Preservation & Sustainability--Resources You Can Use

High Falls, Rochester NY

This weekend, The Landmark Society will be joining over 40 other organizations, businesses, and agencies as a vendor at the Greentopia Festival in High Falls. You might wonder, what is the purpose of this Greentopia and how does it possibly relate to The Landmark Society and historic preservation? First, the event itself is designed to celebrate the green movement, showcase what the region is doing to contribute to the movement, and open up a discussion about what sustainability and "green" really mean.

Genesee Valley Park, Rochester NY

That's where we come in. Although preservation isn't usually the first thing that leaps to most peoples minds' when they hear the words "green" or "sustainable," reusing our existing building stock, preserving our historic landscapes and rural spaces, and reinvesting in our urban centers and rural villages are all examples of recycling on a large scale. And, of course, there are added environmental benefits to preservation--most historic neighborhoods are walkable, older buildings were built to last with high quality materials, and most older buildings incorporate green features such as double-hung windows with operable upper and lower sash that allow you to maximize passive ventilation rather than blast the A/C.

Erie Canal & converted grain tower,
Pittsford NY

So come visit me this weekend at The Landmark Society's table at Greentopia--I and other friendly Landmark Society staff will be there all weekend. I'll be more than happy to share with you why preservation is a necessary part of ensuring the health and sustainability of our communities. Or, if you're reading this post after Greentopia, explore some of the links below to learn more about preservation and sustainability and, more importantly, how you can help save our planet by saving our historic resources.

If you only read one thing, take a look at this article from the National Trust's Preservation Magazine:
A Cautionary Tale--Amid our green-building boom, why neglecting the old in favor of the new just might cost us dearly. By Wayne Curtis.

From us, The Landmark Society:
8 reasons why preservation is an environmentally friendly activity
The Greenest Building - display board from Greentopia
Embodied Energy - display board from Greentopia
Preservation Tips - display board from Greentopia

From CITY Newspaper:
Closing the door on vinyl windows

From the National Trust for Historic Preservation:
Sustainability & Historic Preservation
Weatherization Guide
Window Know-How: A Guide to Going Green
Historic Wood Windows Tip Sheet
Energy Efficient Strategies - Cold Climates
Energy Efficient Strategies - Main Street

From the NY State Historic Preservation Office:
Weatherization Toolkit

From Old House Journal:
Weatherstripping 101 (the print version of this article has more helpful photos and inserts)

The Greenest Building - This website calculates the amount of embodied energy contained in an existing building and the amount of energy required to demolish a building. You can even convert those numbers into gallons of gasoline.


Caitlin Meives is Preservation Planner with The Landmark Society. She'll be spending this weekend celebrating her two favorite things--the natural and the historic built environments.

These should be places where we use and live and enjoy. These are living spaces...

Hi. My name is Laura, and I suffer from Marketing Brain. This means that no matter what I do, read, see, think about or experience, I always seem to find myself conducting a logical (read: Spock-headed) examination of the concepts of communication and perception. It's maddening sometimes (both to me as well as to anyone around me I'm sure!) but I think it's important to do...especially in preservation.

See, in preservation, what we know we do is much different than what people think they know we do. I could wax poetic about this for days, but that would likely bore you right out of your skulls. So instead, I'll post a quote from a recently-published article from the Buffalo-based magazine/blog Block Club, which sums it up nicely:

"Historic preservation is a very high hurdle for people to get past. They don’t see it as a green movement. They don’t see it as a neighborhood movement. They don’t see it as a keeping-a-sense-of-place movement. They see it as a set of rules and regulations that ordinary people cannot achieve. And that’s the dilemma…"

So how do we get the average person to understand this concept - that preservation isn't about being wed to a property, or about rules, regulations and putting old things under glass as specimens - but instead, that preservation is a movement about sustainability, smart planning, active use and keeping a sense of place for future generations to enjoy? That's my primary challenge as The Landmark Society's marketing communications "army of one," and the challenge we all share throughout this field of preservation.

I spend a lot of time thinking about this one. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

And, here is a link to the full Block Club piece. A great read.

(I should note the Block Club article isn't only about perception. It highlights the amazing grassroots preservation efforts taking place in Buffalo and speaks to our field as a whole. It also features Henry McCartney, our former executive director who now directs Preservation Buffalo Niagara.)

-Laura

p.s. Our Annual Preservation Conference on April 24th addresses how preservation and sustainability intersect. I hope you'll join us: Saving the Past, Sustaining the Future: Preservation Strategies for Challenging Times

posted by Laura Keeney Zavala, director of marketing

How's THIS for adaptive reuse

The most beautiful, um, Pizza Hut?

I came across this article via the National Trust for Historic Preservation's press room (a fantastic place to get daily preservation news, btw...) and had to share.

So without further ado, I offer you...The Most Beautiful Pizza Hut in the World

I offer no pithy prose, just a "wow, ain't this cool" moment to share. Just goes to show that innovative adaptive reuse can be found in the strangest of places. Consider the unique dining experience this Pizza Hut offers over its other cookie-cutter locales. And, most importantly, what could you do in your town?

