Preservation Photos #11

Looking up in Rockefeller Center, December 2008.

Building a New Bridge

The sad news has likely reached all interested parties by now: the Lake Champlain Bridge is to be demolished as soon as possible. A demolition company has been hired and design for the new bridge (to be erected in the same place as the current bridge) are moving full speed ahead. On Saturday December 12, NYSDOT held three public meetings to offer a summary of issues and present six new bridge designs. See the presentation here. Now the public is invited to view the designs online and to participate in a survey, categorizing reactions to the bridge designs, choosing what new bridge features are important, and commenting on how to commemorate the old bridge. The opportunity to participate in this bridge survey is available only until midnight on Monday December 14. Participants do not have to be New York State or Vermont residents. The survey is anonymous. Historic preservationists, bridge enthusiasts, historians, citizens, everyone can voice an opinion. This is an important chance to have a voice in the outcome of the new bridge.



What’s Your Architectural Personality?

What is your personality in terms of architecture? Take this quiz from HGTV to find out where you fall in the wide range of architectural styles.

I was hoping to be of the arts and crafts variety, but I took the quiz twice (you’ll see that some questions you can probably answer more than one way) and both times I received:

You’re solid as a Ranch house!

Simple and suburban by nature, you exude a cozy warmth that lets people know you don’t mind if they leave their shoes on in the house — it’s only carpet, after all! Family and friends are important to you, and you love having them stop by. While not overly fussy or vain, you care about your looks — but honestly, you’re happiest in sweatpants. To you, life isn’t measured in the goods you’ve acquired, but in time well spent.

Well, thinking about it, it’s not so bad and having grown up in a 1957 ranch house, what else am I supposed to know? And I do love having friends and family stop by; I was just hoping to escape suburbia! Not this time, I guess. Well, for anyone else who was hoping for a different style, this quiz only uses 18 styles and we know just how many there are beyond that 18. Take the quiz and share your results.

An edit: So, I found out there was a bonus question involving dog choices, but that didn’t come up every time for my quiz. Strange. But with the dog question (and the same answers that got me the ranch house) I ended up with Highbrow Greek Revival:

Greek Revival homes (also called Southern Colonial) are a mixture of many influences, including Roman and Greek (the columns) and French (the high windows). You’re a mix, too. You take the best from the world and make it all work together. Though sophisticated, you’re still up for a night of dancing on a sawdust floor. You love life. You have a welcoming temperament and can always find time to chat over snacks.

Hmm…I suppose a combination of all types is a good thing. Clearly, this quiz is way too entertaining. Keep playing!

Thanks to Maria G. for sharing this quiz!

Article Reminder

To those writing articles for the December/January issue of Preservation in Pink, please start sending them to me. Your deadline is before Christmas (anytime before is fine) and after December 17th would be perfect. If you have a magnet already, I’ll come up with something else as a thank you/writing compensation.There is still room for some articles, so please consider it. To my fellow preservation bloggers out there – this includes you! Consider it another place to get on your soapbox (as long as you can back it up, of course).

Preservation Photos #10

Given the fate* of the Lake Champlain Bridge and the amount of my life that is has consumed lately, it seems fitting to share another photograph. My photographs cannot do it justice, however. Check the Center for Digital Initiatives at the University of Vermont for beautiful, historic photographs by Louis McAllister. The Special Collections Library at UVM has a wonderful postcard collection with many Lake Champlain Bridge views.

* from the NYSDOT website: NYSDOT is expecting Federal Highway Administration approval for the bridge demolition by Monday 12/7. NYSDOT’s prime contractor will be receiving bids from subcontractors for the controlled demolition of most bridge sections on Monday 12/7 and select subcontractors on Wednesday 12/9. Crews will start preparing the bridge for demolition as soon as next week.

Approaching the End

(of the semester, I mean). Yes, it’s the Christmas season and I am counting down days until I can watch Christmas movies and decorate and bake cookies or build a gingerbread house (perhaps from The Gingerbread Architect)  without worrying about papers and presentations. It must be the same for all students; as a historic preservation student, I have never known anything different. On the upside, writing something like a 20 page paper allows me the energy and space to know and love my subject (the Lake Champlain Bridge for me).  Seeing my months of hard work come together at the end of semester is always a wonderful feeling. Now if only Burlington, Vermont would see some snow…

One other guarantee this time of year is that I drink much more coffee than I already do. Fellow grad students everywhere, what about you? How do you feel towards the end of your semester? What have your projects been this semester?  Good luck and enjoy your coffee. I recommend the Vermont Coffee Company, dark roast.

Nothing better than a cup of dark, bold, strong coffee from freshly ground coffee beans to help with the last stretch of the semester's assignments.

Preservation in Pink readers, what is your favorite coffee?

