Preservation Magazine, Fall 2020

PEOPLE SAVING PLACES

FALL 2020

The magazine of the National Trust for Historic Preservation

CARVED IN

MEMORY IN NEWPORT, RHODE ISLAND, A CENTURIES-OLD BURYING GROUND HIGHLIGHTS THE CITY’S BLACK HISTORY

THE RICHARD H. DRIEHAUS FOUNDATION NATIONAL PRESERVATION AWARDS FARNSWORTH HOUSE’S LATEST CHAPTER

contents FALL 2020 The magazine of the National Trust for Historic Preservation

34 DEPARTMENTS 2 Editor’s Note 4 President’s Note 6 Transitions

26

FROM LEFT: WILLIAM ZBAREN; MICHAEL MORAN

God’s Little Acre, an African American burying ground in Newport, Rhode Island, holds centuries of rich history within its borders.

26 | Clear and Present

52 At Home 61 Itinerary

FEATURES 16 | Precious Stones

11 Past, Present, Future

67 Outside the Box

34 | Community Spirit

The 2020 Richard H. Driehaus Foundation National Preservation Awards went to an urban farm in Boston; a Black history landmark in Memphis, Tennessee; and a New York health care center.

An update on Farnsworth House in Plano, Illinois, a National Trust Historic Site commissioned by a brilliant and boundarypushing woman.

On the cover: A detail from the God’s Little Acre headstone of Phillis and Prince Stevens. Phillis, an enslaved

woman, arrived in Newport, Rhode Island, from what is now Guinea around 1759 at the age of about 13. She and her infant son, Prince, both died in 1773. Photo by Philip C. Keith. Correction: On page 16 of the Summer 2020 issue, Surry, Virginia, was misspelled. Preservation regrets the error.

72 Final Frame

Preservation is the quarterly magazine of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. It celebrates the places that have shaped the diverse American cultural experience and inspires people to save the past and enrich the future through charitable giving, advocacy, and volunteerism.

EDITOR’S NOTE

Show and Tell

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I

n June, the National Trust published a statement telling our supporters that we believe Black Lives Matter, and that historic preservation organizations are obligated to demonstrate that through their work. As a writer, I’ve always followed the adage “show, don’t tell.” In other words, instead of writing, “It was a beautiful sunset,” try to paint a picture of that beauty with words. As such, this magazine has tried in recent years to demonstrate through the stories we cover that Black history matters, and, by extension, Black Lives Matter. We’ve focused on presenting a mix of content that covers places representing the history of all Americans.

But now, we realize we must do more. It’s time to be less subtle. It’s time to show and tell.

In the United States, the grassroots preservation movement, state and local preservation organizations and nonprofits, and the National Trust generally have a long history of protecting and maintaining places that represent white, male, Eurocentric history, often overlooking places that represent women and people of color. In its seven decades of publication, Preservation magazine has mostly reflected that, bringing you stories of places like battlefields, Old West ghost towns, early industrial buildings, and grand mansions built by captains of industry.

These places are revered as icons of our history, but the story they tell is incomplete.

Meanwhile, the places that represent African Americans and other people of color—as well as women, Native Americans, the LGBTQ community, and other minority groups—have often been ignored or even erased, meaning that we have to be more creative and tell a preservation story in a nontraditional way. But we welcome the challenge and are committed to intensifying our effort moving forward, to showing that Black Lives Matter in the field of preservation as much as they do in every other area of society.

It is work we look forward to but can’t do alone. So I’m asking for your help. We love hearing from you with story ideas and invite you to continue telling us about the historic places in your community that can be or have been saved and protected—especially those demonstrating that Black Lives Matter. We know that historic preservation is a tool we use to tell the full American story and look forward to discovering new places with you. We hope to hear from you soon.

Editor in Chief Dennis Hockman Managing Editor Meghan Drueding Assistant Editor Nicholas Som Copy Editor Katie Finley Contributing Editors Lee Bey, Reed Karaim, Lydia Lee, Kate Siber, Amy Sutherland, Chris Warren Research Editors Samantha Spengler, Kelly Tomas, Lauren Walser Proofreader Susan Cullen Anderson Creative Director and Designer Mary Prestera Butler Contributing Photo Editor Michael Green EDITORIAL (202) 588-6013

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WEST

R.W. Walker Company, Inc. (213) 896-9210 | mike@rwwcompany.com Receipt of Preservation is a benefit of membership in the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a privately funded nonprofit organization chartered by Congress in 1949. The National Trust for Historic Preservation works to save America’s Historic Places. Our programs and publications are made possible in part by membership dues and contributions. A one-year membership is $20 ($30 for family membership) and includes four issues of the magazine and discounted admission to National Trust Historic Sites. (Of the dues, $6 is designated for circulation purposes for a one-year magazine subscription.) For new memberships, renewals, or changes of address, write to Membership Dept., The Watergate Office Building, 2600 Virginia Ave. N.W., Suite 1100, Washington, D.C. 20037, call (800) 315-6847, or send an email to members@savingplaces.org. To raise additional revenue, the National Trust for Historic Preservation may share its mailing list with select organizations.

Please notify the Membership Dept. if you want your name deleted. • For back issues, send $4.50 each by check or money order to Magazine Orders at the address above. Bulk copy price for 10 or more magazines is $3 per issue. For information about submitting editorial queries or photographs, please see our website, SavingPlaces.org/magazine. • Preservation (ISSN 1090-9931) is published quarterly, © 2020 National Trust for Historic Preservation, and may not be reproduced in any manner without written consent. Periodical postage rate paid at Washington, D.C., and additional mailing offices. • Preservation articles are works of journalism and not the official policy of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Articles about products do not constitute endorsements. The National Trust for Historic Preservation assumes no responsibility for the content of advertisements. • POSTMASTER: Send address changes to National Trust for Historic Preservation Membership, The Watergate Office Building, 2600 Virginia Ave. N.W., Suite 1100, Washington, D.C. 20037.

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Subscription questions and address changes: (800) 315-6847 SavingPlaces.org/magazine

PRESIDENT’S NOTE

Uncovering Forgotten History

I

started out in historic preservation many years ago as an archaeologist. One of the reasons I was drawn to that part of the field was the sheer excitement of unearthing parts of history that had been hidden for decades, or even centuries.

But uncovering history is not just for archaeologists. Digging deeper into the history of any historic place can uncover forgotten stories that provide a more complete understanding of our own narrative.

The Farnsworth House in Plano, Illinois, featured in this issue, is a good example.

A masterwork of Modernist architect Mies van der Rohe, the spare and simple rectangular form of the Farnsworth House seemingly floats above its rural setting. Its interior design, equally spare, is a reflection of the Miesian “less is more” philosophy. Since well before its 2003 acquisition by the National Trust, it has been furnished with Miesdesigned furniture as well—steel-framed Barcelona stools, a matching daybed, Brno chairs, and other pieces that complete the package.

What has been largely missing from this perfect Miesian picture, however, is the voice of Edith Farnsworth.

Farnsworth, a talented Chicago physician, musician, translator, and writer, commissioned the house and famously fought with Mies over its cost. But she also furnished it according to her own needs and her own taste— not the architect’s—with Italian and Scandinavian furniture. Still modern, still sleek, but warmer and more comfortable, these items worked together with pieces from her collection of Asian art. A far more accurate portrayal of how Edith actually lived at the Farnsworth House has now been re-created based on research by architecture professor Nora Wendl and interior architect Rob Kleinschmidt, and curated by Farnsworth Executive Director Scott Mehaffey. Supported by the Graham Foundation and the Tawani Foundation, the exhibition, “Edith Farnsworth Reconsidered,” reveals a voice that has been sidelined for too long. (Appropriate to our current times, the exhibition can be seen virtually, through a link at farnsworthhouse.org.)

The Farnsworth House is not the only place where a woman’s side of the story has not been fully told. Far from it. Sites associated with women’s history on the National Register of Historic Places reflect but a very small percentage of the Register’s total listings. Women’s stories, and their contributions, have been sorely neglected, their voices unheard.

We are committed to remedying this, starting with our campaign Where Women Made History. This past year, through an online crowdsourcing campaign, we collected more than 1,000 submissions of sites across America that illuminate and celebrate women’s roles in history. There will be more to come on Where Women Made History in future issues, and we are committed to uncovering this part of our history that should not be forgotten.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a privately funded nonprofit organization, works to save America’s historic places.

Paul Edmondson President and Chief Executive Officer Tabitha Almquist Chief Administrative Officer Laura Bracis Chief Financial Officer Lynn English Chief Development Officer Geoff Handy Chief Marketing Officer Katherine Malone-France Chief Preservation Officer Thompson M. Mayes Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel PRESIDENT EMERITUS Richard Moe FIELD OPERATIONS Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, District of Columbia, Houston, Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco BOARD OF TRUSTEES Timothy P. Whalen, Chair Susan E. Chapman-Hughes and Jay Clemens, Vice Chairs Christina Lee Brown, Linda Bruckheimer, Laura W. Bush, Lawrence H. Curtis, Samuel Dixon, Damien Dwin, Kevin Gover, Luis G. Hoyos, Shelley Hoon Keith, Fernando Lloveras San Miguel, C.H. Randolph Lyon, Martha Nelson, Charles Morgan Royce, Lisa See, G. Jackson Tankersley Jr., Phoebe Tudor Ex Officio The Attorney General of the United States The Secretary of the Interior of the United States The Director of the National Gallery of Art Representative, National Trust Advisors Representative, National Trust Historic Sites Councils & Boards Representative, National Preservation Partners Network Chairs Emeriti Robert M. Bass, Alan S. Boyd, Carolyn Brody, Nancy N. Campbell, William B. Hart, J. Clifford Hudson, Jonathan M. Kemper, Marita Rivero Honorary Trustee David McCullough NATIONAL TRUST HEADQUARTERS The Watergate Office Building 2600 Virginia Avenue NW Suite 1100, Washington, DC 20037 (800) 944-6847 SavingPlaces.org

PEDMONDSON@SAVINGPLACES.ORG

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PLACES RESTORED, THREATENED, SAVED, AND LOST

by Nicholas Som

S AV E D CHANDLER HOUSE After years of uncertainty, the Chandler House in Manchester, New Hampshire, has been saved. The mansion was constructed by businessman and New Hampshire state senator George B. Chandler and completed in 1890. After its 1915 purchase by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Manchester, it served as a bishop’s residence and later a convent, falling vacant in 2015. With demolition looming, the Manchester Historic Association began searching for a buyer, and the New Hampshire Preservation Alliance placed the house on its 2015 Seven to Save list. The Currier Museum of Art and the diocese discussed ways of saving the property for three years, but the diocese filed a demolition permit application in early June. Local preservationists responded by holding rallies outside the mansion and garnered more than 7,000 signatures for a petition to save it. In addition, Manchester Mayor Joyce Craig penned a letter to the diocese indicating her support for preserving the building. The diocese reached a sale agreement with the Currier in September. The Currier, which is located across the street from Chandler House, plans to rehabilitate the mansion, restoring the exterior and using the first floor as a museum dedicated to Manchester and New Hampshire history.

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ED BROUDER

TRANSITIONS

THE PLAZA HOTEL PIONEER PARK The Plaza Hotel Pioneer Park in El Paso, Texas, has opened following an extensive rehabilitation. Built in 1930 as the El Paso Hilton Hotel, the 19-story Art Deco building was the seventh high-rise built by Conrad Hilton and remained the tallest building in El Paso for more than 30 years. Hilton hired architect Henry C. Trost, who took inspiration from Southwestern pueblos in his design. The building was renamed the Plaza Motor Hotel before closing in 1991 and stood vacant until local businessman Paul Foster purchased it in 2008. Architecture firm Cooper Carry was chosen to lead the rehabilitation in 2017. It exposed the double-height lobby atrium that had been covered with a drop ceiling during a midcentury renovation, restored original viga detailing and precast concrete reliefs, and re-created the hotel’s historic canopies based on Trost’s drawings. Old photographs and newspaper articles guided the selection of interior materials such as mohair and tooled leather, as well as the restoration of the building’s stained-glass skylights. State and federal historic tax credits combined to make up 45 percent of the funding received for the project, which cost more than $78 million. The hotel welcomed its first guests in June of 2020.

FROM LEFT: THE PLAZA HOTEL PIONEER PARK; ANDY CARLSON/A&M RENOVATIONS

RESTORED

R E S T O R E D 11-F RECREATION BUILDING, GRANADA RELOCATION CENTER The 11-F Recreation Building in Granada, Colorado, was built around 1942 as part of the Granada Relocation Center, one of 10 sites selected by the War Relocation Authority to incarcerate Japanese Americans during World War II. At its peak the camp, commonly known as Amache, forcibly detained more than 7,300 people in prisonlike conditions.

When Amache closed in 1945, nearly all its 556 structures were demolished or sold for their material. The city of Granada purchased the recreation building and moved it near the center of the town for use as a maintenance shed and, later, storage space, removing about 40 feet from the building’s length in the process. It remained there until 2018, when nonprofit Friends of Amache worked with the city to move it back to its old location, replacing it on its original foundation. Construction company A&M Renovations split the building so it could replicate the missing 40 feet, and then performed vital roof and ceiling frame repairs. It also discovered small brick landings likely constructed by 11-F internees, buried more than a foot deep outside the foundation. Partially funded by a grant from the National Trust, the $437,000 restoration was completed in June of 2020.

