Architecture & Preservation in the News

Philip Johnson's Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut officially opened to the public on June 21. Tickets are pretty much sold out for the forseeable future, but here are a few articles to whet your appetite for this unique site:

• Behind the Glass Wall: Memories of life and death in an architectural masterwork (by Christopher Mason, New York Times, June 7, 2007) - includes a multimedia slide show and photographs.

• Through A Glass Clearly, A Questing Spirit (by Nicolai Ouroussoff, New York Times, July 6, 2007) - includes a multimedia slide show and photographs.

A few other recent articles of interest include:

• The 'Great Love' Of a Collector Of Old Mansions (by Kathryn Matthews, New York Times, July 6, 2007) - about Richard Jenrette and his collection of fantastically restored historic houses, including Edgewater in Barrytown, New York; includes photographs and a multimedia slide show.
  

• Alcoholics Anonymous Founder's House Is a Self-Help Landmark (by Lisa A. Foderaro, New York Times, July 6, 2007) - about Stepping Stones, the Westchester County home of Bill and Lois Wilson, founders of Alcoholics Anonymous and Al Anon. The house was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2005 and was recently added to New York State's Women's Heritage Trail. Tours are available by appointment, seven days a week. FYI - Stepping Stones is currently seeking an archivist to "continue the work of cataloguing the Wilson's possessions, including the most significant items, now in storage, like the first copy of the Big Book to roll off the press.

• Restoring the Past to Improve the Future (by Fred A. Bernstein, New York Times, July 1, 2007) - About the rehabilitation of the historic Attucks Theater in Norfolk, Virginia (constructed in 1919, but unused since the 1950s) by the Norfolk Housing and Redevelopment Authority, which has successfuly used New Market Tax Credits to restore the theater and revitalize the surrounding neighborhood.
  

• Guidebook sets the scene for road trips (by Michael Janairo, Times Union, June 24, 2007) - about National Geographic's new Guide to Scenic Highways and Byways.
  

Kate Mullany House Included in NYS Women's Heritage Trail

The New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation announced yesterday that the Kate Mullany National Historic Site on 8th Street (just north of Hoosick Street) here in Troy has been included in the newly created New York State Women's Heritage Trail. The Mullany House, which has been designated a National Historic Landmark, is the only site featuring an early trade leader and its inclusion will undoubtedly bring more visitors. Efforts are currently underway to restore the historic three-story house to what it was like when Kate Mullany lived there in the 1870s.

Here's the press release (with minor modifications in formatting):

STATE PARKS UNVEILS WOMEN’S HERITAGE TRAIL
22 Sites Celebrate the History of Women in New York State

(Albany, New York, Tuesday, March 27, 2007 . . . ) New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation Acting Commissioner Carol Ash today announced creation of the New York State Women’s Heritage Trail designed to highlight the significant contribution of women in the history of New York State. The Heritage Trail is established by Heritage New York, a program within the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation.

“New York is home to countless women whose leadership and influence have shaped the history of our state and the future of our nation,” said Ash. “The Women’s Heritage Trail recognizes the significant contributions of these remarkable individuals and will serve as an important educational tool for generations.”

“These world class facilities focus on the daily life, culture and inspirational contributions of women in New York State,” said Ash of the Trail’s 22 designated sites or museums.

Notable sites along the Women’s Heritage Trail include the birthplace of the Women’s Right Movement at Seneca Falls; the homes of key women’s rights proponents such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton; and other influential women in history, including Harriet Tubman and Eleanor Roosevelt.

“It is fitting for the creation of the Women’s Heritage Trail, a celebration of the contributions of women to our state and national history, to be announced in March during Women’s History Month,” said Rich White-Smith, Director of Heritage New York. “The sites on this trail reveal the depth and diversity of women’s achievements and struggles through history, from nameless immigrants to national leaders.”

The mission of Heritage New York is to preserve, interpret and celebrate the many important events, places and people associated with the state’s history through a series of Heritage Trails based on significant historical themes. Heritage Trails include the Revolutionary War, the Underground Railroad and the Theodore Roosevelt. For more information on New York State Heritage Trails, visit www.HeritageNY.gov.