O Christmas Tree

Choosing and chopping down a Christmas tree with my family was always one of the best days of the year. Even on Long Island we had Christmas tree farms, so all six of us would pile into the minivan and drive out east to the beautiful, seemingly rural tree farms. Those days remain among my favorite memories. We’d be bundled in jackets, mittens, and boots, just hoping for snowflakes. We ran around the trees and walked as far back as we could on the farm, figuring that was where they kept the best trees. After searching and all choosing different trees, we would finally narrow it down to two and Mom would make the final decision. Knowing how much her young daughters liked tall tress, we always ended up with a tree larger than we could handle. Luckily, our 1957 ranch house was designed with 12′ cathedral ceiling in the living room (technically called the “great room”). A few years Dad actually had to cut about 2′ – 3′ from the bottom of the tree in order to make it fit! One year the tree almost fell off the roof on our way home; we four girls watched it like a hawk after that.

Eventually cutting your own tree became much too expensive, and we resorted to choosing a tree from a lot, though we’d still head out east for it – until we got to be older and we weren’t all home from college in time to participate in the tree picking.  While we can’t all be there for tree picking, we make sure to decorate the tree all together – it’s a bit event with music, cookies, eggnog, too many ornaments, and traditions – even if we have to wait until Christmas Eve to decorate. We’ve had ugly trees, fat trees, tall trees, trees that fell down in the house, and many more. I imagine it will always be a big deal to us.

My dad is a fan of breaking shoes and bustin’ chops, as he would say, so every year he now talks about that nice 8′ artificial tree that he and Mom are going to put in the living room – forget the real trees!  I think he’s kidding, but still, I threaten to not come home if there is a fake tree. Or I’ll just haul one down from Vermont. We do have fake miniature trees in the house, but there is nothing quite like the Christmas tree smell, without which it wouldn’t feel like Christmas as my house.

Yesterday I received a neighborhood email with 5 reasons to buy a real Christmas tree that touch on the environment and the local economy – how perfect!

5 REASONS TO GET A REAL CHRISTMAS TREE

By Clare Innes, Marketing Coordinator – Chittenden Solid Waste District, Redmond Rd, cinnes@cswd.net

Thinking about getting an artificial Christmas tree this year? Here are 5 great reasons to go for the real deal:

1. The average artificial tree lasts 6 to 9 years but will remain in a landfill for centuries.

2. Think a real tree poses a greater fire hazard? Think again. Artificial trees pose a greater fire hazard than the real deal because they are made with polyvinyl chloride, which often uses lead as a stabilizer, making it toxic to inhale if there is a fire. Lead dust can be harmful to children.

3. Every acre of Christmas trees produces enough daily oxygen for 18 people. There are about 500,000 acres of Christmas trees growing in the U.S. Because of their hardiness, trees are usually planted where few other plants can grow, increasing soil stability and providing a refuge for wildlife.

4. North American Christmas tree farms employ more than 100,000 people; 80% of artificial trees worldwide are manufactured in China.

5. The most sustainable options: Buy your tree from a local grower or purchase a potted tree and plant it in your yard after the holidays.

Enjoy the beginning of the holiday season and have fun finding the perfect tree.

A Life in the Trades: December 2009

Series introduction. October 2009. November 2009.

By Nicholas Bogosian

When did manual competence become inferior to informational and technological competence? When did blue-collar become blue-collar? When did the college degree become superior to vocational training? In recent years, this dichotomy has been explored in academic realms to reveal fascinating insight. In truth, the line between the manual and the intellectual cannot be divided so easily.

The work of the preservation tradesman, like many other trades, must utilize the mind and hand in ways which few other careers can match in the modern world. The tradesman is not simply a field-trip factory worker cranking out the steps he or she learned back in trade school. The preservation tradesmen, in particular, rely on their knowledge of material sciences, history (human and building), building construction, conservation methods, the use of tools and various technologies, and manual proficiency at various building crafts. Their learning is a process which extends far beyond their initial training in a world where every new project is a process of new research and insight. Indeed, the critical thinking and management of all these elements into an informed decision and application seems to be a truer throwback to what we once called the “Renaissance Man.” The interdisciplinary character of the preservation trades can seem overwhelming and exhilarating.

Dave Mertz, director of the Building Preservation and Restoration program at Belmont Technical College, explains about his paper “The Role of Higher Education in Traditional Trades Training” that

“As late as the 19th century, the construction trades were considered highly desirable fields which required manual dexterity, critical thinking skills and advanced technical knowledge. This array of skills attracted highly qualified apprentices who were academically proficient and career driven. With the advent of higher education in America, the role of the training shifted from the practitioner to the technical and vocational schools and the quality of the student began to slowly diminish as parents, teachers and guidance counselors pushed their children into career paths that were deemed more socially and financially advantageous, leaving those who were not deemed “college bound” to fill the trades and other jobs perceived to be laborious in nature.

Today, students who struggle academically or who are socially maladjusted are often pushed into high school vocational programs. This influx of under-prepared and often unmotivated class of students along with the shift to assembly-like construction practices during the post-war building boom has led to the “dumbing” of the trades. Today’s preservation trades programs have begun to challenge the academic paradigm of the past fifty years by reinventing traditional trades education under the banner of historic preservation and at a collegiate level.”

