Due to an Historic Preservation Program Committee meeting scheduled at the last minute for today, January 29 at 10 am class will be cancelled. Sorry for any inconveniences this causes. Below are the Documents needed for the Styles Assignments:
Posted on the Lecture Page is all of the material that I would like you to review. It includes PDF material for Roof Forms and Vocabulary, Porches, and Windows. Please review before class on Monday, January 26.
Also, due today is the Architectural Photo Hunt. I will begin reviewing images tonight so please make any last submissions by 5:00pm January 21.
Thank you,
Shannon
In all honesty, it is difficult to pinpoint any specific time in my past when I fell in love with Historic Preservation. I am certain, however, of when I was able to articulate it as such. As a high school senior here in the booming metropolis of Eugene, I worked as a student aide for the Planning & Development Department which was located at City Hall at that time. When I wasn’t setting up for City Council meetings, photocopying, stuffing envelopes for the next Public Hearing, or traipsing about downtown Eugene delivering Inner-Office Memorandums…I found myself in the Planning Library, intrigued by the Historic Preservation books, and leafing through them with great excitement. Of course, what followed was this new awareness and vocabulary that allowed me to differentiate between a Craftsman Bungalow and a deliciously ornate Queen Anne…how thrilled I was. It was merely putting a name to a face that was already deeply loved.
When I put the pieces together, an aesthetic admiration for aged items in general, notwithstanding architecture, had taken up residence within me some time before. For years I had been drinking in the pages of Victoria magazine…gardens, literature, fashion, travel, food and more…all coming to life before my tired, suburban eyes. Transfixed, I was a devoted watcher of This Old House (on PBS…along with Victory Gardens and various cooking shows), and came to see the skill and devotion in keeping old places beautiful and livable. Paired with my love of nature, it seemed only fitting for a true love of local history especially would befall me. All of my pioneer ancestors are buried in the Willamette Valley, and most here in Lane County. My own grandfather was a Lane County Commissioner back in the 1950’s and I spent countless hours engrossed in the stories and pictures that he and my grandmother would tell me about growing up in this great place. To this day, I point out landmarks and building to my own children, explaining how they are connected to them by the relatives they never knew. I believe strongly in telling stories, and the many places that tell them in their own silent voices, waiting to be echoed by those who may keenly tune their ears to hear.
More recently, I have been connected, through several different avenues, to the city of Coburg, just north of Eugene. A little historic town with continuing struggles towards economic viability, it is a treasure of history, lovely residents and businesses. They are my family in so many ways. I also sit on their Historic Preservation Committee and Planning Commission currently, and have worked with SHPO and Resore Oregon (formerly HPLO) to nominate a historic home slated for demolition. After years of attempts, I watched it burn this last spring, but learned much in the process, and feel very called to work with preserving our local history by becoming a better equipped citizen. Passion alone isn’t enough.
And so, I continue with my own collection of stories to tell…pictures, books, jewelry, furniture and so on…a variety of items that have found themselves useful once, and continue to be depended upon by my children and I. How happy they must be. The kids love to amble in awe through pioneer cemeteries for fun, explore abandoned houses, listen as I point out landmarks, and retell the stories of others so that they remain alive today. These are important because they shape who we are and how we situate ourselves into our surroundings. Sometimes, the old is new, and the new is old, and as long as we are here to experience them, it would be lovely to know others beyond us will as well. This is part of my story…in the making.
Lorrie Zeller
Ebey’s Landing National Historical Reserve was established by Congress in 1978 “to preserve and protect a rural community which provides an unbroken historic record from the 19th century exploration and settlement in Puget Sound to the present time.” It comprises 17,572 acres of Central Whidbey Island (including 4,300 acres of Penn Cove), and its boundaries follow those of the original land claims filed by settlers in the 1850s. Basic patterns of land use have remained unchanged since European-American settlement in the mid-19th century. The Central Whidbey Island Historic District, comprised of nearly 400 historic structures, shares the boundaries of the Reserve. Preservation internships with Ebey’s Landing NHR offer unique opportunities to work on a broad range of projects in the only historical reserve in the National Park Service. These internships help us complete our mission by maintaining current documentation and assessments of our historic structures and landscapes, while offering valuable practical experience to graduate students preparing for degrees in cultural/historic resource management.
A maximum number of points are shown next to each item on the list. An item that is well photographed and provides a fine illustration of the item, will receive the highest number of points. Make sure the item is large enough to be the focus of the photo but not without some context. All of the items on the list need a little context. One and only one photo per item. Prize for the highest number of points earned by a student will be Dictionary of Historic Preservation By Ward Bucher. Runner up and Best Examples will also be awarded.
The product will be images submitted to the AAA Fileserver.
When I was in middle school, my parents purchased an ever-deteriorating house in Petersburg, Virginia. The use of the word “deteriorating” is perhaps too sugarcoated. The house was simply falling apart. However, my parents loved their new project and through hands-on, but sometimes forced labor, I grew to love the home as well. What was most interesting for me during the renovation process, are the stories that the house began to share with us. Within it’s walls we found newspapers, in the attic we found glasses and marbles. In the basement we found a trunk buried under layers of soot; inside were receipts, letters, and a locket of hair. I realized that the house had grown in a symbiotic relationship with the people that had lived there, and that I too, would leave my mark on the building. It was during the following years that I discovered an interest in the field of preservation, which would eventually develop into a full-fledged passion. More recently, this desire to learn about the historic being coupled with an undergraduate degree in Urban Planning, has led me to pursue a Historic Preservation Master’s degree from the University of Oregon. After achieving this degree, I hope to influence local communities, specifically in dense urban environments, to discover the merit and joys behind Historic Preservation. I hope that through my future efforts within the field of preservation, I will allow the stories of quietly waiting buildings to be heard on a massive scale.
