 Enslaved carpenters in the 1820s built this mushroom-shaped two-story structure on Melrose Plantation located on Cane River in northwest Louisiana. Built to be a barn, the building came to be known as African House. The trust recognized African House in 2015 as a national treasure and furthered a successful campaign to restore the time-worn building threatened by destabilization. In 1955, the acclaimed artist Clementine Hunter painted a series of nine large oil on plywood panels telling the story of the early 20th century life on Melrose Plantation, told from the point of view of the African-American and Creole workers. The addition of African House murals enhanced the value of this remarkable structure. The murals were cleaned and conserved in 1984, but great strides in art conservation have been made since their only cleaning. After more than 30 years exposed to the dust and insects of Cane River, the murals desperately needed maintenance. Fine art conservators Jill Whitten and Robert Proctor came to the rescue with the tools and expertise necessary to accomplish the state-of-the-art conservation. They took the murals down and transported them to their Houston studio for months of extensive repair and conservation. After placing the panels in a nitrogen chamber to kill insects, the WP team cleaned and restored each square centimeter of the nine panels. While the extensive conservation work on the African House murals was underway in Houston, a Hope crew, provided by the trust, spent weeks at Melrose restoring African House. After a celebratory evening at the W&P studio where the who's who of Houston art scene came to see Clementine Hunter's now bright and compelling paintings, Whitten and Proctor installed the panels for exhibition in Natchitoches, Louisiana where they were on display for a year at the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame and Northwest Louisiana History Museum. Jill Whitten and Robert Proctor returned to Louisiana in March 2016 to take down and return the paintings to Melrose, 15 miles south of Natchitoches. Over several days, the Whitten and Proctor team installed moisture barrier in African House and carefully placed each panel back where it was originally installed in 1955. Home at last. Clementine Hunter never traveled more than a hundred miles from her Cane River home but her famous murals of plantation life not only made the trip to Houston and back but also spent two years away. Today, the artist's culturally significant African House murals hang once again on the second floor of African House open for all to see and enjoy.