Biographical Data

Michael Kelley, president of J.M. Kelley Ltd., was raised in upstate New York.  Prior to being a full-time historic preservation contractor and consultant, he had been in the corporate world
and had spent five years as a flight officer in
the U.S. Marine Corps.

From the age of 16 however, after helping a family friend restore an 18th century farmhouse, he has pursued the study of period buildings and styles without a break. Taking courses and seminars relating to various aspects of restoration, buying and restoring houses, amassing a significant reference library, and traveling to England and Holland to study the roots of our architectural traditions, Mr. Kelley pursued his avocation with fervor.  In 1988 he began restoration projects in the Capital region on a full-time basis.

Some of his earlier projects included assisting in the documentation, moving, and re-erecting of many buildings in Eastfield Village.  The Village is Don Carpentier's School of Historic Preservation in East Nassau, New York. These buildings include a large 1840's church, a 1790's tavern, an early store, and Don's own house, an early cape.

Don and Mike collaborated an a project for a large engineering company to document and dismantle four Dutch barns in the Fall of 1989.

In 1990, J.M. Kelley Ltd. restored, moved and rebuilt a 1790's Dutch barn in Old Chatham, New York.  They added a hewn wing and spent the next eighteen months in an extensive adaptive re-use conversion to a high-tech meeting and entertainment space.

In the Fall of 1993, with the consent and co-operation of the Shaker Heritage Society, Mr. Kelley rescued a significant Shaker storage building.  It was re-erected in an agricultural setting sixty miles away resulting in a museum-quality restoration of the building. He then set about the task to design and build, using Shaker design elements, a 16,000 square foot state-of-the-art sheep milking and research facility to accompany the storage building.

Soon thereafter, another project in Old Chatham was the renovation of a house known as the Williams Estate (founder of the Shaker Museum).  This consisted of the creation of a full commercial kitchen, eight guest rooms, tap room and dining rooms. On completion, this became known as The Old Chatham Sheepherding Company Inn.

 Mr. Kelley has been involved in numerous smaller projects on an ongoing basis.  These have encompassed ornamental stone work, fireplaces, paneled rooms and establishing preservation programs for some upstate house museums.

Recently Mr. Kelley has been selected as Consultant and Contractor to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He is responsible for documenting and dismantling a pristine early Dutch house, and installing it in the Museum. He has also been called upon to evaluate some of the architectural artifacts in the American Wing.  He is currently moving and reconstructing some of the 18th Century rooms for the redesign of the American Wing.

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