PreserveCast

Ep. 140: Gettysburg: A Touchstone of American History with Christopher Gwinn

Gettysburg is a special place and has been since the ground was made hallowed by soldiers nearly 160 years ago. Today, as America grapples with its history – especially its Civil War history – places like Gettysburg are critical to the understanding of who we are and where we are headed.

Today’s guest is responsible for leading the effort to interpret that history. Christopher Gwinn is the Supervisory Park Ranger for the division of Interpretation and Education and is working hard to reach all Americans with the story of Gettysburg.

Grab your knapsack and toss on your forage cap, we’re headed to the crossroads town of Gettysburg on this week’s PreserveCast.

PreserveCast Ep135: Preserving Public Housing with Dr. Lisa Lee of the National Public Housing Museum

The story of where we live is uniquely personal. Many historic homes have been preserved and opened to the public – places that tell a story about the way we once lived.

 

However, American public housing – places built and maintained by governments – has been long been overlooked, forgotten, and worse yet, maligned.

 

Today’s guest, Dr. Lisa Lee, is working to solve that gap in memory and understanding as the Executive Director of the National Public Housing Museum, the only cultural institution devoted to telling the story of public housing in the United States.

 

Find the best spot to sit and relax in the place you call home as we talk about the history of housing on this week’s PreserveCast.   

PreserveCast Ep133: Creating Places for Nature in Urban Communities with Alden Stoner of Nature Sacred

In challenging times, nature brings us peace. From time immemorial, humans have taken to nature to soothe their anxious and tired souls. In today’s busy and built world, opportunities to experience and commune with nature are limited – but today’s guest is doing something about that.

Alden Stoner is the CEO of Nature Sacred, an organization dedicated to bringing natural sanctuaries to urban communities to reduce stress, improve health and strengthen communities. It is work that was important before and is becoming increasingly more important every day the nation confronts its current challenges.

Take a deep breath and find your favorite tree – we’re talking nature in urban spaces on this week’s PreserveCast.

PreserveCast Ep127: Elizabeth Finkelstein, Preservationist & Instagrammer, Makes Historic Real Estate Circa Awesome

Born in an 1850s Greek Revival home that was lovingly restored by her parents (and having attended more country auctions than she can count), Elizabeth Finkelstein’s love for crown molding and decorative ironwork runs in her gene pool. After high school, she left the quiet of the countryside for the bright lights of the big city to entrench herself in New York’s great history and architecture. While there, she earned a Masters in Historic Preservation and spent years working in the field of professional preservation advocacy (and started a few geeky architecture blogs to boot!).

A licensed tour guide, professor and architectural historian, Elizabeth is also Country Living Magazine‘s official real estate columnist. Through @circahouses and @cheapoldhouses, Elizabeth is proud to maintain two of the most popular Instagram feeds devoted specifically to historical homes for sale. The wildly popular, viral feed @cheapoldhouses has been featured in New York Magazine, The Financial Times, Money Magazine, Buzzfeed, and numerous other influential publications.

Elizabeth and her husband Ethan fantasize simultaneously about owning a Brooklyn brownstone and buying a big, old farmhouse somewhere far, far away. In the meantime, CIRCA keeps them dreaming...

PreserveCast Ep119: [Healthy, Hip & Historic] "Reset to Default: Making Preservation the New Normal" by Jim Lindberg, National Trust for Historic Preservation

In the penultimate episode of PreserveCast's special series during the COVID-19 pandemic, we will hear from Jim Lindberg, Senior Policy Director for the National Trust for Historic Preservation who will discuss the ways the goals of preservation are interconnected with those of advocates for issues like the environment, community health, and equitable development.

Collaboration and partnership are a key part of any successful preservation effort and this presentation by Jim Lindberg will explore the importance of this broad coalition to build systems that encourage building reuse. Research across these various fields demonstrates the need to build new rules and unwind entrenched thinking on building communities. The aim to create places that are greener, healthier, and more equitable applies to urban and rural communities alike.

James Lindberg has more than 25 years of experience in historic preservation, planning, and sustainable development. Through his leadership of the National Trust’s Research & Policy Lab and the ReUrbanism initiative for cities, he seeks innovative ways to encourage building reuse and create more inclusive, healthy, and resilient communities.

PreserveCast Ep116: [Healthy, Hip & Historic] What the Future Holds for Historic Preservation and Community Revitalization with Storm Cunningham

As this current international pandemic has changed the everyday ways that we interact with each other and our communities, it’s clear that our environment has important physical and psychological effects on us all. Preservation addresses the physical material of our built environment – and those materials’ potential positive or negative health impacts – so too, does preservation address an emotional connection to a time and place in history.

This five-part special podcast series, Healthy, Hip & Historic on PreserveCast will feature five preservation visionaries that will place our preservation work in a broader context, identify challenges, and illuminate solutions for linking historic preservation and healthy communities.