Smart. Sustainable and smart. And gorgeous. Enjoy the read.


(photo by Annie Scott from gadling.com)

posted by Laura Keeney Zavala, Director of Marketing

Sustainability, Recent Past, and More from Tulsa

Yesterday I posted a link to a description of an interesting session on climate change at the National Trust for Historic Preservation's annual conference in Tulsa. Here are a few more posts worth reading from Trust staffers who attended the conference.

One session whose description really resonated with me concerned sustainability issues relating to post-WWII buildings. Lately I've been giving two presentations, one on how historic preservation is the greenest form of development (recycling on a grand scale), and one on the importance of identifying and protecting our notable resources from the recent past. The two concepts are somewhat in conflict, as mid- to late-20th century buildings, on average, have much worse energy performance than buildings constructed before 1920 or after 2000 - so in one presentation I try to build people's appreciation for recent resources, while in the other I point out that they, not the older buildings more easily recognized as "historic," are a big problem from an energy perspective. The session on sustainability and modern buildings posed this dilemma as an opportunity, as described by Barbara Campagna:

...according to a 2003 Department of Energy report, 55% of America’s commercial building stock was built between 1945 and 1990. And the most inefficient buildings are those built during this same period. Given that almost 50% of the greenhouse gas emissions from the US come from the operations and construction of buildings, the only way we are going to make a demonstrable impact to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is through the greening of our modern heritage – most of which are not stellar icons like those discussed in this session.

The session looked at the philosophical and practical issues associated with making these decidedly un-green buildings, constructed when energy was cheap (ever try to open a window in a 1960s office building?) more environmentally friendly.

While the session Barbara Campagna described focused on iconic buildings, another session looked at very ordinary buildings: 1950s and 1960s neighborhoods. This was another topic of particular interest to me, as I'm working on a project with the Village of Pittsford to develop some guidance for their Architectural and Preservation Review Board to use when reviewing applications to alter post-war houses in the village (the entire Village of Pittsford is a locally designated preservation district, meaning that any exterior alteration to any building, regardless of age, must be reviewed by the APRB). Adrian Scott Fine points out that in Tulsa, as in many communities, preservationists and others are just starting to come to grips with the implications of post-war neighborhoods as potential historic resources:

In an already rabid private property rights environment, it’s a tough sell to put in place local historic or conservation district designation anywhere these days, let alone to do it for a 1950s ranch house neighborhood. A big part of the problem is us and our need to get over ourselves. The idea of saving places which are from the period of our living memory is affected by a number of prejudices, where taste all too often trumps judgment. History didn’t stop in 1945 or in 1975. We cannot pick and choose arbitrarily which era of our past to deem more important.

Finally, another of Barbara Campagna's posts, this one a story about a tour of green rehabilitations in and around downtown Tulsa, resonated, for obvious reasons:

I learned that 60% of Tulsa’s downtown core is covered with parking lots and that the neighborhoods, communities and culture exist on the edge of downtown or the older “suburbs”. That encouraged me a bit, although I would like to understand sometime what happened to downtown Tulsa to devastate it to such an extent. There is no retail, few restaurants, no pharmacies, grocery stores, or dry cleaners anywhere in sight downtown. And while many downtowns around the country go dormant on the weekends, I have never seen a major city that is dormant during the week also...

...What I learned from this trip and from several other visits around the city over the weekend, was that there are islands of hope in the city. What’s missing right now is connection. Downtown has more holes than beauty and most of the innovation appears to be on the edge of downtown. But each of these projects represented the best in community activism and dedication to reviving place. Each of the people we met behind the tour and the projects are adaptive use warriors -– recognizing the importance of keeping what you can and looking for ways to bring culture and community to their city. I hope that the influx of 1,500+ preservationists will have some impact on the political will and that ten years from now the surface parking lots will be replaced with parks and green buildings, you will be able to find a pharmacy, grocery, restaurant, and store on every corner and the streets will be alive with activity during both the week and the weekend.

Sound familiar?

The National Trust conference will be in Buffalo in 2011 - we look forward to the opportunity to bring those 1,500 preservationists to Rochester while they're right next door.

Posted by Katie Eggers Comeau, Advocacy Coordinator

"Preservation by relocation" or "harvesting?"

Our November newsletter arrived on my desk this morning, and should be in your mailboxes soon (not a member? Join here!). In the newsletter is an article I wrote about historic religious buildings in urban areas, focusing on the challenges they face as demographics shift, some of the innovative ways former religious buildings have been reused, and resources that can help congregations maintain their historic religious buildings.

A recent article in the Buffalo News presents an unusual approach to the problem: a congregation in Georgia wishes to purchase and dismantle a vacant Buffalo church, move it to Georgia, and reassemble it there as their new house of worship. Is this historic preservation? Normally a moved building is considered to have lost a significant component of its historic integrity, because it is no longer in its original setting. However, there are cases where moving a building is the only way to save it - if demolition is imminent, for example. In the case of this former church in Buffalo, there seems to be some disagreement as to whether the building might have the potential for reuse if it remains in its original location. Buffalo has a surplus of empty religious buildings, due to a large number of church closures, and while there have been notable reuses, many are sitting empty.

