Published by the Preservation Trust of Vermont, 104 Church Street, Burlington, VT 05401
http://www.ptvermont.org

Vermont News

• National Register News

National News

• The Right Targets Smart Growth For Smearing

Publications & Resources

• Public Buildings Keep Town Centers Alive

Events

• "Building Rural Bits: Technology and Transportation", March 11, 2003
• VMGA Annual Meeting: Shaping our Future, March 17
• The Way Home: Paintings of Two Generations of A Vermont Farm Family by Eunice Kinsey, February 22 - June 8

Opportunities

• Did Mark Twain Really Sleep Here?  Learning to Write about Historic Buildings and Gardens,  April 5 & 26, 2003
• Project Manager/Curator: Norwich University
• Executive Director: Building a Better Brattleboro
• Save America's Treasures Grants
• Nominations Sought by Preservation Burlington
• Preservation Education Institute: Workshop Schedule at a Glance

VERMONT

National Register News
The National Park Service has recently listed the following property on the National Register of Historic Places:
 

White River Junction Historic District Update and Boundary Increase, Hartford
This was a project completed by the Hartford Historic Preservation Commission to update descriptions of the 29 buildings located in original district listed on the National Register in 1974 and to expand the boundaries of that district to encompass a more complete listing of resource types in the downtown area.

The district is a well-preserved example of a densely settled late 19th and early 20th  century village center whose significance is related to its location at the junction of several railroads.  It functions as the cultural, political and commercial center of the Town of Hartford. The boundary increase adds 36 contributing properties and 21 noncontributing properties to the previously listed district and includes residential, educational, transportation and industrial resources and provides a greater mix of resource types to the district. The buildings range in style and building type and most date from the 1880s to the 1930s.  Victorian era and early 20th century styles, including good examples historic industrial and commercial buildings, are most widely represented. Commercial and public buildings are largely built of masonry with residential structures being wood frame.

Correction
My apologies for an oversite in the article about the Church Street Firehouse in last month's Historic Vermont newsletter.  The story neglected to include an important part of the history of the firehouse: beginning in 1974 and for more than 20 years following, the Church Street firehouse was home to the the University of Vermont Church Street Center for Community Education.  The Church Street Center offered opportunities for many people over the years and played an important role in vitality of Burlington's community life. -- Meg Campbell, Editor
 

The Right Targets Smart Growth For Smearing
March 2, 2003, Commentary in the Hartford Courant
By Philip Langdon

In Washington last week, a campaign that insults Americans' intelligence prepared for takeoff. No, this wasn't another focus-group-trained Democrat charting a run for the White House. It was something much more visceral: a campaign by the right to make "smart growth" look like an un-American plot.

Randal O'Toole, director of an Oregon think tank known as the Thoreau Institute, convened 125 libertarians, free-market true believers and other conservatives for a three-day conference called "Preserving the American Dream."

In the view of O'Toole and his anti-government allies, American aspirations toward homeownership and mobility are being threatened by smart growth. "How do we get our country back?" demanded O'Toole, who has a taste for over-the-top rhetoric.

In states from Oregon to Maryland, smart growth has attracted broad support because it preserves countryside and presumably saves money by steering more development into areas already equipped with highways, sewers, schools and other costly public facilities. Smart growth does not put an end to metropolitan expansion. Even in Maryland, where Parris Glendening championed regulation of development during his recently concluded two terms as governor, countryside continued to be converted into shopping centers and residential subdivisions.

What smart growth does do, however, is reduce spread-out, leapfrog development - partly by reducing government spending on new roads and other projects that encourage land conversion in the hinterland. Clearly, many Americans are receptive to this goal. In the November 2000 elections, 553 initiatives aimed at saving open space and controlling the rate or location of development were on the ballot in the United States. Seventy-eight percent of them passed.

But since then, a counterattack has been forming. The emerging assault on smart growth does not appear to have the laudable aim of getting planning to function more intelligently and effectively. Instead, it appears aimed at discrediting the entire notion of using government to promote beneficial development patterns.