Preservation Maryland brought Storm Cunningham, an author whose work is leading the way for partnerships between preservationists and environmentalists, to our annual statewide conference held in 2016 in Frederick, Maryland. Storm Cunningham is the publisher of Revitalization News online, and the author of "The Restoration Economy," "reWealth," and the forthcoming "Planetary Renewal: A Strategy To Reverse Our Decline."

As a regional partnership planner, he has facilitated comprehensive revitalization processes, not just a vision, project or plan which help places enhance their economy, boost the quality of life and increase climate resilience by repurposing, renewing and reconnecting their natural built and socioeconomic assets.

Storm joined our group of preservationists, planners and heritage tourism and museum professionals to show the group how they can think differently about who they partner with and what benefit comes from those partnerships. If we want to make the world a better and more sustainable place, we need to breakdown the silos each discipline has wedge themselves.

One example Storm will share was a potential relationship between “water people” and “solar people.” Instead of saying “we have nothing in common,” think about your goals and how they overlap. “Solar People” want solar panels to make clean energy and “water people” want to get safe and clean water long distances. Water evaporates unless it is covered, so why not cover the water channels with solar panels? This is a win-win. More energy and less water loss.

PreserveCast Ep113: Roadtripping through America's Automotive History with Diane Parker

Start your engines – because on this week’s PreserveCast we’re talking historic cars and the history of the American Automobile with Diane Parker, Vice President of the Historic Vehicle Association. Buckle up and hit the clutch, because you’re listening to a revved-up edition of PreserveCast.

Diane Parker is Vice President of the Historic Vehicle Association (HVA). Surrounded by gear heads from a young age, Diane developed a love and appreciation for vehicles. Since joining the Historic Vehicle Association in 2013, she has combined her love of vehicles with her expertise in operations management. Focusing on the organization’s overall vision, values, beliefs, and strategic goals, Diane is extremely passionate about the organization’s mission to share the cultural past associated with America’s automotive heritage; and to ensure it is never lost nor forgotten.

Two major components of that include Cars at the Capital, their annual exhibition on the National Mall in Washington, DC and, the continued growth of their program that documents historically significant vehicles. That program is the National Historic Vehicle Register. Similar to the Register of Historic Places, and in partnership with the U.S. Department of Interior, the Register program ensures that culturally and historically significant automobiles are fully documented and reside within the Library of Congress in perpetuity.

PreserveCast Ep. 95: The Intersection of Historic Preservation and Smart Growth With Kimberly Golden Brandt

Historic Preservation and Smart Growth are cut from the same cloth – and a interconnected in a variety of important ways. When we grow smart, we revitalize historic communities and keep from sprawling outward.

It’s a message that Preservation Maryland has been making for years – but in the past several months the organization has become much more serious about this issue following its merger with 1000 Friends of Maryland, the statewide smart growth organization.

Kimberly Golden Brandt, the former Executive Director of 1000 Friends now heads up Smart Growth Maryland, a campaign of Preservation Maryland.

On this week’s PreserveCast we’ll learn why the organizations merged and what it could mean for the future of Maryland.

PreserveCast Ep. 92: Unpacking the Phillips Packing Plant with Katie Parks White and the Eastern Shore Land Conservancy

The Eastern Shore Land Conservancy is truly a renaissance organization. With a proud history of land conservation, the conservancy also operates the Center for Towns, a program focused on the health and sustainability of the Eastern Shore’s historic communities. Most recently, one of the organization's projects has been selected as one of Preservation Maryland's Six-to-Fix projects for 2019. In this episode, Nick speaks to Katie Parks White, the vice-president of conservation for the Conservancy to learn about this exciting adaptive reuse project at the historic Phillips Packing Plant project in Cambridge, Maryland.

In this episode you will learn: how to foster economic growth in a historically rural community without adding intrusive development; how to engage a community into revitalization efforts; how to conserve land and maintain cultural landscapes amid rising pressures to grow from surrounding metropolitan areas.

Grab a pail and dig into the agricultural and industrial history of Maryland's Eastern Shore on this episode of PreserveCast!

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PreserveCast Ep. 80: Keeping Historic Savannah Authentic with Daniel Carey

Savannah, Georgia, often conjures up visions of elegant mansions shrouded by graceful Spanish moss clinging to the branches of towering live oaks. But that vision isn't always a given. It is a daily fight to protect the city’s historic character from the ravages of time and being loved to death by throngs of tourists every year. Fortunately, Daniel Carey is leading the effort at the Historic Savannah Foundation to maintain an authentic experience for tourists of the city as well as keeping it affordable and maintaining its charm for its native residents. Learn how Daniel is promoting slow rise revitalization efforts as well as developing a sustainable approach to tourism management in this week's episode of PreserveCast!

https://www.preservecast.org/2018/07/30/keeping-historic-savannah-authentic-with-daniel-carey/

 

PreserveCast Ep. 42: Montgomery Modern: What's the Future for Mid-Century Modern Architecture?