Friends of Amache and the Amache Museum plan to interpret the building for the public, adding signage and historically accurate furnishings.

FALL 2020 | SavingPlaces.org

7

TRANSITIONS

SHEBOYGAN MUNICIPAL AUDITORIUM AND ARMORY Completed in 1942, the Sheboygan Municipal Auditorium and Armory in Wisconsin was commissioned by the Works Progress Administration to house the United States Army’s 32nd Infantry Division. It soon became a key multipurpose center, hosting events from Johnny Cash concerts to political rallies for Hubert Humphrey and Jesse Jackson. The Art Moderne–style structure also served as the home arena for Sheboygan’s NBA franchise—one of 17 original teams—and was the venue for the first game featuring a racially integrated, major professional-league basketball team in 1942. The building fell vacant in 2014, in part due to deterioration caused by neglect and deferred maintenance, but it remained structurally sound. After several adaptive reuse proposals failed, and a bid to host the Milwaukee Bucks’ D-League team fell through, the city of Sheboygan agreed to sell the property in April of 2018 to the nonprofit Armory Community Project, which intended to preserve it as an event space. However, the city gave the group only eight months to secure about $7 million in funding. The Armory Community Project raised more than $5 million before the deadline, but the city terminated the agreement after an intermediate financial benchmark could not be met. Demolition began in July of 2020, with no plans for development on the property as of press time.

T H R E AT E N E D RANCHO LOS AMIGOS The south campus of Rancho Los Amigos began in 1888 as the Los Angeles County Poor Farm. Located in Downey, California, the county-operated working farm provided room, board, and health care for indigent men and women who arrived in the decades after the California Gold Rush. Patients harvested vegetables and tended to animals in exchange for lodging. The site grew to encompass more than 102 buildings and 540 acres while evolving into a long-term rehabilitation hospital, taking the name Rancho Los Amigos in 1932. Over time, many of the hospital’s functions shifted to the newly constructed north campus of Rancho Los Amigos, and most of the original buildings fell vacant by the late 1980s. As the site deteriorated due to neglect and arson, multiple proposals to redevelop Rancho Los Amigos in a historically sensitive manner stalled. In June of 2020, the County of Los Angeles Board of Supervisors approved a plan to raze more than 60 historic structures, making way for new administrative buildings. The Los Angeles Conservancy, which supported the earlier redevelopment proposals, continues to advocate for alternatives that would preserve a greater portion of the south campus.

As of press time it is unclear when demolition will proceed.

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FROM TOP: BOB SHORT; ADRIAN SCOTT FINE/L.A. CONSERVANCY

LOST

“Historic places are in our nation’s DNA. We need to preserve them for generations to come.”

Merry Sanders Sarasota, FL National Trust member since 1985 PHOTO BY ALEX MCKNIGHT

Create your own meaningful legacy by including the National Trust for Historic Preservation in your estate plans. To learn more, contact us today.

TELEPHONE: 202.588.6017 EMAIL: legacy.savingplaces.org WEB: TrustLegacy.org Have you already included the National Trust in your will or estate plan? Please notify us so we can welcome you to our Legacy Circle.

PAST | PRESENT | FUTURE

F I R ST LO O K

Eight is Enough

STEFENTURNER.COM

FORTY-TWO YEARS AGO, preservation architect

Joseph Pell Lombardi took a risk. He purchased the spectacular but dilapidated Armour-Stiner Octagon House in Irvington-on-Hudson, New York, from the National Trust, which had bought it in 1976 to save it from demolition. “It was the most extraordinary house,” Lombardi says. He restored the eight-sided house to its 1872 splendor over the next four decades, eventually enlisting the help of his son Michael and other family members. The site, a National Trust easement property, joined the Trust’s Distinctive Destinations program in

2019, when it opened to the public for the first time.

Now there are even more reasons to visit. Since the opening, Michael Lombardi has largely completed the re-installation of the property’s 19th-century greenhouse on its original site, and is conserving the main house’s service kitchen, laundry room, and pantry. Updates to the rare Egyptian Revival Room are ongoing. And Joseph Lombardi has written a book about the house’s history and restoration, The ArmourStiner (Octagon) House. For more information on the site, visit armourstiner.com. —Meghan Drueding FALL 2020 | SavingPlaces.org

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PAST | PRESENT | FUTURE

PERSONALITY

Building Character Austin, Texas–based investor and real estate developer Clark Lyda has been a history buff since childhood.

Much of his development work focuses on finding new uses for old buildings, creating an economic impetus for their preservation. We spoke with him recently about some of his latest projects. —Meghan Drueding

WHAT APPEALS TO YOU ABOUT ADAPTIVE REUSE? My theory is that historic buildings get torn down because they lose their purpose.

You’ve got to preserve the essence of them but give them an economic purpose—a sustainable reason for being— so they can continue forward.

Older buildings tell us a story about the people who built them and the time they were built. Most tend to have a higher level of craft than ours do now.

And better materials, and more respect for resources. I’ve had

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varying degrees of success with them, but I find them to be more compelling.

WHAT’S A PROJECT YOU’RE PARTICULARLY PROUD OF? The Stagecoach Inn in Salado, Texas. The original part dates from 1860-ish. It was in bad shape when we got it; it had been allowed to deteriorate substantially. But the essence is intact.

One of the latest ones is another hotel, the Commodore Perry Estate in Austin. It’s had a lot of different people working on it. It was a 1928 property I had known since I went to school there in the 1970s, and it was a residence before that. We’re working with Stefanos Polyzoides, an amazing urbanist architect.

After 10 years of cost and effort, it’s now open, or at least part of it is. I think it’s really lovely.

I’ve done a lot of adaptive reuse work on buildings that aren’t particularly significant; they’re just old buildings. You have this character of material and craft. Why not preserve that instead of tearing it down?

We’ve tried to do that.

HOW HAVE YOUR HOTELS BEEN DOING IN THE PANDEMIC? We’re fortunate in that they are on larger sites and have largely external circulation. They have lots of outdoor dining spaces

and gardens, and the rooms have private outdoor spaces.

Lots of people from within Texas and even within Austin have been coming to get away from home. In addition to the obvious protocols with cleaning, distancing, masking, and all the other stuff everybody tries to do, we have the advantage of space.

We can create relative safety.

WHAT IS YOUR OWN HOUSE LIKE? It’s in Travis Heights, one of the oldest subdivisions in

Austin. It was built in 1934 by the Reuters, a family of grocers. It’s much more like a San Antonio house, with white stone and a Ludowici tile roof. It’s very Spanish Colonial. We’ve upgraded the electrical and plumbing, but the interior and exterior are largely original.

WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR FAVORITE HISTORIC PLACES? I have a real weakness for small West Texas towns—not the touristy ones! Also, I like

ABOVE: JESSICA ATTIE; OPPOSITE: DREW KELLY

HOW DID YOU BECOME INTERESTED IN HISTORIC PLACES? I grew up out in the country in Central Texas, around the late 1960s and early ’70s, when a lot of older places in Texas were still intact. My mother was very interested in history and collected antiques. It was just part of my life. So when things started disappearing in Central Texas around the early 1980s, during an economic growth spurt, it was disorienting and threatening to me. When I started investing in real estate, I gravitated toward odd properties people didn’t know what to do with, rather than conventional properties. Those tended to be properties with some history.

N E WS B R I E F

Law of the Land

TOP RIGHT: FRANK FICHTMUELLER/ALAMY

Above: The renovated Stagecoach Inn in Salado, Texas, a Historic Hotel of America, opened in 2018. Clark Lyda (right) used state historic tax credits to help finance the project.

the Menger Hotel in San Antonio. And I used to be a big fan of houses from the Gilded Age era, so I am drawn to places like Newport, Rhode Island, or Long Island, New York.

ON AUGUST 4, 2020, the Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA) was signed into law, placing a capstone on years of advocacy work by the National Trust and many other nonprofits. “This is the largest federal investment in the preservation of historic and cultural resources in a generation, and the result of a multi-year campaign that engaged preservationists across the country,” says Tom Cassidy, vice president of government relations and policy at the Trust.

The act, which received bipartisan support, benefits historic preservation in two primary ways. First, it will provide up to $9.5 billion over the next five years to the National Park Service and other federal agencies so they can tackle much-needed deferred maintenance projects. At sites such as the National Mall’s Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C., where the National Trust is helping combat constant flooding and crumbling infrastructure, that boost could be vital.

In addition, the GAOA fully supports the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Since its creation in 1965, the fund has helped acquire sites as varied as Women’s Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls, New York, and New Mexico’s Chaco Culture National Historical Park (shown), part of the Greater Chaco Landscape, which the Trust listed as one of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places in 2011. The act commits $900 million to the fund annually, a sum it has received only twice in its history. —Nicholas Som

FALL 2020 | SavingPlaces.org

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PAST | PRESENT | FUTURE

Out of the Shadows

D

espite the pandemic’s disruption of typical museum activities, National Trust Historic Sites are carrying on with digital and inperson exhibits this fall and winter. Much of this programming focuses on important, often overlooked women—including those we highlight here.

For more information about exhibitions at Trust Sites, visit SavingPlaces.org/historic-sites. —Meghan Drueding

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Length, in inches, of the new bedspread made for “Pliable Plane: Anni Albers” at Philip Johnson’s Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut, featuring the textile patterns of artist Anni Albers

20,000

Female garment workers who participated in the New York shirtwaist strike of 1909, highlighted in the Tenement Museum’s digital exhibit “Tenement Women: Agents of Change”

22

Model number of the Olivetti Lettera typewriter on display at Farnsworth House in Plano, Illinois, as part of “Edith Farnsworth Reconsidered”

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Steppingstones in the Lower Garden at the Woodrow Wilson House in Washington, D.C., where “Suffrage Outside” explores the history of the women’s voting rights movement

10

Short videos about entrepreneur Madam C.J. Walker, presented by her great-great-granddaughter, A’Lelia Bundles, as part of “Voices in the Landscape” at Lyndhurst in Tarrytown, New York

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Photographs of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, sculptor Margaret French Cresson in the online exhibition “Margaret French Cresson (1889–1973): Her Artistic Life and Legacy at Chesterwood”

7 1780

Groupings of steel-wire sculptures by artist Kristine Mays in the “Rich Soil” outdoor exhibit at Filoli in Woodside, California

Year seven enslaved women were listed as part of the household of Benjamin Chew, original owner of Cliveden in Philadelphia. Cliveden’s enslaved and free women are highlighted in “Preserving & Adapting Their World: The Women of Cliveden” Clockwise from bottom left: Madam C.J. Walker at the wheel; Garment workers on strike; Edith Farnsworth’s typewriter model; Margaret French Cresson; Kristine Mays

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FROM LEFT: MADAM WALKER FAMILY ARCHIVES/A’LELIA BUNDLES; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; WILLIAM ZBAREN; CHAPIN LIBRARY, WILLIAMS COLLEGE, GIFT OF THE NATIONAL TRUST FOR HISTORIC PRESERVATION/CHESTERWOOD; JEFF BARTEE

BY THE NUMBERS

OBJECT LESSON

Mealtime Memories

I

n 1901 Abraham and Fanny Rogarshevsky left Lithuania and joined the throngs of Eastern European immigrants who sailed to the tip of New York City’s Manhattan Island to start a new life. By 1908 the couple and their six children moved to a building on the Lower East Side that now houses the Tenement Museum, which has re-created the family’s threeroom apartment. On the kitchen table sits a white ceramic tureen with dainty floral motifs. As charming as it is simple—it has no special provenance—this everyday object tells the story of how an immigrant family held on to their old life amid a new one.

To keep kosher, Fanny had two sets of dishes, one for dairy and one for meat. The latter included this tureen. She used it to serve the traditional Sabbath meal of cholent, a stew of meat cuts, barley, and beans. The Sabbath, from Friday sunset to Saturday evening, is devoted to rest and prohibits work, so practicing Jews like the Rogarshevkys observed it by refraining from activities such as lighting a stove. Fanny made cholent on Fridays before sundown and left it on a low flame so the family could eat a hot meal during the Sabbath without breaking any rules.

After Abraham died of tuberculosis in 1918, Fanny began working as the building’s janitor. Still, according to family oral histories, she found the time to continue making cholent. The prized dish was passed down through the generations, a constant reminder of their roots. A great-granddaughter donated it to the Tenement Museum in 2010. —Amy Sutherland

N E WS B R I E F

Places in Danger IN SEPTEMBER, THE NATIONAL TRUST announced its 2020 list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places. One of the included sites, Rassawek (shown), once served as the capital of the Monacan Indian Nation in central Virginia. The James River Water Authority has proposed building a water pumping station at Rassawek, which would damage its rich historical resources FROM TOP: MO DAOUD; GREG WERKHEISER

and likely disturb Monacan burial grounds.