“By establishing this heritage trail linking the state’s remarkable landmarks, we are highlighting New York State’s unique role in advancing the cause of women’s rights, as well as emphasizing the important contributions of individual women in our nation’s history,” said Ash. “I invite all New Yorker’s to visit these sites and continue to learn about our history and all these facilities have to offer.”

The 22 New York State Women’s Heritage Trail sites include:

• Matilda Joslyn Gage Home (Fayetteville);
  
• Johnson Hall State Historic Site (Johnstown);
  
• Marcella Sembrich Opera Museum (Bolton Landing);
  
• Constitution Island-Warner House (Cold Spring);
  
• Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Museum (Jamestown);
  
• Susan B. Anthony House (Rochester);
  
• Alice Austen House Museum (State Island);
  
• National Women’s Hall of Fame (Seneca Falls);
  
• Letchworth Museum & Council Grounds (Castile);
  
• Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site (Hyde Park);
  
• Historic Cherry Hill (Albany);
  
• Harriet Tubman Home (Auburn);
  
• Wilderstein Historic Site (Rhinebeck);
  
• Howland Stone Store Museum (Sherwood);
  
• Watervliet Shaker Historic District (Colonie);
  
• Ganondagan State Historic Site (Victor);
  
• Weeksville Heritage Center (Brooklyn);
  
• Lower East Side Tenement Museum (New York);
• Women’s Rights National Historical Park (Seneca Falls);
  
• Edna St. Vincent Millay’s Steepletop House (Austerlitz);
  
• Kate Mullany National History Site (Troy); and
  
• Shaker Museum and Library (Old Chatham).

The Kate Mullany House is also included in the National Register of Historic Places Travel Itinerary, "Places Where Women Made History." This itinerary includes 74 sites in New York and Massachussets, and offers the following background history:

Kate Mullany (c. 1845-1906) House

This modest three-story brick house is the only surviving building associated with Kate Mullany, a young Irish immigrant laundry worker who in 1864 organized and led the all-female "Collar Laundry Union" labor union. Even though the women laborers of Lowell, Massachusetts and elsewhere had been organizing unions to protest working conditions and wages since the 1840s, early women's unions often only lasted as long as the particular issue under debate. The Collar Laundry Union, unlike so many other unions, remained an organized force in the industries of Troy, New York more than five years after its inception. The origins of Kate Mullany's union date back to the 1820s, when entrepreneurs established the nation's first commercial laundry in Troy to wash, starch, and iron a local invention, the "detachable collar." By the 1860s, Troy supplied most of America's detachable collars and cuffs, employing over 3,700 women launderers, starchers, and ironers. Working 14 hour days for $2 a week, the women launderers labored in oppressive heat. When owners introduced new machinery that increased production, but worsened working conditions, a young woman named Kate Mullany organized a union to demand change. In February of 1864, Mullany and 200 other workers formed the Collar Laundry Union. The well organized union struck and demanded a 25 cent raise, and the laundry owners capitulated a week after the strike began. The Collar Laundry Union remained active in Troy, often assisting other unions, and even attempted to establish an employee cooperative. Mullany herself gained national recognition in 1868, when National Labor Union President William Sylvis made her the first female appointed to a labor union's national office. One of the American labor movement's earliest women leaders, the home of Kate Mullany exemplifies a strong tradition of women's union activity. The property is not open to the public.

For additional background information, please see:

• Kate Mullaney [sic]: A True Labor Pioneer, which includes a brief biblography.
  

• Carole Turbin's book, Working Women of the Collar City.

• Then First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton's July 15, 1998 remarks in front of the Kate Mullany house as part of her Save America's Treasures tour.
  

NEWS: Los Angeles County Museum of Art Considering "House Collection"

I've recently posted about Colonial Williamsburg's potential sale of Carter's Grove, one of their many historic buildings, as well as the struggles of historic house museums in general. Now, as reported yesterday in the New York Times, a different and creative twist to protecting historic buildings may be on the horizon: the director of The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is thinking about collecting "significant pieces of midcentury residential architecture, including houses by Rudolph M. Schindler, Richard Neutra, Frank Lloyd Wright and his son Lloyd Wright," and "treating them as both museum objects and as residences for curators."

