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

Tax credits for storm windows and doors?

The following is from a listserv posting by Adrian Scott Fine, Director of the Center for State and Local Policy at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and is reposted here with permission from the National Trust.

There have been a lot of questions recently about the eligibility of storm windows/doors for the $1,500 stimulus tax credit -- through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). The new law increases (from $500 in 2007) the energy tax credit for homeowners who make energy efficient improvements to their existing homes, raising the amount to 30% or up to $1,500 towards qualifying improvements placed in service in 2009/2010. The 2009 and 2010 rules establish a higher threshold for the credit that was available in 2007 for products that qualify as “energy efficient” for purposes of this tax credit.

Question: Do storm windows/doors qualify for the $1,500 tax credit. Answer: YES!

Despite some confusion and misleading information, storm windows and doors do qualify for the tax credit. This chart (http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=tax_credits.tx_index#c1) from the U.S. Department of Energy, Environmental Protection Agency and Energy Star clearly lists storm windows/doors as eligible products for the tax credit.

Question: Are all storm windows/doors eligible? Answer: NO.

As stated earlier, the 2009/2010 provisions established a higher standard than in 2007 and all eligible storm windows/doors (purchased from June 1, 2009 to December 31, 2010) must have a U-value of 0.30 or lower and solar heat gain coefficient of 0.30 or lower. Here’s where the main problem lies regarding questions on eligibility. While it is common for new windows to offer specific qualifications regarding performance, it is a difficult to assess for storm windows/doors. Measuring the U-value and solar heat gain of storm windows/doors depends on the performance of the existing window in combination with a storm window, which will always be a case-by-case basis. This can only be tested after storm windows/doors are installed and will vary greatly from building to building.

While some storm window/door manufacturers are marketing their products in conjunction with the tax credit, others are not because the performance standard is difficult to substantiate for all cases. Some are listing classes of exterior windows (single pane, clear glass, double pane, low-E coating, etc.) that a product may be combined with to be eligible in specific climate zones (for a map, go to http://resourcecenter.pnl.gov/cocoon/morf/ResourceCenter/dbimages/full/973.jpg).

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Question: What do I need to claim the tax credit? Answer: MANUFACTUER’S CERTIFICATION STATEMENT

A Manufacturer’s Certification Statement is a signed statement from the manufacturer certifying that the product or component qualifies for the tax credit. Taxpayers must keep a copy of the certification statement for their records, but do not have to submit a copy with their tax return. Some manufacturers are providing these Certificates on their website. Other manufacturers are not, taking a more conservation approach and not issuing these certificates since it’s difficult to substantiate on a case-by-case basis. Though there are others, two storm window/door manufacturers that do provide certificates are Gorell (http://www.gorell.com/pages/energy_tax_incentive_act.htm) and Kaufmann (http://www.kaufmannwindow.com/2009energytaxcredit.htm).

As always, please check with your tax advisor for advice.

**Also, for more information on the stimulus funding, and constantly-expanding case studies, check out the Perfect Storm webpage(s) on PreservationNation at http://www.preservationnation.org/resources/public-policy/perfect-storm/

Live greener, and save money, too!

Are you interested in living greener?

Tomorrow night we're offering a special workshop on practical, sensible ways to make your living space greener and healthier.

When you hear phrases like "green design" and "sustainable technologies," you may think about new construction with high-tech energy-saving gizmos, but as you probably know, reusing a building is the best way to go green on a big scale! Of course, existing buildings can and should be sensitively upgraded so that they operate as efficiently as possible. At tomorrow night's workshop, Jay Tovey, president of Tovey Co., a Certified Green Professional and a nationally recognized expert on energy efficiency in home remodeling, will share practical tips on making existing houses and renovation projects greener and healthier for you and for the planet. He'll provide specific tips about greening historic houses, but the workshop is applicable to old and new houses alike. Don't miss it!

The workshop will be held this Wednesday, November 18, at the Rochester Home Builders Association, 20 Wildbriar Road in Henrietta, from 6:30-8:30 p.m. Tickets are $25 advance, $30 at the door, free with new membership in The Landmark Society. Advance registration is strongly recommended - buy online or call us at 546-7029.

Architects can earn two AIA CES credits for attending this workshop.

For more details, see our website.