One of the speakers in the "Preserving the American Dream" conference, David Strom of the Taxpayers League of Minnesota, urged opponents of smart growth to "be relentless in undermining the credibility of your opponents." Strom said a campaign that the Taxpayers League ran against a mass transit proposal in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area depicted pro-transit leaders as practitioners of social engineering. "No one knew what social engineering was," Strom said, "but it sounded bad. We made it sound like they were a bunch of commies."

Strom told smart-growth opponents to wage merciless attacks. "We often make the mistake of assuming this is a battle over who has the better facts," he said. Quite the contrary, whether smart-growth policies are adopted will hinge, he asserted, on whether voters can be persuaded that the typical smart-growth leader is "a pointy-headed intellectual fascist" trying to ruin people's lives.

Michelle Thaxton, executive director of the South Carolina Landowners' Association, told the group to avoid engaging in complex discussions about smart growth. "You don't give any human more than three to five points, or you lose them," Thaxton said. "The press likes sound bites, phrases," she said. "They write that thing [newspapers] on an eighth-grade level."

Jon Caldara, president of the Independence Institute, a free-market think tank in Golden, Colo., said anti-smart-growth forces should avoid looking like they're made up of "cranky white men." One way to do that, Caldara and others said, is to portray smart growth as harmful to minorities and women, buttressing such claims with what he called "hard-luck stories."

 Thus, many praised the idea of appointing a black South Carolina state representative, Joseph H. Neal, as chairman or honorary chairman of the emerging anti-smart-growth coalition. Neal, a Democrat who represents a rural district near Columbia, told the group that his constituents - primarily African American property owners of modest means - have been dealt a severe financial blow by a planning initiative in Richland County that drastically reduces the development rights of their land. If Neal's story is true, the county's decision to limit development in some areas to one house per 25 acres has in fact sorely hurt black property owners. But the smart-growth opponents' reliance on "playing the race card" - as described by Gerrit Knaap of the University of Maryland's National Center for Smart Growth - mostly results in assertions that look highly dubious.

Last November, a conservative foundation, the National Center for Public Policy Research, charged that if smart-growth policies like those of metropolitan Portland had been in place nationwide for the past decade, "over a million young and disadvantaged families, 260,000 of them minority families, would have been denied the dream of homeownership." But Ethan Seltzer, director of the Institute of Portland Metropolitan Studies at Portland State University, dismissed the report as "pretty much garbage." The study claimed that by limiting the quantity and location of land available for development, smart growth drives up housing prices. Knaap found, in his own study, that Portland-area housing prices have remained comparable to those of most metropolitan areas in the West.

Smart-growth opponents have failed to acknowledge that minority-group members in cities benefit substantially from keeping a metro area relatively compact. Twenty-four percent of black households do not own cars. They depend on public transportation, which operates best when jobs and housing are within a few miles of each other. Urban minorities benefit, in addition, from the vitality that smart growth sustains in cities.

Participants in O'Toole's conference said money for an anti-smart-growth campaign might come from the conservative Scaife Foundations and others like them; Wal-Mart, Home Depot and other big-box retailers; road contractors, home builders and developers, among others.

Maybe it will. What the libertarians most need, however, is not money but intellectual honesty and decency. Without honesty and decency, no American dream will long survive.

Philip Langdon of New Haven is senior editor of "New Urban News," a national newsletter on community design and planning.  This article appeared in the March 2, 2003 Hartford Courant and is reprinted with permission.
 

Public Buildings Keep Town Centers Alive
by Philip Langdon

Post offices, municipal halls, libraries, courthouses, and other public buildings can play a critical role in keeping downtowns and town centers strong. Conversely, the loss of key public buildings can seriously damage the fabric of downtown. A report from planning journalist Philip Langdon.

In the 1970s the Postal Service threatened to vacate a Classical-style post office at Broadway and Church Street, the  "100 percent corner" in Saratoga Springs, New York. "Because the city government couldn't or wouldn't move fast enough, the mayor at the time, Raymond Watkin, sued as a private citizen to stop the process, and it worked," recalls former resident Mary Hotaling.

