Preserving Poetry, One Home at a Time

Posted on April 10, 2012 by Jamie

April is National Poetry Month!

We therefore decided to look to our poetic roots. And by that we really mean our poets’ roots. Many artists have been inspired by their homes and, if nothing else, were subconsciously affected by the places they lived before and while writing. Here we have a sampling of homes of famous poets. Fans of poets, and historic architecture, can visit the birthplaces of poets the world round. If you feel inspired, perhaps you can share with us the home of one of your favorite poets… or a poet who lived near you.

: Shakespeare’s Birthplace, Stratford upon Avon

William Shakespeare spent many years of his life living in this aged Tudor home. It has definitely seen many years but it has seen many visitors, too. Think we’re getting ahead of ourselves to choose William Shakespeare as our British representative? The visitors to Shakespeare’s birthplace include Charles Dickens, John Keats, Walter Scott, and Thomas Hardy.

Emily Dickinson’s home, referred to as “the Homestead,” was probably the first brick house in Amherst, Massachusetts. It was built in 1813. Emily Dickinson grew up here and lived here for her adult life, as well. The house, now part of the Emily Dickinson Museum, is undergoing restoration to look as it did to Emily Dickinson, herself. Even the hemlock hedge has been restored. (Emily Dickinson was often inspired by the landscape around her home; View from Federal Twist has a nice post about it).

Happy Poetry Month!

Conservation in Canada: Adaptive Re-use of Company Houses at Cape Breton

Posted on December 12, 2011 by admin

Noted for its culture and scenic beauty, Cape Breton of Novia Scotia, Canada, has long been a destination for tourists (just check what National Geographic has to say). Off the northeast edge of North America, Cape Breton may look isolated and desolate, but it has seen centuries of history. John Cabot reportedly visited the island in 1497, a visit which is commemorated in the naming of Cape Breton’s Cabot Trail (which is over a hundred miles long). Since then, Cape Breton has seen Portuguese fishermen (sixteenth century), French colonizing (seventeenth century), and in the last few centuries, coal mining and steel-manufacturing.

Recent history, however, is a sad story. The century-old “company houses” of Cape Breton have fallen into disrepair. In fact, they made the Heritage Canada Foundation’s 2010 list of the 10 most-endangered historic places in Canada. But help is on the way.

Adventures in Preservation is one of several important groups working together to save the houses. AiP is partnering with Cape Breton University, Nova Scotia Community College, the HomeMatch program, and community members in a project called Historic Housing for the Near Homeless. Connections formed with schools and students have proved invaluable as collaboration continues; students who worked on previous AiP projects have stepped into leadership roles in this new one. (See the Cairo, Illinois, project, “Creating Affordable Housing From Shotguns”.)

historic house undergoing preservation and reuse as affordable housing Cape Breton

One of the houses benefiting from this new preservation project Photo: Tom Urbaniak

The house the AiP team will be working on is located in the Kolonia section of Whitney Pier, a multicultural community established in the early 1900s around the former Sydney steel plant. There homes were constructed from the dismantled Breton Hotel, which housed the workers who built the steel plant in 1899-1902. Preservation of the company houses is a nod to an important piece of Cape Breton’s history. This project will also provide affordable, durable, adaptive re-use homes for local families at risk of homelessness.

Take this exciting opportunity to join in the efforts! Learn more and join the project at our “upcoming adventures” page!

— Susie Trexler

One Tome or Two? Tea with a Side of History

Posted on December 1, 2011 by admin

A "folly" built in the 1700s remembers an era when castles were actually lived in. Blaise Castle, Bristol. Photo: Susie Trexler

England is a country steeped in history. You can hardly walk a hundred feet without running into something that is older than the United States. In Europe, this is average. To a Nevadan (a state since 1864), this is fascinating. On my flight home I was sitting next to a young man from Stockholm, Sweden, who confessed that his parents had just bought a summer house that was three hundred years old.