Posted by Katie Eggers Comeau, Director of Preservation Services

A wealth of weatherization resources

Our beautiful September weather (in Rochester, anyway) has just turned blustery and cold! As the weather changes, you may be thinking about making your house more energy efficient. The National Trust recently put together an excellent Weatherization Guide for Older and Historic Buildings to help homeowners with this very topic. Here you'll find practical information on a variety of topics, including:

• How and why to start with a home energy audit
• Windows, windows, windows: why they matter, how to identify window types, how to decide when to repair or replace, how to make simple and low-cost repairs, and more
• A guide to the various incentives for weatherization
• A nifty illustration of the features of old houses that provide protection against cold weather (those 19th-century builders knew what they were doing!)
• Tips and strategies for specific parts of your house, including the roof, insulation, and mechanical systems
• And for any other questions, a very thorough "Whole House Resource Guide" with case studies, articles, and much more.

Of course, we have plenty of resources here in Rochester as well! Check out our publication Rehab Rochester, especially Chapter 6: Energy Conservation. You'll also want to attend our "Your Old House" workshop series, coming up in October and November. This fall's topics include sensible (and sensitive) options for heating and cooling old houses, sustainable and green practices to make your house more energy efficient, siding repair, and lead-safe work practices.

Posted by Katie Eggers Comeau, Director of Preservation Services

Act Now to Support Tax Credits for Sensitive Energy Upgrades

Have you heard about the tax credits available for weatherization? So far, those incentives have only been available for new materials like replacement windows, and therefore aren't available to owners of historic buildings who want to maintain their character.

A piece of legislation is going before Congress tomorrow that can change that. The American Clean Energy and Security Act includes a very important provision, the Retrofit for Energy and Environmental Performance Program, that allows building owners to get tax credits for sensitive energy upgrades, like window repair and appropriate weatherization.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation's Advocacy Center has a site where you can quickly email your Congressperson an automated note in favor of this legislation. I just did it, and it took about 30 seconds! Please act now to support this legislation, as Congress is scheduled to vote on it tomorrow.

For more on appropriate energy upgrades for historic houses, please see our online publication, Rehab Rochester, and the National Park Service's Preservation Brief No. 3, Conserving Energy in Historic Buildings.

Posted by Katie Eggers Comeau, Director of Preservation Services

Why Main Street is Green

Here's a nice piece from Michigan about why characterizing historic Main Street buildings as energy hogs is unfair. Energy performance issues in older buildings typically have to do with the maintenance they've received, rather than the way they were built. Buildings constructed before WWII - in other words, before we began taking cheap energy for granted - incorporated a lot of what we would now call passive energy-conserving features like operable windows, awnings, and transoms designed to bring daylight indoors, but often those features were not maintained or were altered when a reliance on mechanized heating, cooling, and lighting became the norm. Fixing the maintenance issues can improve energy performance, at a fraction of the cost of new construction, replacement windows, or other so-called green solutions that are actually the opposite of sustainable.

And here's another article, also from Michigan, describing the projects of preservation architect Gene Hopkins, who also argues for the environmental benefits of rehabilitating historic downtown buildings. Mr. Hopkins's projects have the full support of the city manager, quoted in the article as saying, "The city does not need any new additional buildings ... We can't afford it and there's no need, so to renovate the existing buildings has been a goal over the last two decades." It helps that Michigan has a state tax credit for rehabilitation of historic buildings, which helps make these projects especially attractive for investors - watch this space for an update on our efforts to enhance New York State's tax credit program.

Posted by Katie Eggers Comeau, Director of Preservation Services

We're not just saving buildings - we're saving the world!

"Existing buildings are going to be what saves the world." -Jean Carroon, June 4, 2009

On Thursday, June 4, over 85 preservationists, architects, engineers, planners, facilities managers, and others gathered in the Eisenhart Auditorium at the Rochester Museum & Science Center to learn how and why to improve the energy performance of historic buildings. Jean Carroon, FAIA, LEED, Principal for Preservation at Goody Clancy in Boston, shared her years of experience exploring ways to pair sustainability and preservation.

The day-long workshop was a good news-bad news situation.

The bad news? Climate change is a huge problem, with new evidence coming out to show the impacts of human activity on our planet are even worse that scientists thought just a few years ago. As often as I've heard about or read the statistics on this, it gives me chills every time I see the stark images of melting glaciers that point to accelerating, dramatic change. The construction and operation of buildings, as Jean said (and as I say in my own presentations on this topic), is a huge source of carbon dioxide emissions.

The good news? Because buildings are such a problem now, they also represent a tremendous opportunity to make changes - and any historic building's energy performance can be improved.

