Welcome back students and faculty! The spring semester began with the first segments of Preservation Design Studio on Friday afternoon and Saturday. Since most Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute students don't return until tomorrow when most classes resume, we had the campus almost completely to ourselves.
As previously mentioned, we will generally be studying the upper Congress Street corridor (pictured above), building on the ongoing collaborative efforts of the City of Troy, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Rensselaer County, the Troy Housing Authority, and private developers to redevelop the former Ahern Apartments (public housing) site on lower Congress Street and Rensselaer's construction of the new Electronic Media and Performing Arts Center and other improvements.
Beyond choosing a site, we have not determined what our final product or products will be. Students will learn about neighborhood planning and generally apply the four Main Street principles of Design, Organization, Promotion, and Economic Restructuring to the Congress Street corridor and possibly the adjoinging Mt. Ida/Hillside neighborhood. During the next two weeks students will be researching the history of the Congress Street corridor and surrounding area, collecting historic maps and photographs, and reading, abstracting, and reporting on the numerous planning studies and related documents that were handed out in class.
The studio will be taught by Building Conservation faculty members Steve Bedford, Amy Facca, and John Holehan (read more about them on our faculty web page), with periodic assistance from Barb Nelson; Norman Mintz, Main Street expert and co-author of Cities Back from the Edge, may also assist.
This semester's class will also include Preservation Law, taught by Dorothy Miner (who also teaches at Columbia University and Pace Law School); Professional Practice, taught by Ruth Pierpont (Director of the NYS Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation's Field Services Bureau); and Preservation Trades and Craftsmanship, taught by Don Carpentier of Eastfield Village (you can read more about them on our faculty web page).
Our Friday dinner was held at Lynn Kopka's and Joe Abbey's house in historic Washington Park, where students and faculty were joined by friends of the Building Conservation program, neighbors, and five building conservation alumni. Following dinner, many students attended the RPI hockey game.
In terms of recent blog additions, we have added a few links to the employment/jobs list and have added a sidebar section (below the Books! list) called the Reading Room. It now includes links to numerous publications such as Old House Journal, the National Building Museum's Blueprints newsletter, Metropolis, Places Journal, and numerous reference sites from the National Park Service, including the Preservation Briefs. We will be adding more publications to this list as we think of and encounter them, and we welcome any suggestions. We will also soon be adding posts about recent publications and reference materials we've come across online.