Of course, a number of organizations own and operate multiple historic houses or buildings as museums (Historic New England, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, to name just a few), and I've heard that a few organizations have established programs where preservation-minded people can "live in a landmark" as a means of protecting and occupying threatened vacant historic buildings. And in England, it is possible for vacationers to rent historic buildings for short-term stays from the National Trust.

Mr. Govan's initiation and consideration of this effort to protect Los Angeles' modern architecture is not really a surprise. Before moving to Los Angeles, he was director of The Dia Art Foundation in New York for 12 years. In that capacity, as many of our readers will know, he envisioned and spearheaded the fantasic Dia:Beacon project in Beacon, New York. The Dia:Beacon project involved the adaptive use of an abandoned industrial building on the Hudson River waterfront to a quarter-million square feet of gallery space for modern works in its collection which had formerly been seen on an infrequent basis in scattered locations. My brief description here does not do it justice; it was a great project and is a great place, well worth a visit.

For more information about Dia and the Dia:Beacon project, read this collection of [The New York] Times Topics articles.

From The New York Times

03/15/07

A Museum Takes Steps To Collect Houses

By Edward Wyatt

LOS ANGELES, March 14 — Shortly after moving here last year to take over as director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Michael Govan started looking at houses — not as a place for him to live but as potential museum pieces.

His idea — one that has rarely, if ever, been tried on a large scale by a major museum — is to collect significant pieces of midcentury residential architecture, including houses by Rudolf M. Schindler, Richard Neutra, Frank Lloyd Wright and his son Lloyd Wright, and to treat them as both museum objects and as residences for curators.

While he has yet to acquire any properties, Mr. Govan said this week that he certainly had his eye on some, including Frank Gehry’s landmark residence in Santa Monica, a collage of tilting forms. In an interview Mr. Gehry confirmed that Mr. Govan had discussed the idea with him but said that no agreements about the house’s future had been reached.

Mr. Govan, who moved here in March 2006 from New York, where he directed the Dia Art Foundation, said his project had been driven by the immediate impression that in Los Angeles, a city defined by outdoor spaces, architecture is inseparable from art.

“It started with an effort to rethink the museum, looking at the resources that are both locally powerful and internationally relevant,” he said. “It’s clear that the most important architecture in Los Angeles is largely its domestic architecture. I’ve talked certainly to a number of people who have interesting architecture, and I’m beginning to talk to other people about raising funds to preserve these works.”

The potential cost of the houses varies widely. Many of the most distinctive properties, in Beverly Hills or the Hollywood Hills, have most recently sold for millions of dollars. Others, like Schindler’s Buck House, on Eighth Street, barely two blocks from the museum, sold for less than half a million dollars in 1995, although it clearly would be worth more than double that today.

Mr. Govan was reluctant to discuss his plans in detail, partly because he has taken only “baby steps,” he said, but also because he does not want to set off bidding wars for houses in which he is interested. He said he hoped the museum could either buy houses or have them donated, the same ways that a museum would go about acquiring paintings or sculptures.

“This whole initiative will depend on generosity,” he said. “In the same way that someone would donate a Picasso, we want people to think of ways to see these houses as works of art and to think about ways to preserve them.”

Although he said he had received an “enthusiastic response” when he presented the idea to the museum’s trustees, “we have no funds at the moment” dedicated to the effort, he added.

But the idea has already started to generate chatter in the architecture community here. Richard Koshalek, president of the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and a former director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, said Mr. Govan’s effort was “not only crucial for the city of Los Angeles but for the history of modern architecture.”

“Architects learn from other architects,” Mr. Koshalek said. “This history will be lost if people like Michael do not take this kind of initiative.”

While owning an architecturally significant house in Los Angeles has long carried a certain cachet, many potentially valuable works have fallen into disrepair or been greatly altered by renovations undertaken by a succession of owners.

“A number of them haven’t been touched,” Mr. Govan said. “But many have been badly renovated and fundamentally changed. So I think it’s kind of the last chance to try to preserve a group of these as a collection.”