But, back to a little bad news. Many of the things that are being promoted as "the solution" - new "green" products, McMansions with lower energy bills, or - ack! - replacement windows - are ineffective or, worse, have the opposite effect of what they're supposed to. Many so-called "green" products may improve a building's energy performance, or have recycled components, or whatever, but given the full life cycle of those products - the way they were made, how they were transported, their long-term effect on the health of the building and its occupants (keep in mind, asbestos was once a miracle product touted for its energy-saving potential), it is likely that few of these new products are all they're cracked up to be, and some may even have very negative unintended consequences for human and/or building health in the long run. Not to mention the many problems with building new "green" buildings to try to stave off climate change; of course new buildings should be green, but in many cases, reuse of an existing building is a much more sustainable solution.

Now back to the bright side. The most important things that we can do to reduce our personal carbon footprints are good for historic buildings! Insulating attics and basements, installing programmable thermostats (and setting the temperature on the low side in winter, high in summer), washing clothes in cold water and drying them on a clothesline, turning off the lights, maintaining boilers and steam traps, repairing and caulking around leaky windows so they perform as they were designed to - these are small steps, but they matter, and they won't harm (and may improve) your building physically or aesthetically. These steps are inexpensive and have a short payback period, so not only are they effective in reducing energy consumption, they save money for the building owner.

On a larger scale, of course, we need to stop demolishing buildings that could be recycled, avoid building unnecessary new buildings, and find new uses for old buildings. These are the actions that can truly have a global impact. Once again, these things are obviously good for historic buildings, and good for the economy - studies have shown that building reuse creates more jobs than new construction, and is a more effective economic stimulus.

Here's the best news of all. Even with her thorough understanding of the implications of climate change, and the role of existing buildings in contributing to it, Jean believes that "the preservation movement is, in many ways, the hope for the future," and that "existing buildings are going to be what saves the world."

Jean believes that the historic preservation movement embodies "a culture of repair, a culture of renewal." That's what we're all about: keeping what we have, fixing it rather than throwing it out, sticking to tried and true methods designed to ensure that the things we have - particularly the well-designed, well-made things we love - last a really, really long time. And making sure that when something new is built, it contributes in a positive way to the long-term environmental, economic, and cultural health and sustainability of our communities. Given our nation's throwaway culture in recent decades, we've sometimes seemed to be shouting into the wind. But the winds are changing, and we should be at the forefront.

The session was presented by the National Preservation Institute, and cosponsored by the Landmark Society of Western New York, the Preservation League of New York State, and AIA New York State.

Posted by Katie Eggers Comeau, Director of Preservation Services

Green Strategies for Historic Buildings: June 4 Workshop

We know that preservation is inherently green, but how do we put that into practice when working with historic buildings?

The Landmark Society is delighted to be working with our statewide colleagues at the Preservation League of New York State to bring an exciting new program on that very topic to Rochester. On June 4, 2009, the National Preservation Institute will present a daylong seminar, “Green Strategies for Historic Buildings,” at the Rochester Museum & Science Center’s Eisenhart Auditorium.

Jean Carroon, FAIA, LEED AP, will present the practical applications of using green building strategies for historic structures, demonstrating how the environmental goal of “reduce, reuse, recycle” can enhance the capital cost competitiveness of preservation projects. Workshop participants will also review the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards used to assess building performance and focus on preservation challenges relating to energy efficiency, windows, lighting, indoor air quality, HVAC, and local and national codes and regulations.

This seminar is aimed at professionals who work with historic buildings: architects, engineers, facility managers, developers, etc.

We're really excited about this seminar. NPI is presenting 48 workshops this year throughout the country, but ours is the only one in New York State, and one of only two in the northeastern U.S.! Wouldn't it be great to demonstrate our region's support for preservation and sustainability with record-breaking turnout?

More information, including a registration form, can be found on our website.

Posted by Katie Eggers Comeau, Director of Preservation Services

Want to create jobs and conserve energy? Re-use a building!

The message that preservation is the ultimate form of "green architecture" is gaining traction at the national level. The National Trust's blog today points to a new ad by the WE campaign (Al Gore's organization) that highlights how rehabilitation of historic buildings is a great way to conserve energy and create jobs. You can watch the 30-second ad on the National Trust's blog.

Posted by Katie Eggers Comeau, Director of Preservation Services

Two Big Projects Taking Shape

At the end of today’s Preservation Issues Committee meeting, one participant commented, “that was a meaty meeting!”

It was indeed. We discussed two very large projects that have the potential to significantly reshape key areas in our region.

