During construction, Gardner frequently came into contact with men of lower classes, and she was a familiar presence among the carpenters, bricklayers, and stonemasons. Despite attempts to paint Gardner as “of the people” in stories about her taking lunch with the workers, their recorded interactions were often fraught. To cite two examples, she ordered a team to remove scaffoldings against the architect’s wishes, and she called the foreman a “thief.” Since Gardner did not record any of her own thoughts on these matters and newspaper reporting cannot be trusted, it remains difficult to know the truth.
Names of the men who built the Gardner Museum survive in Isabella’s register of “Contractors Used During Construction,” even if little is known of their specific personal circumstances. Many were Italian and Irish immigrants, although at least one hailed from Japan. They all worked long hours for little pay. Massachusetts adopted a nine-hour workday in 1891, optionally reduced to eight hours in 1899, but only if the majority of voters of the city in question accepted the change. The state, while first to do so, did not enact a minimum wage until 1912, and then it was only for women and children. Bricklayers, for example, made $3.60 per day on a project where changing the height of a single window cost $300 to $400. Gardner encountered these realities head-on in 1901 when carpenters in Boston went on strike for an eight-hour workday without a reduction in wages. According to newspapers, she received their delegation at home to listen to their grievances. She also met with the building laborers’ union, who claimed a middleman was pocketing 50 cents of their $2-per-day wages. Whether she was interested in keeping the status quo or in advancing their cause remains unclear.
Among the site’s workers, Teobaldo Travi, nicknamed “Bolgi,” stands out. Born in Milan, he immigrated to the United States and, by 1889, was a resident of Dorchester, Massachusetts. An employee of one of her contractors, Gardner chose him to oversee the transport of building materials and historical elements, such as the stylobate lion (a column base from Italy, dating to about 1200) that anchors a corner of the courtyard colonnade. Gardner admired his careful work and later hired him on a monthly salary, first as a watchman and later as the museum’s majordomo. In that role, he ran Gardner’s household and oversaw visits to the museum, often in an elaborate uniform designed by Joseph Lindon Smith. In this guise he wore a Napoleonic hat and carried a staff. Bolgi cut a striking figure. One newspaper eventually published a caricature captioned “The Veronese policeman,” satirizing his role as the guardian of Gardner’s Renaissance masterpieces. He worked for the museum for forty-one years before retiring in 1940.