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Moynihan Train Hall: A Conversation with Colin Koop of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

By Priya Chhaya posted 2 days ago
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Editor's Note: For more on Moynihan Train Hall and its part in the legacy of Pennsylvania Station, read a Q&A between Tom Mayes and Holly Leicht on SavingPlaces.org. A project decades in the making, the new Moynihan Train Hall opened to Amtrak and Long Island Rail Road passengers in January 2021. While it does not fully replace the underground warrens of the present Penn Station below Madison Square Garden, the train hall serves as a symbol of what is possible for adaptive use transportation ...
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Building on the PastForward Town Halls: Climate Change

By Jim Lindberg posted 7 days ago
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Last October, more than 500 preservationists participated in the PastForward Online 2020 Town Hall on climate change. This virtual gathering generated a range of opinions, ideas, and suggestions for how the preservation movement can more effectively engage in climate change advocacy and action. What did we learn and how can we build on this important discussion? The Town Hall on Climate Change began with a series of short video commentaries from practitioners around the country. A brief overview ...
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Greenwich Historical Society: Preserving and Reimagining Bush-Holley Historic Site

By Special Contributor posted 21 days ago
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By Debra Mecky   In 2020, Greenwich Historical Society was awarded the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Trustees Emeritus Award for Historic Site Stewardship . We are now accepting award nominations for 2021 through February 15 .  In 2018 Greenwich Historical Society completed a five-year plan to advance its mission and make a greater contribution to the community. At the heart of our $13.5 million dollar capital project was the reimagining of our suburban campus to restore and ...
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What Does Home Mean to You? Diverse Stories of Victory and Loss from California

By Special Contributor posted 21 days ago
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By Christine Madrid French When Louisa Bird Cunningham founded the Ladies of Mount Vernon in 1853, she focused on the concept of “home” to save President George Washington’s house in Virginia. That moment, recognized as one of the earliest historic preservation movements in the United States, continues to shape the effort to save significant sites in the twenty-first century. Today, however, the emphasis is on broadening the concept of home and context to include all of the cultures that contributed ...
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[Q&A] 20 Years of the National Trust Community Investment Corporation

By Special Contributor posted 24 days ago
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By Mike Palien Twenty years ago, the National Trust for Historic Preservation formed the National Trust Community Investment Corporation ( NTCIC ) as a dedicated subsidiary to finance impactful preservation and community development projects. Today, NTCIC raises money through several state and federal tax incentive programs, such as the Historic Tax Credit (HTC), New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC), and Solar Tax Credit (STC); and makes investments in mission-oriented projects. Since its inception, ...
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James River Transmission Line Update and Advocacy Alert

By Sharee Williamson posted 01-26-2021
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Since including the James River near Jamestown, Virginia, on the annual list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places in 2013, the National Trust and our partners, including Preservation Virginia, as well as preservation advocates around the country have urged the Army Corps of Engineers to explore alternatives that protect the James River’s cultural landscape from Dominion’s misguided transmission line. During the initial review of the project, almost 30,000 people signed a petition during ...
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From Trails to Timber: Uncovering Black History in Oregon

By Lawana Holland-Moore posted 01-22-2021
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The West is filled with stories of cowboys, loggers, pioneers, and homesteaders seeking new lives often under uncertain, tough circumstances. Now imagine if the stories and those individuals who forged new paths for themselves and their families on the frontier were Black. In 1857, the state of Oregon’s constitution set exclusion laws that did not allow Black Americans to settle, live, or own property, and over time, this led to an erasure of the state’s Black history. Today, two preservation organizations—both ...
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National Trust Awards $256,342 in Grant Funding to Organizations Nationwide

By Lizzy Barringer posted 01-21-2021
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The National Trust Preservation Fund , the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s small dollar grant program, offers a timely look at issues preservation organizations are tackling across the country. Applications to the fund’s October 2020 grant round reflected the impact that the pandemic and recent social justice issues are having on the field and on the work that organizations are choosing to do. More than sixty percent of all awarded grant projects had a focus on diversity, equality, inclusion ...
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Los Angeles Has a River? Art as an Agent of Conservation and Change

By Special Contributor posted 01-14-2021
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By Tracy Stone It may surprise you to hear that Los Angeles has a river that traverses 51 miles of the city and county and is, in fact, the reason that the city exists where it does. Once a source of sustenance for the region, the Los Angeles River is best known as a concrete flood control channel created by the Army Corps of Engineers in response to a devastating flood in 1938. Since channelization, the river achieved some fame and recognition as a cultural landmark with appearances in movies ...
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An Invitation to Act: A review of Main Street’s Comeback

By Briana Grosicki posted 01-07-2021
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2020 forced us all to hunker down at home with time to revisit our values. In Main Street’s Comeback: And How It Can Come Back Again ,  author Mary Means writes a convincing argument that the desire to revitalize our main streets is a core value of American culture. Means demonstrates that the emotional pull of linking arms with neighbors to incrementally tackle our downtown revitalization problems is deeply rooted in all of us—and that is why the Main Street Approach will help us climb out of ...
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7 Preservation Resolutions for 2021

By Marisa Brown posted 12-28-2020
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Editor's Note: For a look back at 2020 check out last week's post Looking Back on 2020: Where Do We Go From Here? and make sure to share your preservation resolutions on Forum Connect. 2020 was a rough year. For thousands of non-profit organizations across the country in small towns and cities that do this work, it was a year of staff and programming cuts, furloughs, museum closures (and openings—and closures) and, for some, permanent dissolution. For faculty and students in university-based ...
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Looking Back on 2020: Where Do We Go From Here?