One of the two is a project called CityGate, where a developer proposes to demolish a complex of nine National Register-eligible buildings and redevelop the site as a mixed-use complex. This property is at the southeast corner of Westfall and East Henrietta roads, and was formerly the Iola campus, a tuberculosis sanitarium developed between 1911-1931. The complex has been determined eligible for the National Register due to its architecture (representing early-20th century institutional architecture; the work of German-trained architect Siegmund Firestone plus three notable Rochester architects) and for its social history, as a public health facility.

The site has very few neighbors, and thus far, there has been very little public interest in the project and few public comments. The Landmark Society is one of the few parties to have commented in the past, and we are currently working on our comments on the current iteration of the design. I would like to very strongly encourage anyone with an interest in urban design, historic preservation, planning, sustainability, adaptive reuse, etc., to take a look at what is proposed for the site and submit your comments. To do so, go to this site and click the link for the CityGate Draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement. It’s a big file and may take a long time to download; hang in there!

The majority of today’s meeting was devoted to a detailed presentation by Mark Tayrien of LaBella Associates and Dorraine Laudisi of the City of Rochester regarding the Midtown project, focusing on the City’s vision for the site, the process of making decisions regarding the historic buildings (the State Historic Preservation Office has determined that the entire Midtown site is eligible for the National Register of Historic Places), and the procedure for public input.

We were pleased that our committee was the first audience for the city’s brand-new outreach presentation that will be presented to a series of audiences as the city seeks broad public input on this very significant downtown project. We have a small team reviewing the planning documents in detail and preparing official Landmark Society comments. I also encourage everyone interested in the future of downtown Rochester to review and comment; the relevant documents are located here. There are quite a few documents posted; go first to the Draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement, dated November 10. You might also want to look at specific appendices, notably Appendix G, which deals with historic issues. It was clear from the presentation, and from the DGEIS, that some big decisions regarding the future of the site are not yet set in stone and the time is ripe for public input.

Comments on both projects should be submitted to Dorraine Laudisi at the city of Rochester (Dorraine.Laudisi AT CityofRochester.gov); please send us a copy! Dorraine told us today that the City is very eager to receive and incorporate comments from the public, particularly from people with expertise in planning, design, and historic preservation. She and her colleagues really rely on these comments to help guide the City’s decision-making, and to help them steer the developers toward the best possible outcomes.

Posted by Katie Eggers Comeau, Advocacy Coordinator

Preservation and Climate Change - A View from "Across the Pond"

Last week the National Trust for Historic Preservation held its annual conference in Tulsa. I wasn't able to make the trip to Oklahoma but have been following along via the National Trust's blog, where Trust staffers have been describing the sessions, their impressions of Tulsa, and more. A post describing a session on climate change and historic preservation, featuring speakers from the United Kingdom, caught my eye. From the description posted by Barbara Campagna, it sounds like it was quite a far-reaching session, containing information on current and projected impacts of climate change on specific historic properties, discussion of how to truly measure values related to sustainability, and explanations of steps that British preservation organizations are taking to both adapt to climate-induced changes and to reduce the energy needs of historic buildings. Here's a particularly chilling passage from Barbara's description:

Decades of neglect and little investment leads to slum clearance and wholesale redevelopment, while whole life costing tied to embodied carbon modeling has been using carbon calculations (15-20 years) assigned by bankers and investors that are likely less than the true value of our material culture. In terms of ecological sustainability, models suggest that melting ice caps will cause a breach of the Thames and catastrophic flooding of London.

At the end of the post are some interesting links to British organizations that are pursuing this type of holistic view of climate change as it pertains to historic buildings - great stuff.

Posted by Katie Eggers Comeau, Advocacy Coordinator

Getting Ready for Winter?

A recent article in the Boston Globe about "buttoning up" your house for the winter includes a neat interactive graphic (click on the image of the house to see the graphic) where you can see the payback period for various weatherization techniques. The shortest payback period? Window plastic wrap, that clear plastic you can install on the inside of your windows in the fall and remove in the spring. The longest? Replacement windows - at 33 years (according to this article, anyway - other studies have found much longer payback periods, well longer than the expected life of the windows).

Posted by Katie Eggers Comeau, Advocacy Coordinator

Save Energy, Save Money - Save Your Windows!

Have you heard the myth about windows - that one of the best ways to improve your house's energy efficiency is by replacing old wood windows with high-tech new ones? We hear it all the time, and it drives us nuts, because we know that in most cases it is just that - a myth. We know that new replacement windows take so long to repay the investment that they wear out before homeowners ever see the savings on their energy bills. We know that the materials these windows are made from, like vinyl, are environmentally damaging to produce. We know that old-growth wood is one of the best materials out there, and that to send it to the landfill is not sustainability, it's waste.