Among the other places on this year’s list are the National Negro Opera Company House in Pittsburgh; the Harada House in Riverside, California; the Terrace Plaza Hotel in Cincinnati; and the Ponce Historic Zone in Ponce, Puerto Rico. For the complete list and more information on each place, visit SavingPlaces.org/11most. —Meghan Drueding

FALL 2020 | SavingPlaces.org

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PRECIOUS STONES

THE CARVED MARKERS AT GOD’S LITTLE ACRE PROVIDE CLUES

TO NEWPORT, RHODE ISLAND’S AFRICAN AMERICAN PAST

•

R

amble around God’s Little Acre, a serene burying ground in Newport, Rhode Island, and you may come across this weathered headstone: “In memory of Duchess Quamino,” it reads, “a free black of distinguished excellence: in-

telligent, industrious, affectionate, honest, and of exemplary piety, who deceased June 4, 1804, aged 65.” A stone can be the doorway to a thousand stories.

BY K ATE SIBER ´

PHOTOGR A PH Y BY PHILIP C. K EITH

FALL 2020 | SavingPlaces.org

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Q

i

UAMINO WAS BORN ON THE GOLD COAST of what is now Ghana around 1739 and traveled captive across the Atlantic on a slave ship. After she arrived in Colonial-era Rhode Island, William Channing, the colony’s attorney general, enslaved her as a cook and baker. She married another African, John Quamino, who had been sent by his prosperous Ghanaian family to learn a trade in North America. Instead, an unscrupulous captain sold him into slavery.

John Quamino won a public lottery, purchased his freedom with the proceeds, and worked as a privateer during the American Revolution with the goal of earning enough money to free Duchess and their children. Tragically, he died in the war, but Duchess did not let that stop her from securing her own freedom and, some accounts say, that of her children, too. She ran a catering business, and her treats were so tasty she became renowned as the great “pastry queen” of Rhode Island. Legend holds that even George Washington was partial to her frosted plum cakes.

Now, Duchess Quamino rests in the largest intact Colonial-era African burying ground in the country. When approaching Newport from the west, cross over the Newport Bridge onto Aquidneck Island, take a right, and you will find God’s Little Acre along Farewell Street. Part of the larger Common Burying Ground, God’s Little Acre holds the remains of more than a thousand residents of African heritage who died around the time it was established, circa 1705, through 1990.

Among the markers are treasures of history: monuments to mysterious souls who left no records except a few words etched in stone, as well as people who led exceptional and well-documented lives. There’s the family of Pompe Stevens, a stone carver who worked in the John Stevens Shop, which still exists today. His signature may be the first existing mark of any African American artisan. Arthur Flagg, also known as Arthur Tikey, was a rope

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maker and distinguished member of the Free African Union Society. Among the later burials, Harriet A. Rice was the first African American woman to graduate from Wellesley College. As a physician, she earned one of the highest civilian honors from the French government for her service treating French soldiers in World War I. Today, God’s Little Acre is a peaceful swath of grass and trees dotted with slate, granite, and marble markers. Visitors peer at the historic inscriptions and carvings as dog walkers stroll by. Immaculate houses that date back centuries line the nearby streets. “God’s Little Acre grabs your attention as you come into town,” says Lew Keen, chairman of Newport’s Historic Cem-

etery Advisory Commission. “The site is very serene, very pleasant. You kind of have to wander around and discover it.”

God’s Little Acre wasn’t always so beloved and well kept. When preservationist Theresa Guzmán Stokes moved to Newport in the 1980s as a staffer for the United States Navy, she noticed that the area was overgrown, while other graveyards nearby were trim and tidy. Accompanied by Rowena Stewart, the founder and then-executive director of the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society, she approached the mayor, who arranged for city employees to mow and clean up the site. Over the years, Stokes and her husband, Keith, an eighth-generation Newporter, have become the burying ground’s most ardent advocates. Along with other

supporters in the preservation community, they have organized cleanups in the spring and fall, and offered tours for both adults and schoolchildren.

Interest in the burying ground and the stories of those interred there has snowballed in recent years.

The stones themselves, however, are deteriorating.

Since 1903, when a survey noted more than 300 markers, 70 have been lost, although some of those have been recovered more recently. New England winters are hard on slate gravestones, which are made of layers, like puff pastry. These slim leaves splinter apart after repeated freeze-thaw cycles.

From 2017 to 2019, the city oversaw the preservation of 22 headstones with funding from the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society and private donations, as well

Previous page: The headstone for Violet, daughter of John and Duchess Quamino, who died in 1792. Opposite: Duchess Quamino’s headstone. This page: Wide gaps in between stones at God’s Little Acre indicate places where additional markers may be missing or buried.

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This page, from left: Headstones for Elizabeth Stevens (d. 1779); Phillis and Prince Stevens (d. 1773); and Cuffe Gibbs (d.

1768). Opposite: Headstones for Violet Stevens (d. 1803); Violet Hammond (d. 1772); and Hector Butcher (d. 1720).

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as guidance from the Newport Historic Cemetery Advisory Commission. A 2019 grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund allowed the Preservation Society of Newport County to conserve another 20 headstones last fall and 20 more this past summer.

Lisa Cornell and her team at Beyond the Gravestone, a Connecticut-based restoration company, cleaned each marker, filled in cracks, consolidated the layers, and capped the stones with mortar to protect them from water infiltration.

Part of the reason the burying ground is so treasured is because the stories of African and African American history from the American Colonial period aren’t always widely known—even though Black people played important roles in every aspect of life in Newport and beyond.

“The burying ground is a wonderful starting point for getting those stories out because we can point to a gravesite and say, ‘this is the person’s story,’” says Theresa Guzmán Stokes, who is now the executive

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director of the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society.

She is also president of 1696 Heritage Group, which assists organizations in highlighting the contributions of underrepresented communities to American history through consulting, website development, and other services. “It becomes very real. It’s a physical touchstone to the past.”

Over the past couple of decades, the Stokeses and others (including Lew Keen) have offered hundreds of God’s Little Acre tours to visitors and students. Often, they say, white visitors are surprised to hear a story about African American history that does not focus on slavery. Instead, the tours celebrate the contributions that free and enslaved residents of African heritage were able to make despite enslavement and oppression. Black schoolchildren, especially, are frequently fascinated and awed.

“For Black folks, it’s a homecoming,” says Keith Stokes, vice president of 1696 Heritage Group. “Black folks get very excited about looking at the markers, hearing the stories, and feeling a real sense of pride

“

THE BURYING GROUND IS A WONDERFUL STARTING POINT FOR GETTING THOSE STORIES OUT BECAUSE WE CAN POINT TO A GRAVESITE AND SAY, ‘THIS IS THE PERSON’S STORY.’” —theresa guzmán stokes

that this is our history—this is our people.”

For the Stokeses, sharing these tales has become a calling. Traditionally, history education in the United States has centered on European and white perspectives. As a result, Theresa says, people of color often feel disconnected from the roles their ancestors played in the country’s development and prosperity: “Without knowledge of the struggles for freedom and equality, and the numerous achievements of our people, how can young people of color see a future of equality and success for themselves?”

Unlike many descendants of enslaved Africans, for whom family records are difficult to find, Keith Stokes has a deep knowledge of and connection to the contributions of his forebears, including those buried in God’s Little Acre. He still has family heirlooms that date to the time of enslavement, and in 2019 he traveled to Ghana to give a lecture about his ancestors for the Heritage and Cultural Society of Africa. There, he visited the 18th-century Fort William at Anomabo and strode through the very door—known as “the Door of

No Return”—that his own ancestor walked through on the way to North America.

“The village leader said, ‘well, for you, it’s the door of re-turn, because you came back!’” says Stokes. With his hosts, he participated in a libation ceremony, a memorial offering during which people pour liquid over the site where ancestors lived. As part of the ritual, he buried soil from God’s Little Acre to represent those ancestors’ return to their homeland. Soon, he will lead a similar ceremony in Newport, delivering soil from the fort at Anomabo to God’s Little Acre to complete the circle.

The community of Newport wasn’t always open to celebrating its African American history. Even 20 to 30 years ago, “all of us polite New Englanders did not want to associate New England’s Colonial history with slavery,” says Keith Stokes. “No one was ready for that. It was out of sight, out of mind. Keep things buried … People had to understand that this is a story that we all share.”

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This page: Theresa Guzmán Stokes and Keith Stokes, experts on God’s Little Acre and Newport’s underrepresented history. Opposite, top and right: Lisa Cornell of Beyond the Gravestone at work conserving a God’s Little Acre marker; Opposite, left: Cuffe Gibbs’ marker was created by his brother Pompey (also spelled Pompe) Stevens, a wellknown stone carver.

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The colony of Rhode Island played a major role in the slave trade in North America. In Newport, the first documented ship carrying enslaved Africans arrived in 1696. Before the American Revolution, the city was a significant slave-trading port in Rhode Island, which was one of the most active slave-trading colonies in British North America. In the middle of the 18th century, Africans represented about 17 percent of the community’s population. It is believed that by 1770, one of every four households in the city enslaved at least one person.

While Rhode Island did have some large farms, slavery generally looked different from the sweltering cotton fields of the South that most Americans associate with the institution. White Newporters worked closely alongside enslaved Africans in a variety of skilled trades in the maritime industry. People of African heritage worked as rope makers, carpenters, sailors, glassblowers, stone carvers, and seamstresses in sail-making shops. Many of Newport’s beloved historic structures, such as Redwood Library and Athenaeum, the Colony House, and Touro Synagogue—a National Trust Historic Site and the country’s oldest Jewish house of worship—were built by skilled African craftsmen, both enslaved and free.

Visitors are often surprised to learn that most of the Africans who arrived here were children. It wasn’t uncommon for kids as young as 7 to be sold into the transatlantic slave trade and forced to make the six- to eightmonth voyage. The majority of Africans who arrived in Newport were from what is today Ghana, though some may have come from Senegal and Nigeria. As a result,

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the Ghanaians shared customs and languages, which made it easier for them to retain their traditions and identities, as well as to organize among themselves.

In 1780, a group of African men in Newport gathered to form the country’s first Free African Union Society, a mutual aid society. Soon similar organizations would be founded in Providence, Boston, and beyond. They aimed to care for those in the African community and maintain and celebrate their identities. Many debated returning to Africa, and some in fact did brave the long journey back across the ocean. In Newport, the society created one of the first free African schools in the country and raised funds to pay for burials to ensure Africans in the community would have a place to rest.

Nearly two and a half centuries after the society formed, God’s Little Acre is still here, filled with markers arranged by the families of free African Americans, as well as enslavers. While other Colonial cities had large Black populations, their African burying grounds were often forgotten or, in some cases, destroyed. Not only does God’s Little Acre harbor the largest number of carved headstones of any Colonialera African burying ground in the U.S., they are decorated in distinctive ways with carvings of faces, symbols, and elegant lettering.

“If you stoop down and really study these stones and look at them, you’ll find that there was a whole group of people who lived totally differently than the other citizens of Newport—but they managed to retain their identity,” says Glenn Knoblock, an independent historian and author of African American Historic Burial Grounds and Gravesites of New England and other books on historic cemeteries. “Those images that you see, you cannot see anywhere else in New England and very few other places in the eastern United States. That’s what makes it one of the most historic places in African American history in the entire country. These treasures are hidden in the wideopen spaces. They’re there for everyone to see.”

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“

I WANDER AROUND STILL AFTER ALL THESE YEARS AND I’LL COME ACROSS A STONE I HAVEN’T READ BEFORE AND I’LL THINK, ‘WHO IS THIS GUY?’” —ruth s. taylor

SAVING AFRICAN AMERICAN CULTURAL HERITAGE IN 2019, THE PRESERVATION SOCIETY OF NEWPORT

received a $50,000 grant from the National Trust’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund for the conservation of gravestones at God’s Little Acre.

This past summer, the Trust announced the fund’s 27 grantees for 2020, which include the Lewis Latimer House Museum (shown) in Flushing, New York; the Muddy Waters House in Chicago; and the Maxville Heritage Interpretive Center in Joseph, Oregon. For more on these and other current and past Action Fund grant recipients, visit SavingPlaces.org/ african-american-cultural-heritage PHOTO BY ADRIAN SAS

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More and more people have been taking an interest in God’s Little Acre over the past few years, and locals expect the burgeoning curiosity to continue.

This summer, as protests against police brutality, racial violence, and inequity spread across the nation, many Americans looked to unearth historical stories as they wrestled for a better understanding of race.

“One thing we have certainly learned recently is the well of racism in this country is as deep as it ever was,” says Ruth S. Taylor of the Newport Historical Society. “We need to grapple with that. And one of the ways people are going to grapple with it is to try to learn more about the history—and that’s a place where we can be useful.” The society’s tours, which include one of the Common Burying Ground and God’s Little Acre, seamlessly incorporate the roles and accomplishments of people of color in Newport’s history. “I don’t want people to come to Newport and take the African American tour,” says Taylor. “I want people to come to Newport and take a history tour and learn everything.”