And that was normal. Adaptive re-use of historic structures seems to be a burgeoning trend in the United States, where buildings are for the first time phasing out of their original uses. In Europe, adaptive re-use is not a preservation choice, it’s a lifestyle.

adaptive reuse, trail conversion, England heritage travel

A canal tow-path has become a walking and bike trail for locals and visitors. Near Bath, England. Photo: Susie Trexler

Reusing buildings that are already there is a given. They’ve served several different purposes since their construction; what’s adding another?

On my visit to Bradford-on-Avon, we ate at a tea house – the Bridge Tea Rooms – that has been standing (impressively) since 1675. The building had the appearance of being duct-taped together with pieces of metal. When we stepped inside we were offered space upstairs. I was not only impressed that the second floor could sustain a group of five, I was giddy at the thought of being in a building that was 336 years old. If there is anything that old on the West Coast of the United States, I can assure you it’s off-limits. You can’t touch it, and you certainly can’t use it.

A 18th century statue commemorates the earlier Roman presence in Bath, England. Photo: Susie Trexler

The tea and scones at the Bridge were delicious, but I will always remember the building, itself. There is forever a debate in preservation, whether it is best to stop the historic clock to preserve its gears or keep it running… whether to let people walk on floors, touch things, use things. There is something to be said for continued use: these buildings were meant to be used, and it’s only through their use that you can fully appreciate them and the history they have witnessed. In a way these buildings have become windows, windows that let us leaf through the pages of history.

Author Susie Trexler is an ace intern at Adventures in Preservation.

Haunted, or Just History?

Posted on October 10, 2011 by admin

Here’s a timely post by ace AiP Intern Susie Trexler

Autumn color in Walla Walla, Washington Photo by Susie Trexler

We have finally stepped into October: autumn foliage is in full bloom across the hillsides, pumpkins decorate doorsteps and fill produce aisles, apples are sold in heavy bags, and Halloween is just around the corner. Leaves crunch underfoot and the old mansion at the end of the street has a larger presence in the crisp, fall air… Perhaps because it is no longer hiding behind trees thick with green summer leaves, or perhaps because Halloween is a time for imaginations to run wild.

When I first began investigating haunted mansions and ghost tours, I had drawn a distinct line between paranormal stories and actual history as though ghost stories were an elaborate (and eerie) side-story. As I wove my way through websites, imagining lantern-lit tours of the Hermitage, home of President Andrew Jackson, and dark strolls down the boardwalks in the Victorian Virginia City, Nevada, I realized supernatural stories are not the sole – or even the main – source of intrigue about these places. By letting our imaginations run wild – at Halloween and any time – we are connecting with the past.

Eerie opening, or a trick of light? Photo by Susie Trexler

NBC’s Syfy channel has named – by popular vote – the top three “most haunted” cities in America: Charleston, South Carolina; Savannah, Georgia; and Virginia City, Nevada. Sure, we may relish the thrill of a ghost story (and ghost stories are aplenty), but these cities have something else in common: they are all witness to vivid and important scenes in American history. They are witness to previous eras and societies.

There is something about people that extends across time and place: people like people-stories and gossip. People like things they can connect to, touch, and imagine. By some ironic twist, ghost stories bring history to light.

Are we preserving the ghosts, or are the ghosts preserving the history, themselves?

_______________________________

Use Halloween as an excuse to step into the past! Explore your local cemetery, or indulge in an eerie event at a historic house near you.

Here are a few we found:

Add to the list, if you dare!

A Peek at Portugal

Posted on September 29, 2011 by admin

Feast your eyes on this collection of architectural photographs taken by Hansel Hernandez. Hansel, who we met when he volunteered with Adventures in Preservation at the Bartow-Pell Mansion, spent a month in Portugal doing more volunteer conservation work.

He took a month’s vacation to do a professional internship in metal and wood conservation with Benfica, the most famous soccer team in Portugal.

His work focused on conservation of the team’s vast trophy collection, full of silver cups and wood pedestals in dire need of conservation. The work required skills he didn’t have in his repertoire as an architectural conservator, so he learned a lot. The private conservation firm from Lisbon that was behind the project has since asked him to help launch their architectural conservation department.

