Preservation Technology Podcasts (U.S. National Park Service)

Episodes

June 25, 2016

72. The Diverse Stories at the Coastal Heritage Society (Episode 72)

Transcript

Georgia State Railroad Musuem Roundhouse Photo by Rich Burkhart Georgia State Railroad Museum Roundhouse Photo by Rich Burkhart

Kevin Ammons: Welcome to the Preservation Technology Podcast, the show that brings you the people and projects that are bringing innovation to preservation. I’m Kevin Ammons, with the National Park Service’s National Center for Preservation Technology and Training. In this podcast, we hear NCPTT’s Maggie O’Neill as she speaks with Emily Beck, the manager of interpretation for the Coastal Heritage Society in Savannah, Georgia, as they talk about how to interpret a history spanning three centuries across five different historical sites.

Maggie O’Neill: Hey everyone – welcome to the Preservation Technology Podcast. I’m Maggie O’Neill, and I’m sitting down with Emily Beck, who is the Manager of Interpretation at the Coastal Heritage Society in Savannah, Georgia. Thanks so much for sitting down with me today, Emily.

Emily Beck: You’re welcome – I’m so excited to be here.

Maggie O’Neill: Why don’t you start off by telling us a little bit about yourself?

Emily Beck: Well, um, I think I kind of have museums in the blood. Both of my parents were in the National Park Service, so I was always interested in history. When I came back here, to Savannah, to do graduate studies in history, I got this job. It started as a part time job while I was in graduate school, and then it turned into something much more permanent (laughs). I’m very happy for that.

The Coastal Heritage Society is a 501(c)3 nonprofit that was founded in 1975. We operate five museums in the Savannah area, including the Savannah History Museum, Savannah Children’s Museum, Georgia State Railroad Museum, Old Fort Jackson, and, most recently, Pin Point Heritage Museum, which is out on the south side of Savannah.

Maggie O’Neill: Emily and I are currently at the Georgia State Railroad Museum, in the Columbus Executive Car right now, recording this podcast. Coastal Heritage Society, specifically Tri-Centennial Park, which is where we are now, has a really interesting history. The site itself spans three centuries, so I wanted to talk to you today a little bit about the cultural landscape of the site and how you guys interpret that history at once.

Emily Beck: It can be difficult and challenging at times, but I think we are really fortunate at this site to have a lot of physical resources – a lot of structures from different time periods – that can help us get across to visitors that we have different time periods of history here. The land that the Railroad Museum is now on was a Revolutionary War battlefield in 1779, and the railroad began construction on their repair facility here around 1851 and completed it around 1855. We have half of a roundhouse left, a lot of the shops buildings in the back, and a working turn table, so we are lucky in that we have a lot of the resources to be able to illustrate to the visitors a lot of the different parts of the history of the site.

The History Museum – we very recently started having interpretation of the battlefield. We have costumed interpreters do a presentation about the battle of Savannah, and we also have a replica redoubt that his built out by the Savannah History Museum. That also helps us to illustrate that it was a battlefield, because it can be very hard for people to picture that this space is a battlefield, or anything other than a railroad facility.

Coastal Museum Association Awards - Coastal Heritage Society received awards for Pinpoint Heritage Museum and Savannah History Museum "Loyalists and Liberty). Coastal Museum Association Awards – Coastal Heritage Society received awards for Pinpoint Heritage Museum and Savannah History Museum “Loyalists and Liberty). CHS Staff Ray Christie, Emily Beck, and Aaron Bradford (3 center) are pictured.

Maggie O’Neill: Do you see any problems with your audience connecting all of this history at once? And how do you solve that if you do?

Emily Beck: Sometimes, yes. Sometimes it is very hard to get people to understand that this was a battlefield because the section that we have sort of sectioned off from the battle field is a very small portion of it. So, we really have to emphasize – especially when we’re on the train ride – to say that this whole area was a battlefield and was not always a railroad facility. And, I think for us, it really helps that our History Museum interpreters are in costumed. That gives them sort of a visual clue that it’s an 18th century battle.

And um, as far as the Railroad Museum, we even have two different time periods for railroad interpretation. We have sort of steam day, in the early days of railroading in the 19th century and early 20th century, and we also have diesel engines that we use here, and that’s a little bit later as well. So even that, we try to indicate that using, not costuming but uniforms for our railroad operations guys. They can wear overalls and a shirt for steam days, and then they wear something that is much more mid-century for the diesel interpretation that we do.