As God’s Little Acre sees more traffic, Keith Stokes acknowledges that increasing interest may lead to deterioration. Situated near a sign for the burying ground, printed flyers help educate visitors on the site’s significance and how to visit respectfully. (Grave rubbings are not allowed, for example, because they can chip the stones.)

His mother, who is 97, remembers strolling in God’s Little Acre as a girl and seeing so many markers, you could barely walk through. Now, wide grassy gaps stretch across the area. Did the missing stones fall over and become covered in soil? After the preservation projects are completed, the Stokeses hope to find out by using ground-penetrating radar.

Brown University architecture students are also collecting 3D images of the markers in God’s Little Acre and mapping the area using aerial drones. They plan to compile the materials into a database and share it with Newport’s Historic Cemetery Advisory Commission, which will eventually publicize their

work. Meanwhile, those involved with the commission and the Preservation Society of Newport County hope to secure the funds to preserve the remainder of the disintegrating stones so that they can continue to be a resource to scholars, schoolchildren, and visitors.

One individual donor has already committed to funding the preservation of 44 more stones.

“I wander around still after all these years and I’ll come across a stone I haven’t read before and I’ll think, ‘who is this guy?’” says the Newport Historical Society’s Taylor. “And I would like visitors to New-

port to do that, too. In some cases we can help answer that question, and in some cases somebody else may answer it in the future. Who are the people buried at God’s Little Acre? How did they get to Newport?

What did they do when they got here? These are the kinds of questions that we’re hoping people will come and ask.”

The headstone for Arthur Flagg, a rope maker who died in 1810 and was also known as Arthur Tikey, sits near other markers for members of his family.

KATE SIBER is a freelance writer based in Durango, Colorado, and the author of the children’s books National Parks of the U.S.A. and 50 Adventures in the 50 States. Her last story for Preservation was on Harriet Tubman, in the Spring 2020 issue.

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PRESENT

CLEARAN

FARNSWORTH

HOUSE

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T

THE PLEASURES AND PERILS OF A TRANSPARENT MIDCENTURY MASTERPIECE

BY LEE BEY

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FARNSWORTH

HOUSE

Scott Mehaffey started the workweek in a mild panic. You could hear it in his voice.

He was headed to the Farnsworth House, architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s superlative one-room, steel-and-glass house located in Plano, Illinois. Mehaffey, the house’s executive director, can usually reach the property by car. But on this mid-spring day in 2020, he needed to hop a ride on a Little Rock-Fox Fire Protection District rescue boat to get there.

That’s because the Farnsworth House—an architectural masterpiece owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation that is also one of the most acclaimed Modernist buildings in the world—was up to its knees in water: The nearby Fox River, swollen by rains, had jumped its banks, submerging the house’s minimalist lower terrace and its nine travertine steps. The residence itself, a rectangular white pavilion built to sit high enough to let floodwaters flow underneath, seemed untouched so far.

But the water was rising. Would the Farnsworth House’s precious interior flood? It’s happened before, but not since 2008.

Ultimately, the waters held and the house stayed dry. The drama was the latest in the 75-year saga that is the Farnsworth House. From its conception until now, the little house on the Illinois prairie that began its life as a weekend residence for Edith Farnsworth has been the subject of disputes, lawsuits, and floods. It’s the stuff of lore, books, a play, museum exhibits—and even a future motion picture.

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Left: Edith Farnsworth (at left) and her friend Beth Dunlap relax on the steps at Farnsworth House in 1951. Opposite: Architect Mies van der Rohe perched the house 5 feet above the ground to keep it away from the Fox River’s floodwaters.

PREVIOUS PAGES AND OPPOSITE: MIKE CREWS; LEFT: WILLIAM E. DUNLAP

“We’ll see what we have when we get there,” Mehaffey said.

F

arnsworth met Mies at a Chicago dinner party in 1945. The architect and German émigré had lived in Chicago for seven years. Most of his groundbreaking work—such as the 860/880 Lake Shore Drive high-rises and the Seagram Building in Manhattan—lay years ahead of him. But Mies, approaching 60 at the time, still enjoyed acclaim as a former director of Germany’s influential Bauhaus and as the visionary brought to Chicago to lead the architecture program at what would become the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT).

Farnsworth had just bought a tract of land near the Fox River in Plano, she told Mies, and wanted to build a small getaway there.

“I wonder if there might be some young man in your office who would be willing to design a small studio weekend house worthy of that lovely shore,’’ she told Mies, as recounted by author Alex Beam in his 2020

book Broken Glass: Mies van der Rohe, Edith Farnsworth, and the Fight Over a Modernist Masterpiece.

“I would love to build any kind of house for you,” Mies responded.

Mies was impressed by Farnsworth—and not without reason. By all accounts, Edith Brooks Farnsworth was remarkable.

Six feet tall and born into wealth in 1903, Farnsworth played the violin in her youth. By the 1920s, she was studying in Italy under composer and concert violinist Mario Corti. But the field of medicine caught her eye, and she graduated from what was then called Northwestern University Medical School in 1938. Farnsworth became an assistant professor at the medical school and served as a kidney specialist at Passavant Memorial Hospital while maintaining a private practice.

“She was kind of a risk-taker her whole life,” says Mehaffey, who has led the Farnsworth House since FALL 2020 | SavingPlaces.org

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FARNSWORTH

HOUSE

the first well-known house to be designed with glass on all sides. That Miesian sensibility is ubiquitous now. [The house has] become the iconography of what Modernist architecture looks like. And it’s expressed perfectly.”

C

ompleted in 1951, the Farnsworth House is a 1,586-square-foot, rectangular, single-story house built from steel and glass in a meadow approximately 100 feet from the Fox River. The house was finished two years after architect Philip Johnson’s sublime Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut, which is also a National Trust Historic Site. But while Johnson’s building sits squarely on the ground, the Farnsworth House floats more than 5 feet above its surroundings, perched “[THE HOUSE HAS] BECOME THE atop a welded steel frame. Terraces of travertine (a type of limestone) allow access ICONOGRAPHY OF WHAT MODERNIST into the house.

ARCHITECTURE LOOKS LIKE. AND IT’S The interior contains no walls, other than EXPRESSED PERFECTLY.” —ASHLEY R. WILSON primavera wood partitions that enclose a single service core containing two bathrooms, a kitchen, heating and electrical equipment, R. Wilson, the National Trust’s Graham Gund Archiand a fireplace. Edith Farnsworth would have seen all tect, who is leading efforts to restore the Farnsworth four seasons vividly at play outside the floor-to-ceiling House. glass exterior walls. From the outside, the home’s minimal “There aren’t that many buildings that you can say are a profile was designed to nestle it within the surrounding first and that they’re this influential,” Wilson adds. “It was natural landscape of trees and flora.

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MIKE CREWS

2018. “She convinced her parents to let her live in Italy at age 19. And to come back and major in medicine [at a time] when Northwestern had a limit of four women per class.”

Farnsworth wanted Mies to design a simple place intertwined with nature where she could unwind and relax. The initial cost estimate for the house was about $40,000. The doctor ended up paying a lot more, and she and Mies would tussle in court over the cost of the project. Their fight spilled out into the print media. But the house created amid the chaos changed the course of modern architecture.

“It’s really revolutionary in what it is,” says Ashley

FROM TOP: MIKE CREWS; WILLIAM ZBAREN

But it all came at a cost. Farnsworth and Mies fell out over the building’s escalating construction fees.

“It was one problem after another,” Mehaffey says.

“And she was frustrated.”

The house’s final price tag was more than $74,000, almost twice the original budget. After it was mostly completed, Mies filed a mechanic’s lien against the building in a bid to recover unpaid design and construction costs.

Farnsworth countersued, alleging malpractice.

“It was a clash of two personalities of immense force and authority,” Mies biographer Franz Schulze wrote in his 1985 book Mies van der Rohe: A Critical Biography.

Mies, who argued Farnsworth had approved the changes that drove up the price of construction, won the suit. Though her countersuit was dismissed, Farnsworth eventually reached a favorable settlement.

Was there a romance between Farnsworth and Mies? Schulze’s biography and other sources have hinted at it, but there’s no real proof, Mehaffey says.

Farnsworth’s diaries don’t mention a relationship between the two. After the lawsuit concluded, they never spoke to each other again.

The architect died in 1969. Farnsworth, who died in 1977, kept the house until she sold it to Britain’s Lord Peter Palumbo in 1972 for a reported $120,000. She was living in Italy by then and never became a fan of the house.

Opposite and top: Farnsworth House as it typically looks, with most of its furniture designed by Mies.

Above: For the current exhibition “Edith Farnsworth Reconsidered,” the National Historic Landmark has been temporarily refurnished to look the way it did in 1955.

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FARNSWORTH

HOUSE

“The truth is that in this house with its four walls of glass I feel like a prowling animal, always on the alert,” she said in the May 1953 edition of House Beautiful

site opened for tours in 2004. Today, the Trust owns and operates the house, while Landmarks Illinois retains a preservation easement on the property.

“The Farnsworth House was the pinnacle of Mies van der Rohe’s residential work and a seminal expression of “[THE FARNSWORTH HOUSE’S] SETTING his revolutionary ‘less is more’ design BESIDE THE FOX RIVER IS PARAMOUNT philosophy,” says Bonnie McDonald, president and CEO of Landmarks IlliTO UNDERSTANDING THIS GLOBALLY nois. “Its setting beside the Fox River is INFLUENTIAL DESIGN.” —BONNIE MCDONALD paramount to understanding this globally influential design. When we learned that the building would be auctioned … magazine. “I am always restless. Even in the evening. I we took drastic and unprecedented action to protect the feel like a sentinel on guard day and night.”

Farnsworth House with the National Trust on behalf of Farnsworth also complained that the home’s glass the world’s architecture community.” steamed up. “You feel as though you are in a car in the rain with a windshield wiper that doesn’t work,” Newshe clash between a famous architect and his week quoted her as saying in June of 1953. wealthy, strong-willed client—played against True to form, the house was a source of drama in 2003, the background of what would become one when Palumbo put it up for sale. The state of Illinois was of the most notable buildings in the world— poised to buy it, but backed out, citing financial woes. sounds like the stuff of movies. In fact, it is: A feature Palumbo then put the Farnsworth House up for aucfilm about Mies, Farnsworth, and the house, with Ralph tion, prompting fears that an out-of-state buyer would Fiennes and Elizabeth Debicki as stars and Richard uproot the house and ship it elsewhere. The National Press as the writer and director, is currently in the works.

Trust and the preservation group Landmarks Illinois— Documented history of the house has typically foaided by a last-minute fundraising campaign—bought cused more on Mies, but this year, as the highlight of the building with a bid of more than $7.5 million. The the current exhibit “Edith Farnsworth Reconsidered,” 32 preservation

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PHOTOS: WILLIAM ZBAREN

T

Opposite, from left: As part of “Edith Farnsworth Reconsidered,” the entry and dining areas contain pieces

by Alvar Aalto, Florence Knoll, Bruno Mathsson, Gio Ponti, and Hans Wegner; Edith’s writing desk holds an Olivetti typewriter, a photo of her with her mother, and re-typed copies of her poems. This page: The house after heavy rains in May of 2020.

the site has temporarily refurnished the residence according to the time when Farnsworth lived there.

(The permanent, mostly Mies-designed furniture will be returned to the site early in 2022.) Using new replicas and loaned antiques, Mehaffey, his team, and consultants Nora Wendl and Rob Kleinschmidt re-created the interiors based on historic photographs.

For the first time, visitors (both in-person and on a virtual reality tour) can experience the house almost exactly as Farnsworth did.

The doctor also gardened, walked her dogs, and enjoyed birdwatching on the 60-acre site, and Mehaffey and the rest of the Farnsworth House staff have introduced ways for visitors to share in that outdoor connection. An exterior-only tour option and a publicly accessible kayak landing both debuted this past summer, and a bike path that connects the site with downtown Aurora, Illinois (accessible by train from Chicago), is slated to open soon. The site offers bird hikes and seasonal landscape hikes, too. Picnicking is encouraged. “It has to be about more than Mies,” Mehaffey says.

T

SCOTT MEHAFFEY

he Fox River originates in southeast Wisconsin and runs south for 202 miles until it feeds into the Illinois River near Ottawa, Illinois. Along the way, the Fox gradually drops 470 feet, a plunge that gives the river enough force to have powered the mills and dams that once lined the waterway.

And when there are heavy rains, the river flows over its banks and surrounds the Farnsworth House.

In recent decades, the flooding has occurred at levels higher than Mies’ design anticipated. A 10-foot wall of surging floodwaters crashed through the windows in July of 1996, when Palumbo owned the house, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage. Chicago architect Dirk Lohan, Mies’ grandson, oversaw a restoration following the flood.

Even non-catastrophic rains still leave their mark on the house over time, damaging the terrace’s travertine and its steel supports and framing. Winter is also an enemy, as freeze-thaw cycles cause the uncommonly close-set travertine to buckle and crack.

Funding contributed through the National Trust’s Where Women Made History campaign has supported Farnsworth House’s “Edith Farnsworth Reconsidered” exhibit. Visit SavingPlaces.org/womens-history to learn more about the campaign and how you can help.