Though most mail-handling for the city of 26,000 was transferred by the Postal Service to a new building about a mile away, postal officials bowed to local pressure and agreed to continue offering window service in the 1910-era building -- a landmark with marble columns framing its entrance. By 1995, however, the Postal Service had chopped up the interior with partitioning and had refused to make major investments in what was, by its calculations, an inefficient old structure.

 Despite its semi-dilapidated condition, the downtown post office had continued to draw 1,500 customers a day, mainly because it stood amid restaurants, stores, banks, and local institutions. "We thought that if the Post Office moved, it would be a disaster to downtown," says Geoff Bornemann, the city's planning director.

Fortunately, an imaginative local developer, Jeffrey W. Pfeil, negotiated an unusual response to the Postal Service's neglect. Pfeil calculated that if he installed a rent-paying business (Coldwell Banker-Prime Properties) in half the building, over a period of years the stream of rental income would generate the $400,000 needed  for restoration and improvements. That included bringing the grand  lobby back to its former splendor and adding a discreetly designed handicapped-access ramp. Pfeil had to devote three long years to pushing his plan through the postal bureaucracy, but with the backing of the late Congressman Gerald Solomon, the building once again became an impressive anchor for downtown.

 Across Broadway from the post office is City Hall, a tall, Italian palazzo-style structure that continues to generate local foot traffic 131 years after it was built. From City Hall it's a short walk to the Saratoga Springs Public Library, built in 1995. That 58,000-square-foot structure, which replaced a much smaller facility, was constructed a block east of Saratoga Springs' main retail street as a result of a consensus that the library should remain downtown.

 Its executive director, Harry Dutcher, sees the library as important to "keeping downtown healthy" and "keeping downtown relevant to the people who live here 12 months a year." "I'm sure it would have been a lot easier to build on a suburban strip," he says. "The building could have been one-story." That would have cost less to build and operate than the three-story structure that ultimately came into being. The costs, in Dutcher's view, are justified by the fact that residents of close-in neighborhoods can walk to it and by the role the library plays in the community.

Saratoga Springs is prospering. Developers are filling parking lots on Broadway with new buildings, some of them two, three, or four stories high, with a mix of retail, offices, and sometimes housing. Downtown storefronts, half-empty in the 1970's, are now full. The city's core looks handsome and distinctive. Public buildings helped make the revival possible...

For the full text of the article, please contact meg@ptvermont.org.

This article is reprinted with permission from the Winter 2003 issue of the Planning Commissioners Journal, the nation's leading publication for citizens interested in planning and land use issues. For more information about the Journal, either call: 802-864-9083; fax: 802-862-1882; e-mail: info@plannersweb.com; or visit their Web site at: www.plannersweb.com. The Journal is based in Burlington, Vermont.

EVENTS

"Building Rural Bits: Technology and Transportation"
Tuesday, March 11, 2003 - 7:00 to 8:00 PM, Room 427, Waterman Building, UVM
Thomas A. Horan, Ph.D.
Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, California

Forward-looking communities throughout the U.S. are using digital technologies to improve economic and social prosperity. For others, technological, regulatory and other barriers prevent innovation, especially in rural areas where advanced telecommunications infrastructures are not in place. This seminar will examine the role of technology in rural community development and advanced transportation strategies to make communities both “wired and livable.”

Dr. Horan is an internationally recognized authority on the community-based impacts of technology.  His recent book, Digital Places: Building Our City of Bits, examines how communities can successfully integrate digital technology in social, economic, and environmental fabrics. Other research involves transportation, telecommunications, and environmental assessment at the national, state, and local levels.

For directions/parking information or to request accommodations, please contact Leslie Barchard at 656-0009 or Leslie.Barchard@uvm.edu

Speaker Series on Rural Transportation - Sponsored by The Rural Transportation Learning Center, UVM MPA Program, Center for Rural Studies, and Community Development and Applied Economics Department, CALS, UVM.

Vermont Museum and Gallery Alliance
Annual Meeting: Shaping our Future
March 17, 2003
9:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.