Hansel is off to Portugal this winter, once again proving that a volunteer vacation can be a life-changing experience!

See all Hansel’s photos

Getting to Know Gjirokastra

Posted on May 30, 2011 by admin

At Adventures in Preservation, we are excited about Gjirokastra. The City of Stone, as it’s known, is chock full of history, architecture, and culture.

When we were first contacted about working there, I had never heard of it, and I’d never been to Albania. People from my days at CARE had worked in Pristina and Kosovo, but Gjirokastra was completely new to me. When I started doing a bit of background research and learning about the city, I was amazed to find such a gem. Any traveler heading there will too!

Photographs tell the story best. The Fotopedia Heritage app, a compendium of stunning photographs of World Heritage Sites, contains eleven gorgeous photos of Gjirokastra. There’s also a video story board by AlbaniaRepublic that puts the city in its landscape context.

Another way to experience the city is via literature. Try reading Chronicle in Stone – the story of prize-winning author Ismail Kadare’s boyhood in Gjirokastra in the early 1940s.

The kullë houses which characterize the city each contain approximately three million stones. Chris Hassler recently posted a series of videos showing renovation work. They offer insight into how these massive buildings are constructed.

AiP has been working to help the people of Gjirokastra preserve their architectural heritage since 2008. If what you’ve seen here has inspired you to go see the city in person, join us at the Skenduli House project beginning in May 2012.

Vernacular Favorites to Celebrate National Architecture Week

Posted on April 10, 2011 by admin

It’s National Architecture Week and that got me thinking about some of the most interesting buildings I’ve seen lately. Keeping in mind the fun my friends over at The Blue Line had with Top 10 lists recently, I didn’t want to come up with Ten Most Amazing Buildings or My Top Ten Historic Buildings. Instead I browsed through photos from trips over the past few years and selected a few particularly memorable vernacular building types.

Gassho house in Shirakawa-go, Japan

Shirakawa-go, in the Japanese alps, was a complete surprise to me. I was not expecting to see snow still on the ground and I certainly didn’t expect to feel like I was back in Switzerland! The way the houses are dotted on the hillside and in a small cluster in the center, not to mention the buildings’ size and shape, all reminded me of Swiss alpine villages. Those commonalities certainly make you think about how much our buildings are shaped by their environment and how similar solutions emerge in similar environments.

The Gassho houses are wood and have steeply pitched roofs. In Switzerland, in Zermatt for example, the oldest houses have stone roofs. In Shirakawa-go, they are thickly thatched. The largest of the houses have several stories, with the top used for silk worm cultivation and production. The interiors are darkened from the smoke from the fires inside, which acts as a preservative. The family member we chatted
with explained that houses that are “smoked” last significantly longer than those that our not. I didn’t ask about the effect of the smoke on their lungs!

The spring day we were there, one of the houses was being rethatched. The workers were using some modern equipment such as aluminum ladders (and hardhats!) but the materials and the method were the same as they been for hundreds of years.

My other selection for the day is the dialou, or tower houses, of Kaiping, China. These are fascinating because they are a response to the social and political environment of their time rather than the physical environment. The building type itself dates back over 500 years and was traditionally defensive towers that could shelter an entire village from storms or attacks.

One of the 1800 dialou in the Kaiping Dialou and Villages World Heritage Site

There are approximately 1800 early 20th century dialou in the The Four Counties region, which is the homeland of many Chinese who emigrated to America, Canada and Australia in the late 19^th century. In the 1930s the region was overrun with bandits during a lawless time. Upon their return to China with their fortunes, the overseas Chinese again built fortified houses, but incorporated fanciful architectural detailing that they had seen in places such as San Francisco and Vancouver. Functionally, they were very traditional, with brick stoves and separate kitchens for the different sons’ wives, and altars for ancestral workshop on the top floors.

Interior of one of the best-preserved dialou

Their decoration and ornament however were very different. The buildings had the typical painting over the door way but the Chinese motifs incorporate, or are even replaced by other elements. In one house, there is that most American of symbols: an eagle with arrows in its talons.

