Preservation Piedmont -1
I look forward to presenting the keynote talk to begin “Preservation Week” produced by Preservation Piedmont in Charlottesville, Virginia. The theme of this year’s week long event is “Threatened Sites & Communities.”
http://ppiedmont.squarespace.com
A pre-event audio interview, hosted on Marcello Rollando’s “Reasonable Voice” show, has also been posted on BlogTalk Radio:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/thereasonablevoices/2013/04/26/preservation-week
This is a very timely, and nationally significant, theme. Late last year someone contacted me about an African American high school constructed in 1949 in Louisiana that has been considered for sale despite the fact that it was architect designed as an “international style” composition, and publicized as a national model for its curriculum and design prior to the 1954 Brown v Board decision. Since I received the invitation to Charlottesville my good friend, Susan Barnes-Gelt (@SBGtweets), sent me an article about the pending demolition of an African American homestead (1897) in Denver, Colorado. The owner, Joseph Adolphus Thomas-Hazell, became one of the founders of the Colorado Black town of Dearfield, Colorado (1910).
Last week Ellen Hunt, AIA (http://ww.epharchitect.com), and I stumbled onto a Rosenwald School located in central Texas that was unknown, even to the Rosenwald Schools Initiative of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Every historic resource that is lost, demolished, or ignored represents a loss of opportunity for American education, economics, sustainability, and quality of life.