Mr. Govan’s idea is perhaps all the more remarkable because the Los Angeles County Museum does not have a department of architecture or design, unlike some older institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

But one of the museum’s first acquisitions after Mr. Govan moved to Los Angeles, after 12 years as director of Dia, was a high-rise office interior by the Modernist architect John Lautner.

The Lautner office was formerly owned by James F. Goldstein, a real-estate investor who had Lautner design the space in 1987 for the 20th floor in a building in Century City, the commercial development on Santa Monica Boulevard in west Los Angeles.

In 2005 Mr. Goldstein was informed that his lease for the space would not be renewed, and a foundation devoted to saving Lautner works began seeking a patron who would preserve the space.

The Los Angeles County Museum initially turned down the proposal because museum officials felt it did not have the room to display the 800-square-foot office. But once Mr. Govan arrived, he seized the opportunity to acquire the work for an undisclosed amount and use it not as an exhibit but as an office — specifically, his.

The museum now plans to install the office, which includes copper walls, a wood ceiling and a floor of black slate, as part of the renovation of the May Company building, a former department store that is on the western edge of the museum’s 20-acre campus on Wilshire Boulevard. That renovation is planned for 2008 or 2009, and Mr. Govan said he hoped to use the space as his regular office, allowing visitors access to it as an exhibit on weekends.

Similarly, he said he hoped to use the houses that he collects not strictly as museum pieces but as housing for museum staff members, a perk that he said he believed would help the museum attract new curatorial talent.

“A lot of curators here have sought out interesting houses,” he said. “I thought, ‘You could just have house tours on a regular basis to allow the public to have access to them.’ ”

Although it does not have a design collection as such, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has hardly ignored the city’s architectural history. In 1987 it organized a tour in the Silver Lake community of houses by Schindler, Neutra and other architects of the 1920s, ’30s, ’40s and ’50s. In 1965 the museum published “A Guide to Southern California Architecture,” a book that, although out of print, is prized by real-estate agents here who specialize in architectural gems.

Various Los Angeles organizations have also sponsored tours of houses that were built as part of the Case Study program: two dozen prototypes of modern architecture, by Charles and Ray Eames, Neutra and Pierre Koenig, among others, that were commissioned by Art & Architecture magazine and built from 1945 to 1964.

Silver Lake, an area around a man-made reservoir in the hills east of Hollywood, is the site of dozens of houses that would be potential acquisitions for the museum. The 2200 block of Silver Lake Boulevard, for example, has no fewer than five houses by Neutra, who was encouraged to migrate from Vienna to Los Angeles by Schindler, who was himself born in Austria and had worked in Chicago and Los Angeles as a construction supervisor for Frank Lloyd Wright.

Schindler’s work is also ubiquitous around Los Angeles. In 2001 the magazine ArtForum listed 32 significant works by Schindler, several in the parts of Los Angeles that visitors to the city rarely get to, including Torrance, Glendale, South Central and Woodland Hills.

Mr. Govan said that because the institution was a county museum, he did not intend to limit his collection to the area immediately around the museum’s west Los Angeles location.

With Mr. Govan’s plans already being discussed in architecture and real estate circles, the museum is certain to face some competition to acquire properties, including that of Mr. Gehry. His Santa Monica house, built in 1978 and remodeled in 1993, is known for its distinctive exteriors, which include corrugated metal, plywood and chain-link fencing.

It is also in the sights of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Mr. Gehry said, which has talked to him about its registering the house or acquiring it once he completes a new residence in nearby Venice, Calif.

“In the meantime,” Mr. Gehry said, “I’m living in it.”

Future of Historic House Museums

As a follow up to my January 5th post Historic Preservation and Heritage Tourism News Stories, which included a link to an article about the financial difficulties of maintaining historic house museums in the face of declining interest and Colonial Williamsburg's related intent to sell Carter's Grove, readers may be interested in Bonnie Hurd Smith's recent post on the ENHA [Essex National Heritage Area] First Period Architecture blog.