“It’s got 220 pieces of travertine on it,” National Trust architect Wilson says of the troubled lower terrace. “Mies is a detail god, and he only had a 16th-ofan-inch joint between the travertine pavers.”

Bids for the terrace repair work—including both sets of steps, the internal drainage system, the surrounding steel, and the travertine—went out this past summer.

And the National Trust has been continually restoring the glass window panels over the past six years. But more fixes are required. The house needs a new roof, and the radiant-heat tubing in the floor should be replaced, says Mehaffey.

The organization has also proposed a below-grade hydraulic lift system, designed by the engineering firm Silman, that would hoist the house far above any floodwaters—not unlike the way a car is lifted at the oil change shop. If built, it would provide an innovative flood mitigation solution while allowing the house to stay on its original site. “Everything about Mies’ design hinges on that,” says Wilson. “If it’s not right there on the river, you no longer understand the power of the building.”

The National Trust is looking to raise $10 million to cover the cost of needed preservation work at the house, an endowment for its long-term maintenance, and the lift project. In the meantime, the terrace conservation work will also help the house fend off future floods, as Mies intended.

“The work on the lower terrace will allow the smooth stone, steel surfaces, and interior drains to shed water as they were designed to do,” says Katherine MaloneFrance, the National Trust’s chief preservation officer.

“Restoration and ongoing maintenance of the house is critically important.”

LEE BEY is a Chicago-based writer and photographer, former architecture critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, and senior lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is the author of the book Southern Exposure: The Overlooked Architecture of Chicago’s South Side, and he rejoined the Sun-Times in 2019 as a member of the editorial board.

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2020 WINNERS RICHARD H. DRIEHAUS FOUNDATION NATIONAL PRESERVATION AWARDS

COMMUNITY

SPIRIT

by Chris Warren

TREY CLARK

The winners of the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation National Preservation Awards for 2020 inhabit three very different cities—Memphis, Tennessee; New York; and Boston. The winning projects, though, share a common goal: to make their neighborhoods stronger and more responsive to the needs of the people who live and work there. One houses a city agency devoted to helping small businesses, another provides essential health care services to the public, and a third creates job opportunities and access to healthy food.

The Driehaus Awards, which honor the nation’s most outstanding and forward-thinking historic preservation and adaptive reuse projects, are sponsored by the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation and presented by the National Trust. This year’s jurors were Carl Elefante, principal emeritus of Quinn Evans Architects; Anthea Hartig, director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History; and Justin Moore, executive director of the New York City Public Design Commission.

Read on to learn more about this year’s winners.

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UNIVERSAL LIFE INSURANCE BUILDING

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he Universal Life Insurance Company building, located on the edge of downtown Memphis, is at once a symbol of progress against adversity, a showpiece designed to celebrate Black history, and an engine for future economic and cultural progress.

It’s also a testament to the patience, persistence, and innovation of architects Juan Self and Jimmie Tucker, who purchased the deteriorating building in 2006. They spent more than a decade putting together the financing to renovate it for a new life, which began in earnest after its grand reopening in 2019.

Designed by influential African American architects Moses and Calvin McKissack, the building opened in 1949 as the headquarters of the Universal Life Insurance Company. Founded in 1923 by Joseph Edison Walker and a few partners, the company’s original mission was to serve African Americans who were turned away from white-owned banks and financial services companies. With an avowed mission of “improving the economic condition of people of color,” Universal Life Insurance Company offered mortgages, insurance, job opportunities, and scholarships to African Americans in and around Memphis.

Turns out, serving the Black community and helping to finance its dreams and progress was good business, despite the challenges of racial injustice. “It was an incredible accomplishment that team was able to make as African Americans in 1923, starting a business and growing it to be one of the largest insurance companies in the Southeast and having offices around the country, including on the West Coast,” says Self. “I’m still in awe of everything they were able to do, particularly in that era.”

The building itself was a visible and very intentional exclamation point on the company’s success. Its architecture relied heavily on Egyptian Revival imagery, including reed-like front columns, that proudly celebrates African history. Terrazzo floors graced the interior and Tennessee marble wainscoting was used liberally throughout the common areas. Gold leaf stenciling announced the names of office occupants in the 33,000-square-foot structure.

And it wasn’t just a hub for commerce. The Memphis

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branch of the NAACP made its home there, and a basement cafeteria became a locus for community gatherings during the Civil Rights era.

Though the Universal Life Insurance Company became one of the largest Black-owned businesses in Memphis by 1973, the company later wound up its operations and closed in 2002. Tucker and Self purchased the building in 2006 and worked with the National Park Service to get it listed on the National Register of Historic Places by 2007.

“We began to put together a development plan and by the time we had it ready, 2008 hit, and the financial crisis blew it out of the water,” recalls Self. “But we had so much skin in the game; we had to win.”

It took another seven years to gather financing—a mix of federal historic tax credits and grants and, eventually, energy conservation bonds that made it possible to move into the construction phase. One critical step to securing rehabilitation funding was getting the City of Memphis to sign on as the major tenant. “That was incredibly significant because we talked to a lot of banks, and many times they questioned the mix of tenants being small businesses—even when they were law firms and engineering companies that were well established,” says Tucker.

Today, the city’s Entrepreneurs Network Center, which aids small businesses, occupies the building, along with the office of Self+Tucker Architects. Both Tucker and Self want to see the space once again become an engine of economic and community activity. Middle Tennessee State University’s Center for Historic Preservation developed a public exhibit about the building and company’s unique history that is housed on the first floor. Tucker and Self have been examining the possibility of bringing in a restaurant.

Their mission sounds like a 21st-century version of the building’s original mission. “Our focus from the start was to become a hub of entrepreneurs, and in some respects the city office there helps to propagate that,” says Self. “It’s attracting entrepreneurs and creatives and creating a different vibe that is focused on economic development and business development so our community can grow and prosper.”

PHOTOS: TREY CLARK

MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE

Previous pages: The Universal Life Insurance Company building in Memphis, with its restored original sign. This page, clockwise from top: The rehabbed building occupies a prominent downtown corner; Juan Self (left) and Jimmie Tucker of Self+Tucker Architects; The original 1940s window frames were filled with energyefficient double-pane glass, helping the project achieve LEED Gold certification.

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CHELSEA DISTRICT HEALTH CENTER NEW YORK

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featured a black stone base, black casement windows that had been replaced over time, orange bricks, and cast stone accents. Years of use and exposure to the weather led to cracks in the masonry, and ugly window air conditioning units and ground-floor security grates provided more visual barriers.

Crews repaired the brick and stone while removing the grates in favor of security windows. A layer of insulation was added inside the exterior wall, and the existing non-historic windows were replaced with highperformance ones. (These and other energy efficiency upgrades earned the building LEED Gold certification.)

On the rear elevation, Yablon and his team added a new, glass-enclosed stairway.

The Chelsea District Health Center reopened in 2018 as the Leona Baumgartner District Health Center (after the city’s first female health commissioner) and is also now known as the Chelsea Sexual Health Center. In the interior clinical spaces, undulating ceilings are made of wood slats, which both contributes to a natural, stress-free environment and creates the space required for new HVAC equipment. “The curved ceiling accommodates extra infrastructure, and that’s how we put the ducts in. But when the ceiling goes back up, you get more of a sense of height, which is important in older buildings with low floor-tofloor height,” says Yablon.

Since the building opened, the $23 million rehabilitation has received just the sort of reaction he wanted. Patients have posted on Yelp that going to an appointment is as pleasant as visiting a museum. “We know that the staff likes working there, and the department is proud of the facility,” says Yablon. “To us, it’s a model of what a public clinic can be.”

Opposite, clockwise from top: A new, perforated Corian screen on the roof hides the building’s mechanical equipment from view; The original Art Deco exterior detailing has been conserved; An undulating wood ceiling adds visual warmth and interest while making room for HVAC infrastructure.

PHOTOS: MICHAEL MORAN

W

hen then-Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia and other New York City officials made the groundbreaking decision to construct a network of public health facilities for lowincome citizens in the 1930s, they took the buildings’ design seriously. “The high quality of architecture was meant to communicate that they valued public health,” says architect Stephen Yablon, whose firm recently transformed one of these buildings, the Art Deco–style Chelsea District Health Center.

Built in 1937 and located on Manhattan’s Chelsea Park, the health center served its original purpose for decades.

But by the early 2000s it and most of the city’s other public health buildings were showing their age. The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene developed a plan to reimagine some of them to become cutting-edge treatment centers for combatting sexually transmitted diseases, particularly HIV and AIDS. After the city government commissioned Yablon to repurpose the Chelsea Distict Health Center, he found that the building no longer reflected the high level of care doctors and physician assistants were providing patients. “The doctors and caregivers are great people and dedicated to what they are doing. But the environment had a defensive look, like the patients were people to be defended against,” he says. “You walked in the lobby and there was a security desk behind glass, and it’s off-putting as soon as you enter.

You would never do that in a private clinic.”

There were also functional obstacles. The existing building was not designed to accommodate modern medical equipment and infrastructure. Yablon’s challenge was to come up with a design that served the needs of the professionals who work there while also creating an enticing interior that removed any hesitation patients might have about seeking care. “You want to communicate that there is no stigma to getting care and that you get the same level of care as somebody who has more income,” says Yablon.

“People need to know their self-worth is the same.”

That meant reimagining both the exterior and the interior of the 26,128-square-foot building. The original exterior

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FOWLER CLARK EPSTEIN FARM

A

s a child growing up in the Boston neighborhood of Dorchester, Patricia Spence used to ride her bike past a dilapidated old farmhouse in neighboring Mattapan. “It was the creepy house,” recalls Spence. “I’ve known that property all my life.”

Today, Spence spends a big chunk of her life at the property that once frightened her. That’s because the 18th-century Fowler Clark Epstein Farm has become the headquarters for the Urban Farming Institute of Boston (UFI), the nonprofit she runs. Its mission is to promote urban farming as a vehicle to increase access to healthy food in disadvantaged neighborhoods, catalyze economic activity, and train people to become capable farmers and entrepreneurs. UFI manages seven farms in the neighborhoods of Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan, and earns income by selling its produce to local restaurants and food trucks as well as through farm stands and community supported agriculture programs.

But the idea that the Fowler Clark Epstein Farm would be a suitable headquarters for anything was highly unlikely just a few years ago. Once a part of a 330-acre tract of agricultural land owned by the Fowler family since 1636, the property gained a Federal–style farmhouse in 1786. In the 1860s the farm’s new owners, the Clark family, added a carriage barn to the estate. (See the Winter 2019 issue of Preservation for a larger story on the property’s past and present.)

Over time, the original 330 acres dwindled to about three-quarters of an acre containing the farmhouse and barn. Jorge Epstein, a local jeweler and collector of weathervanes, doors, turrets, and other architectural pieces, purchased that smaller property in 1941. The onetime farm became known for his salvage business, Old Mansions Company, which gave interior designers and home rehabbers access to his vast collection. After Epstein died in 1998, the property quickly fell into disrepair.

In 2005 the Boston Landmarks Commission learned of plans to demolish the historic buildings and stepped in to designate them as landmarks, which meant they couldn’t be knocked down. A decade later the nonprofit preservation group Historic Boston Inc. (HBI) purchased the abandoned and much diminished property.

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Kathy Kottaridis, HBI’s executive director, says the motivation to purchase the farm wasn’t just to save the farmhouse and barn; rather, it was that the property had the potential to benefit the surrounding neighborhood. “One of the criteria we have for evaluating properties before we take them on is whether transforming them would result in something bigger,” she says. “It’s as much about respecting architecture and history as doing it in a way that answers questions about whether they can stand on their own in a modern economy and how they can do that.”

Eventually, UFI and HBI connected. Years of work went into assembling $3.8 million in financing to fund the rehabilitation of the farm, a package that consisted of state and federal historic tax credits, funding from nonprofits such as the Trust for Public Land, individual donations, and more traditional debt and equity financing.

Once the money was available, rehabilitation work began, overseen by architecture firm Perkins and Will. The barn and house’s exteriors remained intact, and the interiors were adapted into offices, storage space, food prep areas, community meeting space, and a demonstration kitchen. UFI moved into the property in 2018.

COVID-19 has forced UFI to suspend one farm stand as well as in-person instruction for staff farmers and classes for local residents. But these programs have moved online, and the organization is finding other ways to engage the community, including constructing and distributing “grow boxes” that locals can use to cultivate their own produce.

Though UFI has been renting the farm from HBI, it is now raising money to buy the property outright. It has also added a greenhouse so it can more easily grow produce year-round.

When the initial plans for re-purposing the farm were in their infancy, Spence knew it was important to reach out to the community to elicit its support. “People were skeptical at first,” she remembers. By the time the farm reopened in 2018, local citizens had become ardent supporters.

“The community was so happy something was being done with the farm,” says Spence. “The fact that we were growing food, and the people doing the work looked like them, made all the difference.”

PHOTOS: IAN MACLELLAN

BOSTON

Clockwise from top: Volunteers from the preservation carpentry program at North Bennet Street School did some of the work on the main house; UFI training program graduate Michelle Montolio; The demonstration kitchen in the barn.