Ken Follett, a historic conservation specialist in Mastic Beach, New York writes in his article, “A Contractor’s View of Craft Training”:

“The very idea that any modestly literate young individual should choose anything but a college education seems to run contrary to an economically-driven myth of our education system. (In crude terms, I think the myth runs something like: Pay up, and we will teach you how to capture the golden goose.) As well, respect paid to the trade of an artisan becomes a threat to the dreams of hard-working parents. Parents who work with their hands, especially, hope their children will not follow them in a career of physical labor…

Why is the preservation industry so incredibly lopsided in favor of intellectual occupations, to the neglect of hands-on craft? I have not met many people who think that a young person following a trade career is not headed on a difficult way in life, especially where higher education is available. Granted, physical labor makes a person tired. But it does not reduce brain cells. On the other hand, too much schooling can dull the senses, inhibit thirst for life, and inflate an individual’s self-importance. And however much is spent on an education, it does not increase the quantity of brain cells….

Hands-on work is not a refuge in a simpler life and it is unfortunate if a vital national resource, the skilled craftsperson working in traditional trades, is allowed to be stereotyped as a theme worker whereby anyone can take it up as a hobby. Construction contracting is not trivial; it is highly complex and demanding. There is an undeniable amount of pain in the fully engaged practice of hoisting two cement bags at one time; this is not a pursuit that comes easy. Progress is measured, not by a high grade-point average, but by food on the table. The gap between those who design and those who implement, between those who think about it and those who have a constant backache and dirty hands, is a convergence of two economic classes. The educational ideals of these two classes, totally foreign, collide at the building site. And neither system of ideals seems disposed to admit the validity of the other. There are few exceptions.”

Matthew B. Crawford majored in physics in undergraduate school and earned his Ph.D. in Political Philosophy. He later ditched numerous “information jobs” to open up a vintage motorcycle repair shop in Virginia. He wrote an essay for The New Atlantic which he later expanded into book form entitled, Shop Class as Soulcraft. Here’s an excerpt:

“Today, in our schools, the manual trades are given little honor. The egalitarian worry that has always attended tracking students into “college prep” and “vocational ed” is overlaid with another: the fear that acquiring a specific skill set means that one’s life is determined. In college, by contrast, many students don’t learn anything of particular application; college is the ticket to an open future. Craftsmanship entails learning to do one thing really well, while the ideal of the new economy is to be able to learn new things, celebrating potential rather than achievement. Somehow, every worker in the cutting-edge workplace is now supposed to act like an “intrapreneur,” that is, to be actively involved in the continuous redefinition of his own job.”

In another example of such matters being criticized, Richard Sennett, professor of sociology at NYU and at The London School of Economics, recently wrote an opus of sociological investigation with his 2008 book, The Craftsman. In it, he explores the meaning of the craftsman through history. Though Sennett does argue that the art of “doing as thinking” in craftsmanship is intrinsic, he does not believe that the craftsman has disappeared over time, rather that the intrinsic qualities have merely shifted into other areas of our economy: the computer programmer, the doctor, the parent, the musician, the chef. However, for those interested in the role of the craftsman through time and what makes them unique, this work is fascinating in its insight.

Matthew B. Crawford states, “Tom Thompson, of Oregon’s Department of Education, says there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that one of the fastest-growing segments of the student body at community colleges is people who already have a four-year degree and return to get a marketable trade skill.” He later goes on to say that 98% of those who graduate get jobs in their first year after finishing.

Though not all college degrees create abstracted job skills, I agree with Crawford’s sentiment that higher education is sometimes failing in its practicality and application. My step-father finds humor in the fact that he graduated with an architecture degree and was asked in one of his first interviews upon graduation, “Do you know how to change a light switch?” Well, he couldn’t. I know myself and a few others in the Building Preservation & Restoration program at Belmont Technical College are attending with previous undergraduate and graduate degrees ranging from history, economics, to theatre. I can’t speak for the others, but it was the specific career-defining move that attending such a trade school creates that drew me here. Dave Mertz, the director of our program, receives more job offers for students in the preservation field than can be filled. There’s a boom right now in the demand for preservation craftsmen as never before. It is heartening to know that at least under the “banner of historic preservation,” our skills are needed and that we should find work for many years to come.

———————————————

Crawford, Matthew B. Shop Class As Soulcraft. (New York: The Penguin Press, 2009).

Follett, Ken. “A Contractor’s View of Craft Training.” 1997: Cultural Resource Management, an online journal from the National Park Service. Volume 20, Number 12.

Mertz, Dave. “The Role of Higher Education in Traditional Trades Training.” From the International Trades Education Symposium, 2009. Web. http://www.iptw.org/iptw09-ites-speakers.htm.

Sennett, Richard. The Craftsman. (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2008).

Preservation Photos #9

Near North Garden, VA, outside Charlottesville, in June 2009 – a lucky drive-by shot at 30pmh.  I don’t know anything about it – do you?