But it's hard to get that message out when there's a lot more money to be made persuading homeowners to buy new windows than encouraging them to keep existing ones.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation has produced an excellent new fact sheet that succinctly lays out the case for keeping old windows as a way to save energy and money. I can attest to that - when I bought my house six years ago, the windows either didn't open at all, flew up by themselves, or were so difficult to open as to be nearly non-functional. For the price of about three replacement windows, I had all 12 of the double-hung windows in my house repaired by old-house expert Steve Jordan. In doing so I kept what preservation architect John Bero calls "the best windows you can get" - old-growth wood windows with good-quality storms. I also kept my house's original design intent intact, saved a ton of money, and kept 12 high-quality wood windows out of the trash.

In addition to the National Trust's pamphlet, take a look at Rehab Rochester, our "owner's manual" for historic houses, which includes sections on window repair as well as many other common maintenance issues old-house owners (or any homeowner, for that matter) face.

Posted by Katie Eggers Comeau, Advocacy Coordinator

A green conundrum: sustainability, density, and preservation

An interesting article from Seattle points out the need for environmentalists and preservationists to find common cause as that city pursues its strategy for a "sustainable" future.

According to the author of the article, Seattle's sustainability policies suffer from a single-minded focus on increasing density. There are clear environmental advantages to denser urban fabric: a certain level of density is needed to ensure walkability, viable public transportation, lively street life, and so on, and directing redevelopment toward a region's core reduces the pressure to sprawl outwards. The author of the article argues, however, that Seattle's pursuit of increased density comes at the exclusion of other goals, including historic preservation and the conservation of the embodied energy that old buildings represent.

The issues in Seattle are so different as to be almost unrecognizable to us in Rochester: in Seattle (and some other trendy cities) the demand for high-rent housing in desirable city neighborhoods leads developers to eye existing buildings for demolition and replacement by higher-density apartments and condominiums. Redevelopment of hot city neighborhoods has always resulted in the demolition of older buildings, but now some cities like Seattle are encouraging this process as evidence of their "green" credentials.

Unlike in Seattle, here in Rochester the resurgence of downtown housing has (so far, at least) taken the form of the adaptive reuse of existing buildings, with the exception of the Sagamore, which was built on a long-empty lot (of which there are many left to be redeveloped, as a flight over downtown or a peek at Google Earth will dramatically reveal). We have not seen the demolition of historic buildings to make way for high-density downtown housing. Instead, we have the opposite problem: although our region's population is not growing, it is continuing to spread ever more thinly across an ever-widening area, leading to the decline of existing neighborhoods in the city and suburbs.

In Rochester and Seattle the issues are different, but the point is the same: as communities think about how to be greener, a great place to start is the recognition that the existing building stock is a critical environmental resource that must not be squandered. It would be unfortunate if environmentalism became yet another justification for treating historic buildings as disposable, when in fact the reuse of existing buildings conserves their embodied energy and keeps their irreplaceable materials out of the landfills.

Richard Moe, President of the National Trust, may have said it best: "It makes no sense for us to recycle newsprint and bottles and aluminum cans while we’re throwing away entire buildings, or even entire neighborhoods."

(photo of New construction in Seattle's South Lake Union neighborhood by Chuck Taylor, www.crosscut.com )

Posted by Katie Eggers Comeau, Advocacy Coordinator

Ten ways to turn your old building green

The new issue of the Landmarks Observer, the newsletter of Greater Portland Landmarks, Inc., has a helpful article on sensible, sensitive things owners of older houses can do to make their homes greener. The article appears on page 2 of the newsletter, available as a pdf.

If they can do it in Maine, we can do it here!

Posted by Katie Eggers Comeau, Advocacy Coordinator

Preservation Districts and Green Preservation in City

Landmark Society staffers are featured in two fine articles in City Newspaper’s recent Home Design section. Rebecca Rowe is the featured interviewee in an article about preservation districts, and I worked closely with the author of an article about energy efficiency and historic houses. I was glad to see that the author of the latter article absorbed what I told him about the environmental advantages of historic buildings, and interviewed experts who could tell him about some simple fixes for common complaints about the energy performance of older buildings. If you’d like a printed copy of this special section, please stop by the Landmark Society – the fine people at City let us take the extra copies, and we’re happy to distribute them.

Posted by Katie Eggers Comeau, Advocacy Coordinator