What would you think if a vacant building in your community was moved somewhere else - is it a great save, or a community loss? Would you rather see it mothballed in place in the hope that the future might bring new uses (much as there is now a strong demand in many cities for long-vacant industrial space for loft apartments), or know that another owner is taking care of it elsewhere?

Posted by Katie Eggers Comeau, Advocacy Coordinator

A recent past loss in Palm Beach

Here's a story and a very sad video about the demolition of the Manus House in Palm Beach, an interesting modernist house by Browning Parker, a devotee of Frank Lloyd Wright. The house was one of Parker's favorites of his 6,000 designs, so much so that he attempted, unsuccessfully, to salvage some of its components to reuse in his own house. The house was 48 years old, just shy of the 50-year mark when buildings usually are more easily recognized as "historic."

It's because of losses like this that we are working to identify our region's own gems from the recent past. If you know of a house, gas station, school, office building, or any other building, structure or landscape that evokes the 20th century particularly well, tell us what you know about it! Visit our Archipedia website, where we are teaming up with the AIA to collect information about our region's 20th-century resources. Fill in what you know, and enter "N/A" for what you don't - we'll fill in the blanks for you.

By Katie Eggers Comeau, Advocacy Coordinator

Politics and Preservation

Is anyone else out there both a preservationist and a political junkie? If so, during this last stretch of the election season, you might be wondering about the intersection of historic preservation and politics. Historic preservation doesn’t exactly rank high on most candidates’ lists of priorities, and in an election dominated by issues related to the economy, health care, foreign policy, and energy, I would be shocked to hear either of the presidential candidates utter the words “historic preservation.” Still, since preservation does tie into broader issues, particularly economic and energy issues, it’s certainly relevant to wonder what the impact of the races to be decided in just a few weeks will be on historic preservation.

There are folks out there who spend their time working to advance preservation-related public policies, and this seems like a great time to let you know what they're up to. As a graduate student, I was an intern at Preservation Action, the nation’s grassroots lobbying organization for historic preservation at the federal level. PA has an impressive track record of effective work on behalf of historic preservation, advocating on behalf of the federal preservation program, the federal rehabilitation tax credits, and national programs like Save America’s Treasures and Preserve America. They have been instrumental in building the Historic Preservation Caucus, a bipartisan coalition of Congresspeople who pledge to work in support of the “the preservation and thoughtful economic development of historic places.” Seven Congresspeople from New York State, including Louise Slaughter, are members of this caucus.

As a grassroots network, PA is based on the support and participation of preservation advocates working at the local level throughout the country. Our region is not well represented in their membership rolls (I may still be the only Rochester-area member!); I encourage you to join and support this great cause. While it may seem like federal-level legislation and policy has little impact on what we do at the local level, the truth is, decisions made in Washington do impact us every day. I know I don’t have time to be actively involved in federal issues day to day, but it’s nice to know that Preservation Action is there to fill that role on our behalf.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation also takes an increasingly active role in advocating for policies that promote historic preservation and sensible development. In addition to its own advocacy work, the Trust’s Public Policy Department offers resources that can help local advocates make the case for appropriate preservation policies in their own communities. Check out their website for a variety of useful tools.

At the state level, the Preservation League of New York State coordinates a statewide coalition of preservationists who seek to advance preservation policies, with a particular focus in recent years on creating a meaningful state tax incentive for historic preservation. The specific political framework in our state (not to mention the current fiscal situation) makes this a challenging undertaking, but the colleagues across the state continue to make our case that preservation is a sensible and necessary investment in the future of our communities.

At The Landmark Society, our advocacy work also includes educating our local candidates about preservation and educating our members and friends about those candidates’ positions. Each fall, our Advocacy Task Force prepares a questionnaire to ask candidates for local, state and federal office in Monroe County their views on historic preservation and related issues. We are now collecting replies from the candidates and will have those up on our website next week; watch this space for more! We see this project as a great opportunity to let our candidates know what issues are most important to us, and to give our members and friends information that will help them evaluate how the candidates would approach local issues pertaining to revitalization, sprawl, and sustainable development.

While we did not send our questionnaire, which focused on relevant state and local issues, to the presidential candidates, it is interesting to wonder where they stand on historic preservation. I came across a blog post recently that posed the question of how each candidate would affect the field of historic preservation. Nellie Longsworth, past president of Preservation Action, used to say that preservation was not a Democratic or a Republican issue; there are supporters on both sides of the aisle and there have been leaders from both sides who have advanced distinctly pro-preservation policies.

After all, historic preservation ties into issues that candidates on both sides hold dear: it’s about strengthening local economies and creating local jobs, revitalizing historic downtowns and neighborhoods, conserving a unique sense of place, protecting the environment, and protecting and promoting the places that have contributed to our national character over the generations. We won't hear the presidential candidates address historic preservation specifically, but perhaps as we listen to them talk about bigger economic and environmental issues, we can make some inferences as to what type of leadership they would provide on the issues that impact our communities and our historic resources.

By Katie Eggers Comeau, Advocacy Coordinator