By Priya Chhaya posted 12-23-2020
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At the heart of our work as historic preservationists is the philosophy of acknowledging and managing change. Every place, landscape, or piece of cultural heritage we strive to protect is affected by external factors that can be attributed to both human and natural intervention. Our challenge is to ask: how much change is too much change? In an answer that might seem antithetical to protecting spaces of the past, my answer is as much as we can handle, and then more . Restoration of the ...
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Continuing Community in New Orleans

By Lawana Holland-Moore posted 12-08-2020
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New Orleans is more than beignets and Bourbon Street, voodoo queens and Mardi Gras. An old city with a multicultural blend of its African, French, Cajun, and Spanish roots, this city has a culture that is all its own. This includes the unique architecture, with its distinctive ironwork, balconies, and 19 th century shotgun and camelback houses, as well as its historic neighborhoods, which include some of the oldest Black communities in the country. Two projects selected as recipients of African ...
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Tadaima! Lessons From a Community Virtual Pilgrimage

By Priya Chhaya posted 12-07-2020
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Earlier this year the COVID-19 pandemic forced many historical sites across the country to re-consider and pivot their programming to the digital realm. This past summer the Japanese American Memorial Pilgrimage s (JAMP) program and the National Park Service came together to pivot what was a regular in-person trip to places where Japanese American’s were incarcerated during World War II to a nine-week virtual pilgrimage for anyone to explore. JAMP was started in 2016 by Kimiko Marr and Marissa ...
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Saving Cook County Hospital: A Q&A with Lisa DiChiera of Landmarks Illinois

By Priya Chhaya posted 11-22-2020
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Often called the Ellis Island of Chicago, the publicly owned  Cook County   Hospital —constructed between 1912-1914—served as a medical facility where no one would be turned away. Dramatized by the long-running medical drama ER , Cook County’s persistent presence on the horizon (easily seen from the  Eisenhower Expressway coming into the city) made the hospital a visual landmark for residents and visitors alike. For over twenty years, a coalition of partners and elected officials worked to protect this ...
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Perspectives of Neighborhood Change

By Special Contributor posted 11-17-2020
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By Jenna Dublin Editor's Note: This article by Jenna Dublin is the introductory essay in a compendium of essay’s called Perspectives of Neighborhood Change . This compendium is part of a broader collection of resources for the report Preserving African American Places: Growing Preservation's Potential as a Path for Equity. The National Trust for Historic Preservation's African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund has launched a research-based campaign to examine the intersection of ...
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William Snyder’s House: Teaching to Tell the Full Story

By David Rotenstein posted 11-04-2020
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Home to such historic sites as the National Register listed Crawford Grill No. 2 and playwright,  Pittsburgh’s Hill District was long known as the “Crossroads of the World” because many European migrants and Southern Blacks settled there.  Hill District home formerly owned by racketeer William Snyder. | Photo by David Rotenstein. My current project involves researching numbers gambling in Pittsburgh, and on a cold January morning I was photographing a home on the Hill once owned by ...
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The 2020 National Preservation Awards

By Forum Online posted 10-26-2020
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The 2020 National Preservation Awards are being presented this week at PastForward 2020 Online . The awards honor inspirational projects, individuals, and organizations that have demonstrated excellence in the field of preservation. .embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; } Louise ...
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Findings from the 2017 Heritage Preservation and Climate Change Survey

By Special Contributor posted 10-21-2020
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By January Tavel In 2017, the National Trust for Historic Preservation collaborated with ICF to launch the Heritage Preservation and Climate Change Survey. ICF is an organization with a long history of helping clients and partners overcome big challenges by creatively integrating the diverse expertise of our team in ways that bring new perspectives, engages stakeholders, and challenges the status quo. With guidance from the National Trust and support from the ICF Innovation Fund, we leveraged ...
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A Q&A on Preserving African American Places: Growing Preservation’s Potential as A Path for Equity

By Priya Chhaya posted 10-20-2020
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The National Trust for Historic Preservation recently released Preserving African American Places: Growing Preservation’s Potential as a Path for Equity , a report that seeks to elevate emerging ideas, research, observations, and questions on the critically important issues of equitable development, social justice, and the practice of preservation. At the heart of this report is the central question: How can preservation be a force for advancing equitable development and social justice in African ...
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