Learn more:

This doorway shows the journeys the builder took overseas to earn his fortune and then return to build his house

How to Spend a Summer Becoming a Preservationist

Posted on March 9, 2011 by admin

Summer is just around the corner and with it opportunities for students to gain some professional experience in their chosen field. If your field is historic preservation, heritage conservation or some other related aspect, there are plenty of organizations that could use your help - and help you kick-start your preservation career.

Preservation can be a particularly challenging field to enter. Given the small size and specialized nature of the field, it’s often difficult to get a job without experience and it’s hard to get experience without finding a job. For that reason, internships have been a mainstay of preservation training for years. Internships provide a boost to non-profit organizations that can use the staffing and energy young preservationists provide, and sometimes turn into permanent positions.

If you’re casting about for ways to gain some preservation experience, here are a few pointers. Of course, there’s plenty of opportunity for hands-on preservation work with Adventures in Preservation!

The National Park Service’s Heritage Documentation Program is the granddaddy of them all. Begun with the Historic American Building Survey (HABS) and Historic American Engineering Survey (HAER), it has expanded to include to include the Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS) and Cultural Resources Geographic Information Systems (CRGIS). Their mission is preservation through documentation, and each summer, they hire research and documentation teams. The programs last 12 weeks, beginning in May or June. The resulting documentation is placed in the Library of Congress. Employment is limited to US citizens; the application deadline is generally early February.

International opportunities are available via the US/ICOMOS international exchange program, which provides opportunities for young preservationists to work with international organizations. The program has been running for 25 years and has placed 600 professionals in preservation organizations. US volunteers have worked in Australia, Italy, Lithuania, Pakistan, Slovakia and the United Kingdom, among many others. Interns from outside the US often work at or with units of the National Park Service.

The program is very competitive. At a minimum, applicants must have an undergraduate degree in a preservation-related field. While there are no age restrictions, the program is designed for those nearing the end of their graduate programs (usually second year students) or those who have been working professionally for 1-3 years.

Good online sources for internship opportunities – and jobs – include PreservationDirectory.com and PreserveNet. Recent postings there included a Building Preservation/Restoration Intern, Stratford Hall, in Stratford, Virginia, and Historic Preservation Intern, Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve, in Jacksonville, Florida.

Check with your local or statewide preservation organization and see if they would welcome an intern. The advantage of this approach is the ability to define your own project. Initiative could lead to some very interesting projects.

Whatever you decide to do with your summer this year or next, I hope it’s a good one!

A Direct Line to History

Posted on November 18, 2010 by admin

Access to one of Armenia’s most famous building complexes just got a little easier. A new cable car, which at 5.7 kilometers (3.5 miles) is the world’s longest, opened in October, enabling year-round access to the country’s ancient Tatev Monastery.

Armenia's Tatev Monastery Creative Commons Photo: Alexander Naumov

The Tatev Monastery dates to the 9^th century and is built along the Vorotan River Gorge on a remote promontory with sheer cliff faces on three sides. The only accessible side has been fortified with walls and towers, creating a formidable defensive complex. It is one of the country’s most important religious centers and a major tourist attraction. The complex contains the St. Paul and St. Peter church, built in 895-906; the Church of St. Gregory, built in 1295 on the site of an earlier church; the over-gate church of Astvatsatsin (11th century); and the Gazavan, built in 904.

The Gazavan Pillar Creative Commons Photo: Thomas Frederick Martinez

The Gazavan pillar is one of the site’s most fascinating features. It is an octahedral column eight meters (26’) tall, crowned with an ornamented cornice. It is also a marvel of Armenian engineering: in response to seismic activity – or the touch of a hand – the structure will sway but return to upright position. (It was also sensitive enough to indicate when enemies were approaching, which may have been its intended purpose.) Armenia is in an active seismic zone and the Gazavan pillar has survived numerous earthquakes. The rest of the complex has not been so lucky. A severe quake in 1931 seriously damaged the bell tower and dome of St. Paul and St. Peter church. The dome has been reconstructed, but the tower is still in ruins.