Join your fellow museum colleagues for a day of presentations and discussions about how our museums impact Vermont's future. We will begin our morning with two key-note addresses. The new Director of the Vermont Humanities Council, Peter Gilbert, will begin our day with a talk about the VHC's newly adopted slogan "Sharing our past, shaping our future." He will talk about how a dual vision of past and future enables us to understand what the humanities have to teach us. Alex Aldrich, Director of the VermontArts Council, will discuss the "Creative Economy" and its impact on Vermont. Both Peter and Alex will share with us some of the most innovative projects that have been recently grant funded that help Vermonters look to their communities and thus to their future through the arts and humanities.

In the afternoon, there will be a number of "how-to" workshops that will provide something for anyone who is looking to the future. These include workshops for directors, archivists, educators, exhibitors, and educators. The workshops will be held at the many fine cultural organizations in Barre. Tours will also be available in the afternoon of Studio Place Arts, the new Granite Museum exhibits, and the new Vermont History Center.

Afternoon Workshops:

 
Workshop 1: Keep it or Throw it: What do we archive for the future?
How do you pick what to save from all the ephemera produced in Vermont today? Who is saving what?  Leaders: Paul Carnahan, VHS and Donald Wickman, Woodstock Historical Society. To be held at the Vermont History Center.

Workshop 2: The Spirit of Objects: Engaging our Communities in Exhibits.
This "How-To" exhibit workshop is based on an exhibit held at the Sheldon Museum last year where community members wrote about objects in the collections. Leaders: Annie Perkins and Liz Shattuck, Sheldon Museum. To be held at Studio Place Arts.

Workshop 3: Mapping our Past: Shaping our Future with Students.
This workshop uses the Vermont Institute of Natural Science's exciting mapping program to show how you can engage middle and high school students in mapping the past and planning for the future. Leader: Ned Swanberg, VINS. To be held at the Aldrich Library.

Workshop 4: Preserving our Collections without Bankrupting our Future.
This hands-on collections care workshop will present low-cost, no-cost preservation options. Leaders: MJ Davis, VMGA and Ingrid Neuman, VMGA Board Member. To be held at the Barre Historical Society's Labor Hall.

Workshop 5: The Business of Sustainability.
Join your fellow museum colleagues in a round-table discussion about how we are all doing financially. How are we all doing? How has the economy and visitation affected our bottom line? What are some creative solutions that Vermont museums have found to be sustainable? Discussion Leader:  Mary Lou Willits, Slate Valley Museum. To be held at the Barre Granite Museum.

REGISTRATION DEADLINE is MONDAY MARCH 10
Contact the Vermont Museum & Gallery Alliance for more information: vmga@valley.net
 

The Way Home: Paintings of Two Generations of A Vermont Farm Family by Eunice Kinsey
February 22 though June 8, Fairbanks Museum, St. Johnsbury
The Way Home features more than 40 watercolors and corresponding short essays.  The images and stories offer first-person accounts of rural life in the Northeast kingdom, revealing details about farming and household practices during the Depression and the decades that followed. References to tools, traditions, and both special and ordinary occasions are included.  The Way Home celebrates regional art and history and allows the Museum to highlight some of its historical collections in a context of the period of their common use.

For more information, contact the Museum at 802-748-2372. www.fairbanksmuseum.org
 

OPPORTUNITIES

Did Mark Twain Really Sleep Here?
Learning to Write about Historic Buildings and Gardens
Two-Session Certificate Elective
April 5 & 26, 2003, 9:30 am - 4:30 pm
Chaplin Hall, Norwich University, Northfield, Vermont

This writing workshop will take a nuts-and-bolts approach to how to write about houses, gardens, and horticulture. The basics of journalism will be covered, and students will explore the differences among the forms of non-fiction for periodical publications. Participants will also dissect previously published examples of the genre, and suggestions will be made regarding ways to sharpen the edges of a piece of writing. There will be an out-of-class assignment to be completed for review during the second session.

Instructor: Paula Panich, publisher and editor of DiRT: A Gardening Journal from the Connecticut River Valley. She has been a house and garden journalist for 16 years. And is co-author of The Desert Southwest and Desert Southwest Gardens (Bantam Books). Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other publications; she was an editor at Phoenix Home & Garden Magazine for 5 years. She ran a public relations consulting firm for the architectural and building trades in Phoenix, and recently founded Taking Root! The Connecticut River Valley Horticultural Marketing Exchange.