My name is Arianna and I grew up in omnisciently sunny Phoenix, Arizona. As such, I spent a good deal of time reading indoors and developed a curiosity for the world, its history, and the built environment. During my tenure there, I resented being raised in the suburbs; in what seemed like endless beige housing developments, beige shopping centers, and beige mountains. Upon graduation from high school I left Arizona in a huff, and went to nearly equally sunny and slightly less beige San Jose, California, where I attended Santa Clara University. There was never any question that I would major in history, though some unexpected things met me in college. I minored in studio art, which had a hobby and passion of mine over the years, but never a discipline. I was also able to study abroad in El Salvador, where I took social justice, and liberation theology courses, and lived in solidarity with the Salvadoran people. Upon graduation, I moved to San Francisco and got a job in the City’s Department of Public Works, where I learned nearly the entirety of my adult people skills, as my position was to take complaints and suggestions from the city’s passionate constituency. In the summer of 2014, I left DPW and received an offer from the Planning Department to intern for their historic preservation planning staff, which was timely, because my acceptance to Oregon had come several days before. My intern project was to prepare a historic context statement for the Bernal Heights neighborhood. After googling “historic context statement” and working diligently through the summer, I presented my document to the entire planning department at the end of August.
And one week later I found myself face down on the ground, making a decision to not look under the neglected floorboards of a 1910’s cabin in a remote valley in the easternmost part of Idaho. Before I knew it, the small idea of historic preservation that I had when I was nineteen had become my entire life, and now my trajectory into the future!
Hello. My name is Nathan Georgitis. I have a strong interest in preserving and providing access to historical collections, which is the focus of my work as a librarian and archivist for the University of Oregon and as executive director of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections. I grew up in Maine in a late-1800s New England farmhouse with a wonderful attached barn. My mother was an antiques dealer for a time and my town was a Shaker settlement that had wonderful examples of Shaker architecture. I suppose all of these things predisposed me to a interest in historic preservation. Recently my family has been concerned with preserving an historic lobster pound on family property on the coast of Maine. I am taking historic preservation courses so that I might advocate for the preservation of this building and related structures.
After growing up on the southern coast of Georgia, I ventured up to Virginia to go to undergrad. I had no idea what I wanted to do, so similar to most undergrads without direction I took classes on everything. I dabbled in environmental science and Middle Eastern studies before finally settling on a major in Art History with a minor in Middle Eastern studies. I had had a silent love affair with Art History since taking an AP Art History course in high school; silent primarily because my parents would mention phrases like “not practical,” “no jobs,” and “not useful” every time I mentioned it. Despite their concerns, I was optimistic I would be able to get a job within the art field. Unfortunately, my optimism was forced to meet a harsher reality when the financial collapse of 2008 occurred the year before I was set to graduate. Not only were the jobs in the field of Art History scarce, but all jobs were scarce.
Like most things go, a bit of luck and a connection landed me an interview at the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton my senior year of college—the spring of 2009. I literally had no idea what this firm did or who they were, but I studied their mission statement and ongoing projects like any eager yet largely unqualified college student looking for their first job. After somehow getting through the interview process, I was hired onto the Global Security team. The government consulting firm was interested in my previous studies of the Middle East and Arabic language classes, not my knowledge of the history of art and architecture. Shocking, I know.
A few months at one project turned into three and half years on three different projects at Booz Allen and one more subsequent year at a boutique consulting firm. I held a lot of positions primarily in support of the Department of Defense. I did policy analysis for the Office for Cyberthreat Analysis, financial terrorism analysis for the Joint Threat Finance Intelligence Office, and strategic communications for the Defense Combatting Terrorism Center. It sounds cool, and to a certain extant it was really amazing. At the end of the day, though, it wasn’t for me. I likely knew this all along, but sometimes it takes years to figure out how to create a new path.
The opportunity to carve out my new path occurred with the convergence of two events. First, after countless searches and many conversations, I finally discovered the incredibly interesting field of Historic Preservation. More in line with my original academic and career ambitions, I knew I wanted to enter the field. Not a fan of student loan debt, I applied to roughly 15 jobs in Washington DC that were loosely related to Historic Preservation. After receiving very few responses and a handful of rejections, I realized I needed a higher degree in order to make myself more qualified for these competitive positions. So, I made the decision to go to grad school. Second, I had met a guy (now my husband) and we both had an itch to travel and experience new places. Knowing that I wanted to start grad school in the fall of 2014, we decided to quit our jobs in September of 2013 and travel for a year. After three months in Argentina, we came back to U.S. and hung out in the mountain town of Asheville, North Carolina, until moving to Oregon over the summer of 2014.
And now I’m in school for Historic Preservation and I feel happier and more confident with this path than I ever thought possible.
Photo: Myself in Tunisia at the Star Wars Site
This year is my first year in the Historic Preservation Master’s Program at the University of Oregon and already have I learned so much! I have a background in Urban Planning, where I got my Bachelor’s Degree at the University of Cincinnati. I have spent time overseas traveling, mostly in my home continent of Africa, but also in Europe (mostly the U.K.) and throughout North America. As a first-generation American I have gone back to my home country of Somaliland and spent time throughout the East African region visiting Kenya and Tanzania primarily.
My focuses in preservation are currently tied to adaptive reuse planning and transportation related issues within the field of HP with a particular interest in warehouses. I am fortunate enough to have had a variety of experiences to observe architecture in foreign countries and throughout the U.S. and I strive to use the opportunities that I have had to prosper in my field as a professional and an individual.