The cable car is a major heritage tourism development initiative for Armenia, which is hoping to showcase its architectural and other heritage. The fare for visitors is 3,000 Armenian drams (eight dollars/six euros.); local residents ride free. If you go, be sure to send us photos!

Note: You can help the people of Armenia preserve their architectural heritage by joining AiP’s volunteer project in Gyumri in June 2011.

Learn more:

Tatev – Wikipedia Entry

Tatev Foundation Website

3D Virtual Model of Tatev Monastery

The Charm of Château Miranda

Posted on November 11, 2010 by admin

Tim Laman of Fort Worth, Texas, sent us this piece about an abandoned architectural gem that has captured his attention. If you too have discovered some wonderful buildings you’d like to share, send their stories along so we can ooh and aah with you. – Jamie

I have always had an interest in historic buildings, but abandoned places seem to have an added draw. During the 1980′s I lived in a small town, and there was an old movie theater on Main Street that was probably 50 years old, but it was obviously abandoned for a long time. On the back side of the building, it looked like someone had driven a truck into the wall and left a gaping hole. I wasn’t brave enough to go in, but I could see the remains of a movie screen hanging in tatters, seats ripped from the floor and pushed into a dust-covered pile, and a broken down popcorn machine. It made me wonder what the theater used to be like when it was new, and what it still could be if only someone cared.

A haunting view of Chateau Miranda/Chateau Noisy Flickr Photo Courtesy Harm Rhebergen

Over the years I’ve explored other abandoned buildings, but these days you really don’t have to go further than online to see them. There are many websites with photos taken by “urban explorers,” and although you can’t believe everything you read, pictures usually don’t lie. It was on one of these websites (abandoned-places.com) a couple of weeks ago that I came across images of something beautiful and utterly unique.

The Château Miranda, later called Chateau Noisy and located near Celles, Belgium, was built in phases circa 1866-1907. Most of the historical accounts I’ve read online seem to copy each other, but sources say the architects were an Englishman named Milner, followed by Pelchner, who was French. The château was built for Count Liedekerke-Beaufort, whose family also still owns the nearby Castle of Veves. The château was used as a private residence for many years, then occupied briefly by the Germans during World War II, and later converted into a home for children. Exactly how long the property has been neglected seems uncertain, but indications are that it has been out of use since 1991.

Crumbling interior gives a glimpse of former glory Flickr Photo Courtesy Harm Rhebergen

The most striking feature of the château is a turreted clock tower which rises some 183 feet (56 meters) above the main house. The entire structure has many towers, conical roofs, and other Neo-Gothic details. It truly is like something out of a fairy tale, but a combination of vandalism, the elements, and deferred maintenance have taken their toll. Most of the 500 windows have been broken; walls, floors and staircases have collapsed; and fire has burned away some upper sections. Mold is a problem in this climate, and trees are growing on the roofs. Although beautifully rendered ceilings and columns still exist inside, they are in constant danger of being permanently lost. The property is privately owned, and the owner seems to be concentrating his efforts on preserving only the Castle of Veves. Some of the posts online allege that hunters in the area try to run off any intruders around the château, and others say that the building is so dilapidated it’s very dangerous to go inside.

What will happen to this place? How can further damage be prevented? In my opinion, it would take raised awareness, an international outcry, organization, and money. Last week I found a Facebook group called “Chateau de Noisy” with 200 members from all over the world, and there is a link there to an online petition which you can sign. The “Helpful Links” section of Adventures in Preservation’s website provides valuable contact information for other organizations all over the world which might be able to help with this cause. And I also decided that if nothing else I can send letters and emails to media outlets, even celebrities, who might be willing to get the word out and initiate some kind of action. My dream is to visit Château Miranda someday and to see it preserved for future generations, but it will take many more voices who care enough to make this dream a reality.

See more of Harm Rhebergen’s photos

Tag Archives: historic buildings