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THE TIDAL BASIN IDEAS LAB IS AN URGENT CALL TO ACTION! The National Mall Tidal Basin is under grave threat. Home to the Jefferson Memorial and the famed cherry trees—and newer memorials to Martin Luther King Jr. and FDR—this iconic memorial landscape in Washington, D.C., faces profound challenges including crumbling infrastructure, daily flooding, and instability of the land underneath.

This October, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, in partnership with the Trust for the National Mall, the National Park Service, and American Express, will unveil the National Mall Tidal Basin Ideas Lab exhibition online. Five landscape architecture firms present their proposals addressing ecological concerns with dramatically different responses to the challenges facing the Tidal Basin. We invite you to see the proposals and tell us what you think.

Help save the Tidal Basin! Visit TidalBasinIdeasLab.org PHOTO BY SAM KITTNER

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WEEKEND GETAWAYS From charming and eclectic towns and burgs to heritage coastal climes, America’s historic areas are opening back up to welcome you for day trips, weekend getaways, or more. Enjoy Main Streets dining and shopping, rural bike rides, walks on the beach, and fascinating tours and museums.

ALABAMA GULF SHORES AND ORANGE BEACH

Gulf Shores and Orange Beach are open and ready to welcome you this fall.

Though the destination is most known for its beaches, many are surprised to hear that there is much history to be explored, specifically at Fort Morgan State Historic Site. Having played a crucial role

From top: Cumberland, Maryland’s charming and historic downtown sits at the convergence of the Potomac River, C&O Canal, and major roads and rail lines. Photo courtesy Allegany County Tourism; Fort Morgan. Photo courtesy Gulf Shores & Orange Beach Tourism

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION in the Battle of Mobile Bay, it’s a favorite for both history buffs and families.

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MARYLAND ALLEGANY COUNTY

Home to America’s First Road Trip!

Moving history starts here in Mountain Maryland, where stories of our nation’s early transportation milestones are told through our river, rails, trails, mountains, and towns. Celebrate the 170th anniversary of the completion of the C&O Canal National Historical Park.

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CALVERT COUNTY Calvert County, on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay, is home to two lighthouses, a park with 65 identified archaeological sites, a Smithsonianaffiliated art garden and a brand-new Barn Quilt Trail. Explore maritime history and enjoy waterfront dining, wineries, breweries, shops and galleries.

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FREDERICK COUNTY Downtown Frederick is home to a bustling historic district full of specialty shops and celebrity-chef culinary experiences. History buffs can explore Civil War battlefields, learn about healing and compassion at the National Museum of Civil War Medicine, and walk in the footsteps of Francis Scott Key. Venture outside the city to see 3 historic covered bridges, and hike, bike or paddle in Frederick County’s state and national parks. Relax and drink in the view at a local winery, brewery, or distillery.

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From top: Calvert County Barn Quilt Trail. Photo courtesy Calvert County Tourism; Susquehanna Museum at the Lock House in Havre de Grace, MD. Photo by Sean Simmons; Roddy Road Covered Bridge. Photo courtesy Visit Frederick

WEEKEND GETAWAYS HARFORD COUNTY Harford County is resplendent with beauty, history, culture, outdoor adventure, and rich heritage. The historic waterfront town of Havre de Grace has five museums, three National Scenic Trails, and stunning views. Plan a trip to Harford County.

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MISSOURI CAPE GIRARDEAU

Nestled along the banks of the Mississippi River is the port town of Cape Girardeau. Cape is a blend of inspiring cultures, sports and entertainment, and tasteful temptations for the palette. And the atmosphere at these local favorites provides an opportunity to get lost in conversation. After you indulge, explore all Cape has to offer with eclectic shops, award-winning breweries and wineries, a full-service casino on the Mississippi Riverbank, or a comedy club bringing in national acts weekly.

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ST. CHARLES Just west of St. Louis you’ll find St. Charles, a river city with a unique historical perspective, beautiful sights, friendly people, and a pace just a little slower than that of the big city. The people of St. Charles have labored lovingly to preserve and share its treasured river heritage. You’re invited to experience the charm and beauty of a city that has been welcoming visitors since 1769.

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From top: The Red House Interpretive Center is a Certified Lewis and Clark Trail Site and a Missouri Legacy Project. Your safety is a priority to us. Please follow social distancing and protective guidelines. Photo courtesy Visit Cape Girardeau; Main Street St. Charles, MO. Photo courtesy Discover St. Charles

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION STE. GENEVIEVE Looking for a getaway? Visit Ste. Genevieve, Missouri’s Oldest Town and soon home to a national historical park. The relaxing downtown features historic houses, charming shops, unique dining experiences. The surrounding countryside offers wineries, hiking, golf, more. Just one hour south of St. Louis on Interstate 55.

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ST. JOSEPH Once a thriving trade stop and the starting point of the Pony Express, the town has held firm to its roots.

From top: Katy Depot in Frontier Park, St. Charles, MO. Photo courtesy Discover St. Charles; The Guibourd-Valle House is one of a handful of French Colonial vertical log structures in Ste. Genevieve open for public tours. Photo courtesy VisitSteGen Tourism

WEEKEND GETAWAYS

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION Fascinating historical sites and museums commemorate the generations of folks who have made the area their home. It’s hard to even go a few feet in the city without coming across a historical marker that recounts an extraordinary story. Today, St. Joseph is home to 13 museums, a thriving arts and music culture, breathtaking architecture, and a one-of-a-kind park system. During this uncertain time, we’re here for you when you’re ready to visit. Your safety is important to us.

There is a mask mandate currently in effect. Please check our website for details and a free guide.

STJOMO.COM From top: Mask mandate currently in place.

Check website for details. Photo courtesy St. Joseph Mo Visitors Bureau; Pony Express Museum. Photo courtesy St. Joseph Mo Visitors Bureau

WEEKEND GETAWAYS

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VIRGINIA LEXINGTON

The Blue Ridge Parkway, “America’s Favorite Drive,” offers inspiring mountain vistas and access to Rockbridge Country’s many indie-owned shops and eateries.

Lexington, VA is an excellent hub for driving vacations, giving you the option to cruise scenic byways or explore nature at Natural Bridge State Park.

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STAUNTON Five decades of historic preservation have led to a nationally acclaimed downtown, an astounding array of Victorian-era architecture, bustling shops and outdoor dining, two Historic Hotels of America, and six walkable historic districts. The American Shakespeare Center runs all year to critical acclaim, most recently from The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. Staunton is just minutes away from two of America’s favorite fresh-air attractions, Shenandoah National Park/ Skyline Drive and the Blue Ridge Parkway.

VISITSTAUNTON.COM From top: Once owned by Thomas Jefferson, Natural Bridge is estimated to be at least 500 million years old. Photo by Steve Shires; Dine Out in Downtown Staunton. Courtesy Staunton Convention and Visitor’s Bureau; Shakespeare Under the Stars at Blackburn Inn. Courtesy Staunton Convention and Visitor’s Bureau

WEEKEND GETAWAYS

TO FILL

TO FILL

AT HOME|SACRAMENTO

Storybook Ending FOR DIANA WILLIAMS CORLESS AND JAMES CORLESS, A MAJOR REHABILITATION RESULTED IN A PERFECT FAMILY HOUSE Interview by Lydia Lee Photography by Kat Alves JAMES CORLESS: When we moved from

Washington, D.C., to Sacramento, we were looking for something in an area like Capitol Hill in D.C., which is incredibly walkable. My job as a transportation planner is right downtown, and we wanted the kids—who are 15, 14, and 12—to be able to get around by foot. We love older houses and came across this three-story Victorian built around 1899 near Midtown Sacramento. It was so interesting and intriguing, like something you’d see in a storybook.

DIANA WILLIAMS CORLESS: It was a house out of a fairy tale. It had a turret with curved, leaded-glass windows; a “musician’s balcony” over the staircase where theoretically a few musicians could stand to serenade people; a kitchen/dining room pass-through cabinet; a vintage intercom system with speaking tubes; and architectural flourishes everywhere.

It had been on the market for quite some time. My guess is that people were scared off by the work it needed. The sellers did disclose that the roof—which is like the Alps, with so many peaks!—was leaky, and replacing it alone would cost $100,000. Whoever was going to take this on would have to either be really naive or have the stomach for this kind of project.

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more money than you think,” which is exactly what happened.

We went for it anyway. We saw some lovely houses in other areas, but they didn’t have the personality or history we were looking for and were further from downtown. In the end, the renovation cost about as much as the purchase price, but we got a one-of-a-kind house that we love.

The No. 1 thing we wanted to change was the kitchen, which was a narrow galley kitchen, around 8.5 by 15 feet. The other big thing on the list was the unfinished attic. It was like a ship’s hull; the pitch was so steep, and the crossbeams went on forever. We wanted to turn that into a usable space.

JAMES: The attic was reportedly built as a ballroom—it was one giant room.

DIANA: I knew that the house was on the city’s list of historic resources, and met with Page & Turnbull, architects who specialize in historic preservation. It was all women in their office in Sacramento at the time, and they knew the house, Opposite: Architects Melisa Gaudreau and Karen Benouar of Page & Turnbull worked closely with Ernest Building Company’s Rocky Fletcher on the project, which included the rehabilitation of the curved turret windows and quatrefoil parlor windows. Many of the original wood shingles were re-created by hand.

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SACRAMENTO|AT HOME

which is sort of famous locally. They had a great mix of expertise and humility and helpfulness.

The architects fleshed out the plan for the kitchen, which was to take down the walls between the galley kitchen and an anteroom that probably had been a butler’s pantry/prep space and a weird laundry room, and make the three into one bright space. The attic became a family room.

We got through the permitting process pretty quickly, interviewed several contractors, and landed upon Rocky Fletcher, who is a carpenter by craft. His exacting attention to detail really shined in the restoration.

Pretty soon after work started, there was a big, unpleasant surprise. We thought that the basement had been reinforced during a previous renovation, but it turned out that one wall wasn’t adequately reinforced to the extent it needed to be for us to build out the attic. So we had to stop everything for a month and deal with the wall. We also ended up rehabilitating all the windows, replacing all the plumbing and the wiring, and installing a new HVAC system.

I now know that rehabbing a house is a lot like peeling an onion. You think you know what you’re going for, but you remove a layer and it’s a decision point.

You can’t go any further until you decide what to do. Sometimes things needed to be fixed right then; other times it was like buying an insurance policy. Rocky would say, “If you go ahead and replace the pipes now, the whole time you’re here, you will never have to worry about it. But if we put the boards back now, Opposite, clockwise from top: Diana Williams Corless and children (from left) Wade, Harry, and Viva in the kitchen, where new cabinetry added around the original pass-through turns it into the centerpiece of the room; Original Ionic columns anchor the parlor; A musician’s balcony perches over the first-floor stairwell. This page: The Queen Anne–style house’s attic has been transformed into a family room.

given the age of the pipes, you might have to deal with it later.”

We were also taking care of this thing that was bigger and going to live longer than us. It felt really wrong not to take the high road, though it was crazy-making and expensive at times.

Some of the most interesting parts of the renovation were finding people who had the skills necessary for projects that aren’t everyday work—refurbishing original windows, plastering coved ceilings, remaking woodwork so it appears seamless with original items. I’m a freelance writer and used to be a reporter for the Oakland Tribune, so I made some calls and tag-teamed with the architects to figure things out.

I was always impressed by the talent we were able to find. The glass in the curved windows in the turret had to be replaced, and it turns out that there’s only one guy in California who can do this. There’s another guy in Texas, and one in upstate New York, and they’re all over 80. I’m not sure how much longer there will be people with these skills around.

JAMES: We moved in on Christmas Eve in 2018. The house wasn’t really done and our

entire lives were packed up in boxes. We got takeout ramen from a local restaurant, and the whole family was sitting around the table. We were exhausted and relieved, and we thought about all the people who had helped us get into the house.

I had a feeling of what it might have been like for Caroline and Fred Mason, the original owners of the house. It must have been a lovely christening for them.

Fred was a German immigrant and Caroline was the daughter of German immigrants. They had a laundry and a haberdashery; they were clearly very successful. We believe it took them about two years to build the house, and they must have been incredibly proud of it.

DIANA: They knew they were building something special. We felt this incredible satisfaction and awe, and excitement for how our lives were going to unfold within these walls.

The house has been a refuge in this [pandemic] time. It’s so light, it’s got different spaces we can retreat to yet also spaces where we can come together. I’ve been feeling incredibly grateful that we’re here. Like this house has seen it all and we’re going to be fine.

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“Working with the National Trust to create a legacy of preserving places has been a joy!”

John and Frances Clausen New Canaan, CT National Trust members since 1976 PHOTO BY KAREN MORNEAU

Gifts of Securities, IRA Charitable Rollovers, and Charitable Gift Annuities are tax-wise tools that work for you and America’s historic places through your support of the National Trust. Contact us to learn more today!

