While perhaps not quite as exciting as attending football games, our Friday night evening sessions are a highlight and very important part of the Building Conservation program. Generally speaking, this required course time, usually 5:00 to 8:00 p.m., is used as supplemental class time or time to tour a specific historic site, professional office, or project. However the time is used, it always includes dinner and involves both students and faculty.
In some cases, dinner is catered in and class work (such as during Preservation Design Studio in spring semester) continues or we hear from a guest speaker such as a local preservation architect, representative of the state historic preservation office, or stained glass conservation consultant. At other times, usually when we visit a specific site or office, students and faculty travel to the designated place and either have a catered dinner there or dine at a local restaurant with historic character (and, of course, good food).
The Friday night sessions enable the students to get to know one another, and facilitate close interaction between students, faculty, invited guests, friends of the program, and other professionals in the field. They also help establish a teamwork and collaboration orientation, rather than the competitive orientation of so many academic programs.
In past years, we have visited the offices of Mesick Cohen Wilson Baker Architects; John G. Waite Architects; Einhorn Yaffee Prescott; River Street Planning & Development; the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation; New York State Capitol; New York State Education Building; the Gardner Earl Chapel and Oakwood Cemetery; the city of Troy's Washington Park and Pottery District neighborhoods, and many other places.
Restaurants have included Smiths in Cohoes, New York; Brown's Brewing Company/Revolution Hall, Holmes & Watson, and South End Tavern in Troy, New York; and the Pump Station and Franklin's Tower in Albany.
This week, the Friday night session was mainly social. Faculty and students met at the historic Daisy Baker's Restaurant, a Richardson Romanesque building originally constructed as Troy's YWCA.