Cost: HWI member/government staff: $160; Others: $180.  Click here to enroll: http://www.historicwindsor.com/registration.htm

Project Manager/Curator: Norwich University
Norwich University, founded in 1819 as the nation’s first private military college, seeks an experienced and highly motivated professional for the position of Project Director/Curator who will:
 

• coordinate the design and development of a new museum for which major funding has been pledged - work with internal and external committees, consultants and constituencies to define and implement the museum’s vision; evaluate and define the scope of  programs and facility needs and develop a project budget for both operating and capitol costs; maintain an overall timetable and projects outline; establish measurable goals and outcomes and a communications plan.
• develop and implement preservation and collections management plans, policies and procedures (including a complete collection inventory).
• work with consultants to identify immediate, short- and long- term collection needs.
• balance the needs of programs, collection development and preservation with administrative, academic and alumni interests and the University’s strategic plans and vision

Requirements:  Master’s Degree in museum studies, history or related field and at least 3 years experience in a museum environment, preferably in an academic setting.  Thorough knowledge of professional museum principles and practices; excellent communications, interpersonal, presentation, and planning skills; understanding of military history; experience in museum facility and program design a plus.

Send cover letter and resume to Project Manager/Curator Search, c/o HR, Human Resources, Norwich University, 158 Harmon Drive, Northfield, VT 05663 or via email: jobs@norwich.edu.  Application review begins March 17, 2003.

For more information on Norwich University, please visit www.norwich.edu.

Executive Director: Building a Better Brattleboro
 Building a Better Brattleboro, a successful non-profit downtown  revitalization organization, is seeking an innovative leader to provide operational expertise. This position is responsible for creating and sustaining a positive, dynamic commercial district that serves as a public space and economic center for residents of Windham County. The successful candidate should have a knowledge of, or expertise in economic development, non-profit administration, special events, marketing and volunteer management with a minimum of 4 years of demonstrated management skills within a similar setting. Candidates must have a superior ability to be collaborative, flexible, enthusiastic, and responsive to the fast pace of a highly dynamic organization. Generous salary and benefits package. Please send resume and salary history to: Executive Director Search, Build A Better Brattleboro, PO Box 961, Brattleboro, VT 05302

Save America's Treasures Grants
Grants are available for preservation and/or conservation work on nationally significant intellectual and cultural artifacts and nationally significant historic structures and sites.  A federal Save America's Treasures Grant requires a dollar-for-dollar match, which can be cash or donated services. Applications are available at www.saveamericastreasures.org  Deadline: March 20,2003.  Foor more information, please contact the PTV Field Service Representative Ann Cousins ann@ptvermont.org or Doug Porter doug@ptvermont.org.

Nominations Sought by Preservation Burlington
Each year Preservation Burlington selects two winners to receive preservation awards.  These awards are given to individuals or institutions who have helped to preserve Burlington's heritage through the restoration or adaptive reuse of the city's many fine old buildings. Past winners have included the owners of private residences, but also organizations like Champlain College and the Burlington Land Trust.

Awards are made in two categories: single family residential and commercial/institutional.  The winners of these awards will be announced at Preservation Burlington's Annual Meeting in March.

We invite the public to make nomination for these awards.  You can do so simply by emailing your nomination to director@preservationburlington.org, or by calling 802-238-2918.  Be sure to include the address of the property and your reason for nominating it.

Preservation Education Institute: Workshop Schedule at a Glance
www.preservationworks.org

• May 16 - 17, 2003  Structural Evaluation and Repair:  Masonry
• July 10 - 13, 2003    Historic Plaster Repair
• July 14 - 15, 2003    Paint:  Historic and Contemporary Materials and Practice (Date Confirmation Pending)
• July 16 - 17, 2003    Structural Evaluation & Repair:  Timber Frame Structures (Date Confirmation Pending)
• July 18 - 19, 2003    Introduction to Architectural Photography
• Date Pending     Preservation Philosophy for People Who Maintain Old Buildings
• Date Pending     American Building Design and Technology
• Date Pending     Repointing Brick Masonry
•