In Future of Historic House Museums, she describes and provides detailed notes from a lecture presented by Carl Nold, president and CEO of Historic New England, Inc., in Salem, Massachusetts on March 1st. After indicating that Mr. Nold spoke to a "packed" house on a cold Tuesday night, she relates Mr. Nold's key points: why do we care about historic houses; what they can be; the current situation; some solutions; community roles, ways to manage, ways to appeal, etc.; key points, worth repeating; what can members do NOW to support historic house museums; and some follow up points.

In the introduction to her notes, Smith expresses the hope that Mr. Nold's comments will be published by Historic New England, but until then, I would encourage anyone interested in this subject to review her notes; to paraphrase or further describe them here would mean presenting this information to readers third hand.

Hurd Smith is former executive director, and now consultant to, the Ipswich Historical Society and principal of Hurd Smith Communications. The ENHA First Period Architecture blog was established in October, 2006.

Historic Preservation and Heritage Tourism News Stories

The New York Times has recently done a number of interesting articles about historic preservation and heritage tourism, including:

Homes Sell, and History Goes Private (Tracy Rozhon) which describes Colonial Williamsburg Foundation's recent decision to put the historic house, Carter's Grove, up for sale (photo above from Colonial Williamsburg's site). The article has provoked much thoughtful discussion about the diverse efforts of historic house and living history museums to stay open and remain relevant in the face of declining visitation rates and increasing competition for education and entertainment dollars. More information follows this list of articles.

Fantastic animated graphic images showing the planned restoration of Central Park's Bethesda Terrace to the original designs of Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted.

Brick Houses, Winding Paths and Unexpected Sharp Elbows (Jeff Vandam), describing recent efforts by local preservationists and New York City's Landmark Preservation Commission to designate Sunnyside Gardens, a 16-block, cooperative garden community in western Queens, as a historic district.

Reclaiming the Revolution and the related articles The Fight for Independence in a Strategic Region and Timeline: Paths of War, From Long Island to Princeton (all by Terry Golway). These articles describe American Revolution sites in New Jersey and Congress' recent passage of legislation designating hundreds of the state's Revolutionary War sites as part of a new entity called the Crossroads of American Revolution National Heritage Area. A slide show of sites and re-enactors is also included.

Once a Hub of Strife, Boston Woos Black Tourists (Joshua Kurlantzick), describing a historic tour of Roxbury by trolley, and some of Boston's efforts to change its image among black Americans.

Using Redevelopment to Tell a Story (Lisa Chamberlain), describing Durham, North Carolina and private developers' recent efforts to turn a painful past into opportunity, using history as a teaching experience while also rebuilding a once-vibrant commercial district. Working in partnership, two developers will redevelop 20 buildings, or 600,000 square feet, as well as a vacant lot that was once the site of a Woolworth's where lunch counter sit-ins took place, attracting the support of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1960. The city has been organizing business owners and volunteers to build a "museum without walls" and is completing infrastructure improvements.

Mothering Brooklyn (Susan Dominus), a eulogy for long-time Brooklyn preservationist Evelyn Ortner describing Evelyn and Everett Ortner's efforts to revitalize Brooklyn, beginning in the mid-1960s.

To read more about the protected sale of Carter's Grove (meaning that "restrictions would be implemented for the long-term protection of the site's historic, architectural, visual, archeological, and environmental resources"), see Colonial Williamsburg Foundation to Proceed with Protected Sale of Carter's Grove, which includes a fact sheet about the protected sale of the Carter's Grove site and statements from the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antinquities. In establishing sales restrictions, Colonial Williamsburg hopes to establish standards that will serve as a model for the historic preservation community.

Readers may also be interested in a new book by Donna Ann Harris, New Solutions for House Museums: Ensuring the Long-Term Preservation of America's Historic Houses. A blurb on the back cover of the book notes that a "generational shift is occurring at historic house museums as board members and volunteers retire and few young people are taking their place. These landmarks are also plagued by serious deferred maintenance and few have any endowment whatsoever. What will happen to these sites in the next ten years? Harris provides a decision-making methodology as well as a dozen case studies of house museums that have made a successful transition to a new owner or user to assure the continuing preservation of the landmark for generations to come."