TELEPHONE: 202.588.6017 EMAIL: legacy.savingplaces.org WEB: TrustLegacy.org Have you already included the National Trust in your will or estate plan? Please notify us so we can welcome you to our Legacy Circle.

SPOTLIGHT ON advertisers To receive FREE information about the historic destinations, hotels, products, and services advertised in P ­ reservation, return the postage-paid reply card or visit SavingPlaces.org/advertisers. Add your email address to the postcard to receive information via email.

HISTORIC DOWNTOWNS 101. All Weekend Getaways 1. Gulf Shores and Orange Beach, Alabama. Step into Alabama Gulf Coast history at Fort Morgan.

2. Allegany County, Maryland. Learn more about Allegany County, the Mountain Side of Maryland.

3. Calvert County, Maryland.

Chesapeake Bay western shore, lighthouses, maritime history, beaches.

4. Frederick County, Maryland.

Shopping, dining, Civil War sites, and craft beverages.

5. Harford County, Maryland. Create your memories in Harford County, Maryland.

6. Cape Girardeau, Missouri. Find all you need to plan the perfect getaway here.

7. Ste. Genevieve, Missouri. French Colonial History, Local Artists, Wineries, Scenic Drives and Hiking 8. St. Joseph, Missouri. We’ll be here for you when you’re ready to visit.

9. St. Charles, Missouri. Beautifully restored 10-block historic district. Site of Missouri’s first state capitol.

17. Mimslyn Inn, Virginia. Our warmth and charm have been welcoming guests since 1931.

18. Omni Homestead, Hot Springs, Virginia. An iconic American resort, nestled in the Allegheny Mountains of Virginia.

HISTORIC TRAVEL 103. All Historic Travel 19. Baltimore National Heritage Area, Maryland. Experience Baltimore’s unique heritage with walking tours.

20. Bowie, Maryland. Belair Mansion—embracing 270 years of rich and unique history.

21. Somerset County, Maryland.

Discover the Chesapeake Experience with us.

22. Talbot County, Maryland. Escape to Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay. 23. Maryland. Official travel information and resources.

24. Vicksburg, Mississippi. The key to the South.

10. Lexington, Virginia. Scenic Shenandoah Valley town built on Southern hospitality, history and culture.

25. Fallingwater, Mill Run, Pennsylvania. Dramatically sited over a waterfall. A Frank Lloyd Wright masterpiece.

11. Staunton, Virginia. Share a passion for history, arts, and travel? Discover Staunton in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.

26. Gillespie County Country Schools, Texas. Driving trail tour brochure of historic schools available.

HISTORIC HOTELS OF AMERICA 102. All Historic Hotels of America 12. Hotel Du Pont, Wilmington, Delaware. A Gilded Age icon with artistry, grace, and sophistication.

13. Historic Hotels of America.

Download or order the 2020 Directory: HistoricHotels.org/ directory.

14. Historic Inns of Annapolis, Maryland. 18th-century charm in the Annapolis historic district.

MIKE CREWS

16. Skytop Lodge, Skytop, Pennsylvania. A Dutch Colonial style historic resort in the Pocono Mountains.

15. Oheka Castle Hotel & Estate, Huntington, New York. Historic mansion on Long Island’s famed Gold Coast.

27. Laredo, Texas. Contact us to book your historical tour!

28. Boar’s Head Resort, Charlottesville, Virginia. AAA Four Diamond resort in Charlottesville, Virginia.

29. Landmark Trust USA, Vermont.

Memorable vacations in five authentically restored historic vacation rental homes.

30. National Trust Tours. Leader in cultural heritage tourism worldwide.

Free 2020 catalog.

EDUCATION 104. All Education 31. Belmont College, St. Clairsville, Ohio. Two-year hands-on Preservation/Restoration Degree

Farnsworth House, a National Trust Historic Site in Plano, Illinois, with its iconic Modernist furniture.

32. Bucks County Community College. Online Historic Preservation Certificate & Associate Degree

42. Beacon Designs. Offering customizable keepsakes made in the U.S.A.

33. Columbia University. New York City multi-disciplinary MS program.

43. Conrad Schmitt. Decorative painting, stained glass, conservation, restoration, interior design, murals, liturgical consulting, and paint analysis.

34. University of Georgia. Founded in 1982, the Historic Preservation program at UGA is one of the oldest of its kind.

35. University of Georgia. Certificate in Native American Studies in combination with a Master of Historic Preservation or Landscape Architecture.

36. University of Maryland. MHP in historic preservation and dual degree with related disciplines.

37. Pratt Institute. Our preservation program prepares students for leadership in a diverse world.

38. School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Chicago, Illinois. Study restoration design, materials conservation, architectural history, preservation planning, and more.

39. Thomas Jefferson University. MS in Historic Preservation, Graduate Certificate in Historic Preservation 40. Ursuline College, Cleveland, Ohio. Graduate and undergraduate programs in Historic Preservation

PRODUCTS AND SERVICES 105. All Products and Services 41. Authentic Designs. Handcrafted Early American light fixtures.

44. Erie Landmark Co. National Register plaques and medallions.

45. Franklin Bronze Plaques.

Manufacturing custom cast bronze and aluminum plaques—made in USA. 46. Indow. Window inserts that press in place without a mounting bracket.

47. InnerGlass. Glass interior storm windows that outperform almost any replacement.

48. Legacy Circle. Support the National Trust by making an estate gift.

49. National Trust Insurance Services. Insurance solutions for historic property owners and preservation organizations.

50. Preservation Products, Inc. Roof restoration systems.

51. Vintage Millwork. Doors, reclaimed wood, cupolas, hardware, staircases, windows, and historical restoration.

52. Wolfe House and Building Movers. Lifting and moving historic buildings nationwide.

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PRESERVATIONeducation

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PRESERVATIONeducation

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PRESERVATIONeducation

Icons of modernism. Homes to U.S. Presidents.

Historic Sites connect us with our heritage. Whether your interest is architecture, gardens, the arts, social justice, or all of them combined, visiting the National Trust’s 27 historic sites open to the public is certain to illuminate your world.

Acoma Sky City Acoma Pueblo, NM acomaskycity.org

Drayton Hall Charleston, SC draytonhall.org

Lyndhurst Tarrytown, NY lyndhurst.org

African Meeting House & Abiel Smith School Boston, MA maah.org

Farnsworth House Plano, IL farnsworthhouse.org

Oatlands Leesburg, VA oatlands.org

Filoli Woodside, CA filoli.org

President Lincoln’s Cottage Washington, DC lincolncottage.org

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Pope-Leighey House Alexandria, VA woodlawnpopeleighey.org

The Shadows New Iberia, LA shadowsontheteche.org

African Meeting House Nantucket & Boston-Higginbotham House Nantucket, MA maah.org Belle Grove Middletown, VA bellegrove.org Brucemore Cedar Rapids, IA brucemore.org Chesterwood Stockbridge, MA chesterwood.org Cliveden Philadelphia, PA cliveden.org Cooper Molera Adobe Monterey, CA www.parks.ca.gov Decatur House Washington, DC decaturhouse.org

The Gaylord Building Lockport, IL gaylordbuilding.org The Glass House New Canaan, CT theglasshouse.org Hotel de Paris Museum Georgetown, CO hoteldeparismuseum.org James Madison’s Montpelier Montpelier Station, VA montpelier.org Kykuit Tarrytown, NY hudsonvalley.org

PHOTO: THE GLASS HOUSE BY HARF ZIMMERMAN

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The Tenement Museum New York, NY tenement.org Touro Synagogue Newport, RI tourosynagogue.org Villa Finale San Antonio, TX villafinale.org Woodlawn Alexandria, VA woodlawnpopeleighey.org Woodrow Wilson House Washington, DC woodrowwilsonhouse.org

PAUL R. WILLIAMS|ITINERARY

Leading by Design NINE PLACES THAT ILLUSTRATE THE STORY OF TRAILBLAZING BLACK ARCHITECT PAUL R. WILLIAMS

by Lydia Lee

THE VOX AGENCY

The parabolic lobby Paul R. Williams designed for the La Concha Motel now hosts visitors to the Neon Museum in Las Vegas. The museum has received two National Trust grants over the past four years.

D

uring Hollywood’s Golden Age, Paul R. Williams was its “starchitect,” designing glamorous homes for Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, Frank Sinatra, and other celebrities.

However, overt racial discrimination was also a reality throughout much of his five-decade-long career.

As a high school student wishing to study architecture, Williams faced what he called “the blank wall of discouragement.” Undeterred, he redoubled his efforts to pursue an education, studying at the University of Southern California (USC) and other institutions. He also worked in the office of landscape architect and urban planner Wilbur D. Cook and was mentored by architect Reginald Johnson.

Certified as a building contractor and trained

in Beaux-Arts architecture, Williams was adept at interpreting period styles. He also gained renown for his extraordinary attention to detail and personalized elements. He had to put his white clientele at ease by learning how to draw upside down, so he could sketch a design across the table rather than sitting next to them. In 1923, he launched his own practice, became the first African American member of the American Institute of Architects, and quickly rose to the top of his chosen profession. In addition to his well-known residential work, he also created many distinctive commercial and institutional buildings.

“His brilliance comes through in the sheer diversity and range of his work, but also in his ability to negotiate relationships, and his grit and persistence,” says FALL 2020 | SavingPlaces.org

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From top: Paul R. Williams in 1952; Williams’ own International Style house in Los Angeles, now an L.A. HistoricCultural Monument.

Learn more about his work in the new book Regarding Paul R. Williams: A Photographer’s View

by Janna Ireland (Angel City Press, 2020).

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hotel’s Paul Williams Suite, which retains the architect’s original design, gives guests an idea of what it would be like to live in one of his houses. Yet, when he was working on the hotel in the 1940s, he wasn’t allowed to stay overnight or even eat by the pool because of his race.

About a 20-minute drive east of the hotel is the Leistikow House in L.A.’s Windsor Square. Williams designed the Tudor–style home in 1923, and its stepped bank of windows follows the home’s grand staircase. Not far from here is Williams’ own home at the entrance to the semi-gated neighborhood of LaFayette Square. Built in the early 1950s, its modern lines show how his architecture evolved with the times. “It was such an elegant home—there was no wasted space,” says Karen E. Hudson, Williams’ granddaughter, who grew up nearby and later lived in

the house for many years.

“I think designing timeless homes for families was so important to him in part because he was an orphan.”

The recent documentary Hollywood’s Architect: The Paul R. Williams Story, available to stream on PBS SoCal’s website, discusses his life and provides a virtual tour of this residence and other dwellings.

A number of his other L.A. houses have been demolished or renovated beyond recognition, most recently Eva Gabor’s former residence in Holmby Hills. “Even though his homes are coveted, there are people who don’t appreciate them,” says Adrian Scott Fine, director of advocacy at the Los Angeles Conservancy. “We’d love to see some sort of blanket approach to designating and protecting his work at the city level, because one-offs are not getting the job done. He’s L.A.’s beloved homegrown architect.”

THIS PAGE FROM TOP: JULIUS SHULMAN/©J. PAUL GETTY TRUST; ©FOTOWORKS/BENNY CHAN; OPPOSITE, FROM LEFT: ARCHITECTURAL RESOURCES GROUP; ERIC STAUDENMAIER

LeRonn P. Brooks, associate curator at Getty Research Institute, which, together with the USC School of Architecture, recently acquired Williams’ archive. “Williams overcame the legal, social, professional, and institutional barriers that prevented many African Americans from entering the field of architecture. My hope is that scholarship from the archive will flesh out the loud nuances of Williams’ life so we can better understand his contributions to the field and the scale of his imagination.”

A prolific architect, Williams designed more than 3,000 buildings before his death in 1980. His touch is evident at the five-star Beverly Hills Hotel; the cursive lettering on its iconic sign is based on his own handwriting. Hired to revive the hotel’s allure after the Great Depression, Williams infused the spaces with flair. His designs were known for their graceful, curving lines and connection with the outdoors; the Fountain Coffee Room, with its long, swooping counter, is a highlight. Today, the

PAUL R. WILLIAMS|ITINERARY

Located on a prominent corner in the West Adams district, the six-story Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Building shows another side of the architect’s work.

Founded in 1925, the Black-owned company was one of the first in L.A. to offer life insurance to Black people, who were often denied coverage by white-owned companies. In Williams’ handsome Late Moderne design from 1949, the lobby includes two large murals that depict Black history in California. A small plaza, added during a 2015 renovation, commemorates Williams and the company’s history.

Nearby is the strikingly domed Founder’s Church of Religious Science in Koreatown. Williams was a friend of the church’s minister, William Hornaday, who told Williams that he “didn’t want any corners that the devil could hide in.” Completed in 1960, the oval building gathers up the large congregation in a cozy semicircle with a wide, curved balcony. The church received a $50,000 grant from the National Trust’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund earlier this year.

One of Williams’ first major commissions, the 28th Street YMCA in South L.A., dates to 1926. Built as separate facilities during segregation, Black YMCAs served as important cultural and political hubs for the community. Williams embellished the Spanish Colonial Revival complex with bas-relief portraits of Booker T. Washington and Frederick Douglass to inspire young men visiting the center. Since

then, an award-winning rehabilitation and expansion by Santa Monica, California, firm Koning Eizenberg Architecture has given it a new life as affordable housing.

