubman Home start off in a visitor center, where they sit in rows of folding chairs and watch a documentary describing Tubman's life. The film kicks off the hourly tours.

Information plaques, drawings, photos referring to slavery, branding, other famous African-American leaders line the walls.

After the documentary, a volunteer leads people around the Home for the Aged, one of three attractions promised on the sign attached to the visitor center.

Carter said he wants people to understand more about Tubman as a determined, creative and innovative woman.

“(They should have) a better understanding of why Harriet Tubman felt so strongly about maintaining a role on the underground railroad and putting her life in jeopardy and leading to freedom as many people as she could,” he said.

From the visitor center toward the Home for the Aged, people can see the brick home where Tubman actually lived that they are planning to renovate.

People can walk through the restored Home for the Aged to get a taste of what Tubman's life could have been like. Much of the furniture is from the time period they are trying to replicate, but the Tubman family donated a variety of objects.

But unlike the Seward House or the Case Lab, Tubman did not leave a legacy that can be tracked in material goods.

Another Tubman historic site has also faced that challenge. Donald Pinder is president of the Harriet Tubman Organization Education and Learning Center in Tubman's birthplace of Cambridge, Md.

The two places share a common obstacle, the lack of Tubman's possessions. Tubman owned two oxen she would take with her to different places to work the fields, Pinder said. Slaves didn't have possessions except necessities. Even the slave cabins they lived in didn't belong to her. They didn't have anything valuable that would be passed on to generations, he said.

However, Carter doesn't look at the destitute life Tubman lead as a disadvantage, but rather a compelling piece of her story.

The home fell into disrepair and was not used in the 1940s and 1950s.

“Anyone who has common sense knows the Seward House has been taken care of, the Harriet Tubman Home has been sold to someone else, and everything was destroyed, sold or given to family,” Carter said.

He also pointed to the economic difference between the two homes, with Tubman living her last years in poverty, and compared with the wealth enjoyed by the Seward family.

“You're dealing with two different situations all together. You have a major contrast there. That's one (thing) that makes the story more interesting,” Carter said.

Visitors at the Maryland site can see a timeline of the events and learn about where Tubman was born and how she started working at 5. There's information about an injury she suffered at a village store, and later of her two marriages. It also, of course, touches on her escape and work with the Underground Railroad. It offers glimpses at books and stories that tell about what she did, and some articles about her move to St. Catharines and Auburn, and her home and group home in Auburn.

Also that site has her last will and testament leaving everything to the Thompson African Methodist Episcopal Church in Auburn as trustees to her estate.

The Cambridge museum and gift shop offers a fixed location for a museum, but they also have booking tours. Someone from the museum boards a bus and travels with the group from location to location to spots with historical significance. These include the plantation were she grew up, the spots her parents lived - separately as they had different owners.

“It gives them a general history of the area, and some of this (region) hasn't changed in 300 years. It's modernized... but the fields and what's being planted hasn't changed, and some landscapes haven't changed,” Pinder said.

Pinder went to the Tubman home in September 2006. He also visited her final resting place under a tree in Auburn's Fort Hill Cemetery.

“When you tell a story if you've been there, it's already more exciting. ... They say 'I followed her footsteps,'” Pinder said.

He was awed by walking in her footsteps in Auburn.

“I related it to grandparents after they died and you go back in the house and you don't see them. It brings back memories - how they did things and they felt,” Pinder said. “It was nice to be in the place that she was and move in the same circles.”

Staff writer Jessica Soule can be reached at 253-5311, ext. 267 or jessica.soule@lee.net