When does history end? For some, like today’s guest Clare Lise Kelly, it might be closer to the present than you think. Clare is an architectural historian here in Maryland whose focus is the preservation of mid-century modern architecture from the 1950s and 60s. She literally wrote the book Montgomery Modern, focused on the architecture of Montgomery County, northwest of Washington D.C. From the future of office parks to Frank Lloyd Wright, there’s a lot to cover before we have to say so long on this episode of PreserveCast.

Listen here: https://www.preservecast.org/2017/10/23/clare-lise-kelly-montgomery-modern-whats-the-future-for-mid-century-modern-architecture/

 

Producer's note: At around the 24:00 minute mark, Clare mentions an example of a building with a successfully, fully-restored facade. She said the Seagram Building, but was actually intending to reference the Lever House.

PreserveCast Ep. 36: Community Forklift and the Ethics of Reuse with Ruthie Mundell

Community Forklift is part of a vital, growing industry, that of reuse and architectural salvage. Ruthie Mundell, the current Director of Outreach and Education and one of Community Forklift's first employees is here to share with us her own origin story, as well as share about the amazing work that the group is doing today. Stick around to learn how green thinking and the preservation of historic building materials can save the environment, and save you money on your next home improvement project.

Listen here: https://www.preservecast.org/2017/09/11/ruthie-mundell-community-forklift-and-the-ethics-of-reuse/

PreserveCast Ep. 27: Energy Sprawl and Open Space Preservation in Kent County

The spread of clean energy technologies is the wave of the future, but where exactly should wind and solar plants go? Nick sat down with Elizabeth Watson and Janet Christensen-Lewis, of the Kent Conservation and Preservation Alliance in Kent County, Maryland, to discuss their experience working to find alternative locations for wind turbines away from Kent County's scenic and historic farmland. Janet and Elizabeth are tackling a difficult problem, but they believe that the necessary move to create sustainable energy does not have to mean erasing our past. 

Listen up here: https://www.preservecast.org/2017/07/10/elizabeth-watson-janet-christensen-lewis-energy-sprawl-and-open-space-preservation-in-kent-county/

PreserveCast Ep. 21: Lifting the Building: Historic Preservation and Flood Mitigation

Flooding is a serious problem for any building, but for a historic building, it can be catastrophic. Fortunately for us there are experts out there like this week's guest Rod Scott who are able to help property owners take preventative measures. Rod not only shares with us how one can raise a building above the floodplain, but also some of the chanigng economics of flooding and flood insurance, as well as why he believes that we are living in historic era of flooding. This is PreserveCast.

Listen here: https://www.preservecast.org/2017/05/29/rod-scott-historic-preservation-and-flood-mitigation/

PreserveCast Ep. 19: Revitalization and the Restoration Economy

Here at Preservation Maryland we know that historic preservation can be a part of a larger world of reuse and revitalization, and we know that these projects are occuring all over the world. That's why we brought in Storm Cunningham, a speaker, consultant, and thinker whose ideas have been put into practice all across the globe about his perspective on revitalization. Learn about the bigger picture of community revitalization and how we can make the most of our existing world in the 21st century on this episode of PreserveCast.

Listen here: https://www.preservecast.org/2017/05/15/storm-cunningham-revitalization-and-the-restoration-economy/

PreserveCast Ep. 16: Energy Retrofitting: Windows, Blower Doors, and More

What do you do with a drafty attic? A window? The whole house? Ed Minch and Thom Marston are here with us today to talk about one approach to making homes more energy efficient and their work at the nation's first energy audit company, Energy Services Group. Stick around and learn about Ed's "p.h.d." approach, what Thom thinks you should do about that old attic, and what retrofitting can mean in terms of historic preservation. This is PreserveCast.

Listen here: https://www.preservecast.org/2017/04/24/energy-services-group-energy-retrofitting/

PreserveCast Ep. 11: Planning for Self-Driving Cars: Now is the Time

We're not too far from a future where self-driving cars are just another part of your daily commute. And according to our guest, Atul Sharma, that will change a lot more than just how you drive. Come and learn how Atul, a planning expert working for Montgomery Country, MD, sees self-driving cars affecting everything from parking and traffic to where we choose to live and how we choose to utilize our historic buildings and communities. Just hit play and sit back while the podcast plays itself.

Listen here: https://www.preservecast.org/2017/03/28/atul-sharma-planning-for-self-driving-cars-in-historic-places/

PreserveCast Ep. 09: A Friend of Maryland is a Friend of Mine

1000 Friends of Maryland is not an actual tally of the Old Line State's friends. It's an advocacy group dedicated to helping Maryland communities develop in ways that we can afford - socially, economically, and environmentally. Dru Schmidt-Perkins, the Presdient of 1000 Friends of Maryland, is on this week to talk to Nick about smart growth and sustainable technology in Maryland's agricultural communities and beyond. Come make a new friend, on PreserveCast.

Listen here: https://www.preservecast.org/2017/03/06/dru-schmidt-perkins-1000-friends-of-maryland-smartgrowth/