Williams’ hospitality projects took him as far as Medellín, Colombia, but closer to home, his 1961 design for the La Concha Motel in Las Vegas is particularly notable.

The concrete parabolas of the building’s lobby are reminiscent of Southern California’s Googie–style architecture. Today, the space, which was moved from its original location in 2006, is the visitor center for the Neon Museum.

On the East Coast, Williams helped to modernize the Howard University campus in Washington, D.C. The historically Black university commissioned the joint team of Williams and Hilyard Robinson to design numerous buildings starting in the mid-1930s.

Robinson was committed to the International Style, and the structures are spare and angular. But

From top: The Williams-designed 28th Street YMCA in Los Angeles has been converted into affordable housing; Curvilinear interiors, such as those at Founder’s Church of Religious Science in L.A., characterize much of Williams’ work.

upon closer examination, one sees decorative motifs in the brickwork of buildings like the Ernest Everett Just Hall and the Ira Aldridge Theatre. “They were working in the leading aesthetic of the time, but you can see how they were trying to relate it to African American culture through these specific architectural elements,” says Brad Grant, professor of architecture at Howard.

In 2017, Williams was posthumously awarded the AIA Gold Medal, one of the highest honors of his chosen profession; it is still the case today that only 2 percent of the nation’s licensed architects are Black or African American. “My grandfather’s been gone 40 years, and I don’t think he’d be happy to see where we are today,” says Hudson, who is a steward of his legacy.

“He used his imagination for creative problem-solving, and our future depends on giving more young people, particularly people of color, the opportunity to use their imagination. I hope his life is an inspiration to others.”

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MARKETplace

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OUTSIDE|THE BOX

Modernist Mile

THE MIDCENTURY CHARMS OF A PRESERVED STREETSCAPE IN TUCSON, ARIZONA

by Reed Karaim

GMVARGAS/JUDE IGNACIO AND GERARDINE VARGAS/TUCSON HISTORIC PRESERVATION FOUNDATION

Anne Rysdale designed the three-story, glassand-masonry Haas Building (1957), one of the architectural highlights of the Sunshine Mile.

A

s America struggles through the confusion and pain of 2020, it can be hard to remember there was a time when our country advertised its faith in the future in bright, Day-Glo colors and whimsical, exuberant design. Tucson, Arizona’s “Sunshine Mile,” a commercial strip containing dozens of Midcentury Modern buildings that was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in May, reflects the spirit of those days. It embodies the quintessentially American architecture that sprang up, particularly in the Southwest, in the middle of the 20th century.

Today, the city sprawls much farther east, but Demion Clinco, CEO of the Tucson Historic Preservation Foundation,

notes that when the Sunshine Mile was being developed in the 1940s and ’50s, “it was one of the first shopping centers east of downtown, in the emerging suburbs.”

The retail outlets and commercial strip developments—with their flat roofs, glass fronts, and Modernist design—represented a small, growing city looking to the future.

“Tucson was really trying to shape itself into this idea of a modern desert city, trying to shrug off the vestiges of the Old West and embrace this new era,” says Clinco.

The Sunshine Mile runs along Tucson’s Broadway Boulevard, kicking off from the west with the Welcome Diner, a sterling example of Googie architecture. This futuristic, slightly kitschy midcentury

style, popular for motels and gas stations, was influenced by the nation’s emerging car culture and fascination with the Space Age. The asymmetrical roof, neon counter lighting, and wall of glass in architect Ronald Bergquist’s design would have been right at home in the classic movie American Graffiti, set in the early 1960s.

Cruising down Broadway takes you past several other notable Midcentury Modern structures, including the Haas Building (1957) by architect Anne Rysdale and the Kelly Building (1964) by architect Nicholas Sakellar. Valley National Bank (now a Chase Bank branch), completed in 1971, marks the Mile’s eastern edge. The sinuous, sculptural building, with Don Smith of Friedman and Jobusch, Architects and Engineers, as lead designer, is perhaps the most recognized work by this prominent Tucson firm.

By the 1970s, Tucson was well on its way to becoming today’s city of more than half a million people, where east-west traffic congestion has long been a concern. A project now underway to widen Broadway Boulevard originally threatened many of the buildings along the Sunshine Mile. The local preservation community rallied, working with the city and regional transportation authority starting in 2011 to reduce the planned widening from eight lanes to six, helping to preserve the Mile’s historic character.

Clinco sees the effort as a model for Tucson going forward. “I think this could really become the catalyst for major revitalizations of significant buildings and streetscapes,” he says. “We have this rich 20th-century heritage, and it’s something that we should celebrate. It’s classic Americana.”

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TRAVEL|HISTORIC TRAVEL

MARYLAND

MARYLAND

MARYLAND

MISSISSIPPI

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PENNSYLVANIA

TEXAS

TEXAS

VERMONT

VIRGINIA

SAVINGPLACES.ORG/ WOMENS-HISTORY

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HISTORIC properties

RealEstate.SavingPlaces.org

SAVANNAH, GA La Scala Ristorante, a full-service turnkey restaurant located on highly visible boulevard lined with live oak trees, this exquisitely restored 7,000+ sq. ft. mansion is being sold fully furnished and equipped. Has 6 separate dining rooms, a brick wine cellar and multiple al fresco dining and event spaces. Currently seating 130 under roof. All new mechanical, plumbing, and HVAC systems.

Detached carriage house apartment plus storage. Jessica Kelly, Engel & Volkers, (912) 238-0874.

RICHMOND, KY Historic Kentucky stone mansion and farm on 51.92 acres surrounded on 3 sides by beautiful Silver Creek. Built in 1790 by Nathan Hawkins, the house is approximately 6,820 sq. ft. consisting of 19 rooms, 6 baths, the original cellar and a fully finished basement and attic.

Has 4 fireplaces with 3 inserts. The 3 historic barns including a 3-stall run-in were fully restored by Amish builders as is the Ice House. Nancy Robertson (859) 661-7660.

BOSTON, MA Beacon Street: 1874 5-story brownstone by Peabody & Stearns in heart of Back Bay. Owner’s Frenchinfluenced 3-bedroom, 2-bath duplex features living room with Clerc & Margeridon landscape wallpaper, 12-ft. ceilings, and 3 fireplaces. Four income-producing apartments.

Office, deck, elevator, parking, and courtyard garden.

Options include a single-family home with au-pair suite.

Price upon request. Contact Douglas Miller, (617) 2764460, douglas.miller@compass.com.

UPPER MARLBORO, MD Waverly Mansion is a historic landmark and superb equestrian facility minutes to DC and Annapolis. Built in 1855 this elegant Italianate Victorian is richly appointed with high ceilings, elaborate moldings and medallions, marble mantels, original wood paneling. With rolling hills, pastoral vistas, and every amenity for the horse enthusiast, this private horse training facility is first class and Waverly Mansion is a home of rare distinction. Gary Gestson, Long & Foster, (301) 975-9500, gary@LNF.com.

HILLSBOROUGH, NC Historic Bellevue, c. 1800, a beautiful Italinate-style villa located on 2.36 acres and nestled on a hill in the heart of downtown. The house appears today largely as it did then, a pair of 2-story front gable wings connected by a central 3-story tower with a pyramid roof.

With 6,036 sq. ft., 5 bedrooms, and 5.5 baths. Once a B&B, the house has been lovingly restored to a single family residence.

Relax on the gorgeous wrap around front porch and enjoy the view. Robbin Taylor-Hall, (919) 906-0573.

TANNERSVILLE, NY Hathaway, the V. Everit Macy Estate, c. 1907 and listed on the National Register. Rare early house by famed New York society architects Delano and Aldrich. This Arts and Crafts-style estate has spectacular mountain views. The 12,000-sq. ft. house is on 200 acres in Catskills Park, 2 hours from New York City. Incredibly intact house, chestnut paneling, original finishes, fireplaces, and hardware throughout. Contact Lewis Jacobsen, Hunter Foundation, (917) 575-1302.

CHARLES TOWN, WV One of the most important landmarks in Charles Town, this 1/2-acre corner parcel has 2 lots with 4 buildings. Historic site, c. 1789, Charles Washington’s office and Thomas Griggs House, one of the oldest standing structures in Charles Town. There are 2 commercial buildings on this site with room to add more.

If you want to be where history is rolling down the streets, this wonderful property may be for you; $750,000. Carolyn Snyder, (304) 267-1050, www.snyderbailey.com.

MARTINSBURG, WV Rare opportunity. Lick Run, c.

1774, on National Register and 125 acres unrestricted.

Stone Georgian 5,000 sq. ft. home, limestone barn, wonderful stone mill. Rare grouping of historic structures.

Beautiful grounds, multiple streams, waterfall, and mill race with walking path. Handsome large comfortable house, 6 bedrooms, 5 fireplaces, gourmet kitchen, second kitchen. Convenient location, near I-81; $1,600,000.

Carolyn Snyder, (304) 267-1050, www.snyderbailey.com.

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Reservations: 800-678-8946 | HistoricHotels.org

HOTEL DU PONT

HISTORIC INNS OF ANNAPOLIS

OHEKA CASTLE

WILMINGTON, DELAWARE Filled with stunning architecture and history, HOTEL DU PONT has entertained guests for over a century. To step inside is to find yourself transported back to an era when people knew how to travel in style and expected the very best. Visit today and add your name to the history of the HOTEL DU PONT.

ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND Experience 18th-century appeal mixed with 21st-­ century convenience at the Historic Inns of Annapolis. Comprising three distinct buildings, the inns offer a refreshing mix of historic ambiance, timeless hospitality, and modern amenities in the heart of the Annapolis Historic District. Come see us and enjoy all that Maryland’s capital city has to offer.

HUNTINGTON, NEW YORK A majestic French chateau-style mansion on Long Island’s famed Gold Coast and the former residence of Otto Hermann Kahn during the decadent Roaring Twenties. Today, Oheka is listed on the National Register of Historic Places boasting 32 guestrooms and suites, fine dining, a stately library, and mansion tours of the estate and gardens for guests to experience the Castle’s rich history.

HOTELDUPONT.COM

HISTORICINNSOFANNAPOLIS.COM

OHEKA.COM

(302) 594-3122

(410) 263-2641

(631) 659-1400

SKYTOP LODGE

THE OMNI HOMESTEAD RESORT

MIMSLYN INN

SKYTOP, PENNSYLVANIA Live the adventure with a naturally inspired getaway at one of the most esteemed lodges in the country—Skytop. This grand historic estate features the very best in accommodations, fine dining, and limitless recreation through 5,500 pristine acres of majestic beauty nestled in the picturesque northeast mountains of Pennsylvania.

HOT SPRINGS, VIRGINIA Fall in love with America’s First Resort. Genuine hospitality, more than 250 years of history and activities including golf, archery, shooting sports, equestrian center, falconry, fly fishing and more make this an ideal getaway in any season.

LURAY, VIRGINIA A Shenandoah Valley tradition since 1931. Offering an elegant blend of quality and comfort featuring a fine selection of rooms/suites, private cottages, fine and casual dining, outdoor pool and spa. New to the Inn collection—The Manor House and Cottages—historic and luxury cottages with main house and onsite pool.

Additional amenities include private event/ reunion site.

SKYTOP.COM

THEOMNIHOMESTEAD.COM

MIMSLYNINN.COM

(800) 345-7759

(540) 839-1766

(540) 743-5105

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FINAL FRAME

Moody’s Jewelry sign, Tulsa, Oklahoma, circa 1949 PHOTO POSTED ON INSTAGRAM BY DREW WALKER (@WAWALKER1978) ON JUNE 24, 2020

WHY THIS PLACE? I’m 42. A lot of these kinds of

signs were still around when I was growing up. I took them for granted. I thought they were neat, but they were always there.

Once I got older and started traveling more, I realized things were starting to go away. That was when I started to make an effort, especially around my hometown in Arkansas. I tried to take as many pictures as I could of things around there that had specific meaning to me. Also, any time my family and I travel, I make time to take pictures.

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to Tulsa, Oklahoma. It’s an active jewelry store. The sign is obviously original. There’s just so much going on in it. The burgundy and mauve are a funky color combination.

These signs have got to be expensive to maintain and repair. The owners must have taken pains to keep it looking new and nice. That shows it means something to them, too.

Final Frame celebrates historic places that are meaningful to you. If you would like a photograph of yours considered for publication, use the hashtags #SavingPlaces or #TellTheFullStory when posting on social media.

“We support the National Trust because without a past to build on, the future lacks direction.�

Morgan Sammons and Dan Decena Ashland, OR National Trust members since 1995 PHOTO BY TIMOTHY PARK

Create your own meaningful legacy by making a gift through a Donor Advised fund, Charitable Trust or a Gift of Real Estate in support of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. To learn more, contact us today.

TELEPHONE: 202.588.6017 EMAIL: legacy.savingplaces.org WEB: TrustLegacy.org Have you already included the National Trust in your will or estate plan? Please notify us so we can welcome you to our Legacy Circle.

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