Maggie O’Neill: And you guys were talking about the redoubt – Have you guys done any archaeological work to place where the redoubt is?

Emily Beck: There were several extensive archaeological surveys done before the redoubt was reconstructed and we actually had um, a couple of archaeologists on staff. Dan and Rita Elliot; they did a lot of work here to determine where everything was positioned. They found quite a few artifacts that we now have on exhibit in the History Museum. This was good for us because we can incorporate that into interpretation, and people are usually pretty interested in archaeological finds on site.

Maggie O’Neill: What are some of the challenges you face when interpreting all of this history at once?

Emily Beck: Um, one challenge we have specifically at the railroad museum is that we have a period of time – a significant period of time, after the Civil War and before the site was shut down, that the site was actually segregated. And so, we talk to visitors about this. Also, I mentioned we have a lot of physical resources – this is another thing that we actually have, an um, what was historically termed “the Colored Workman’s Washroom – we have on site. We have plans to go in and put an exhibit in there, about the African American experience with railroads. This is something that not a lot of other railroad museums actually talk about. Sometimes it can be a little bit awkward talking to visitors about that, but most visitors really show a really strong interest in that sort of social history of the site, here at the railroad museum.

Maggie O’Neill: How are you guys branching out through interpretation?

Emily Beck: Um, we, for a long time, I think we had not a very diverse audience that were coming to see the artifacts and the site of the railroad museum. And a lot of the history we have here, that used to be in the history museum, a lot of it was military themed – so it was a very – we were kind of afraid that we were missing out on getting a lot of families, perhaps women, to come and visit us. And so, we started to expand our interpretation to include um, stories that may not have been heard in the past. A lot of our revolutionary war interpretation deals with the battlefield, but we have just recently – the past couple months – we have been working on a program that deals with perspectives of African Americans and women who were here in the city during the siege of Savannah and leading up to the battle that happened.

The railroad museum – we make an effort to talk about social history, in terms of segregation on the site. We also talk about women who worked for railroads – especially with school groups. I think a lot of kids are kind of interested in that as well. When they can see someone who was like them worked on the site, it makes it more real to them, I think.

And, we also have a lot of girl scouts groups that come out here. William Washington Gordon was Juliette [Gordon Lowe]’s grandfather and he was one of the founding fathers of The Central of Georgia Railway, who owned this repair facility. So we have them come out a lot, quite a bit, and we’re actually getting into our “Juliette Family Tree Season” where we’re going to have kids come out here – lots and lots of scout troops – and we’ll take them through the History Museum and the Railroad Museum and talk about the Battle of Savannah and different elements of the history here.

Girl Scouts on the site tour by train during the Juliette's Family Tree program. Girl Scouts on the site tour by train during the Juliette’s Family Tree program.

Maggie O’Neill: So you guys have been – there has been interpretation on the Railroad Museum since 1990 – how did that progression go?

Emily Beck: Well in the early days of the Railroad Museum being open there was interpretation here, but it was mostly print interpretation. You might get a little guide and there were signs on site, but we really, really have expanded in the last maybe, um five or seven years. We started to get more of an emphasis on actual interpreters out in the field, talking to visitors about the site. I think that has really helped us, in terms of the popularity of our sites and sort of the reaction that people have about what is here. I think it is important to have a human connection with people who are speaking to you and who can converse with you and go back and forth and talk about different elements of the history of all the sites that we have.

Maggie O’Neill: So the history – it’s a very large site, especially this and Old Fort Jackson is a very large site, and so is Pinpoint [Heritage Museum]. How do you maintain them?

Emily Beck: Um, it’s very difficult. Sometimes, it depends. We have um different ownership here at Coastal Heritage Society. So some of this land is city land, some of it is not city land – some of it is privately owned. So sometimes it’s difficult to determine what maintenance facility or maintenance process you might need. The Fort – Fort Jackson – a lot of the interpretive staff actually does a lot of the maintenance out there. Like weed killing, cutting the grass, going out and cleaning the site, so it just depends. Here, at Tricentennial Park, because of the volume of visitors that we have, we actually have a maintenance staff our here. And our railroad operations – a lot of them double as maintenance or preservation staff. That’s another thing I think, for Coastal Heritage Society, everybody here has to have quite a few different jobs in order to make everything run smoothly.

Maggie O’Neill: You just mentioned preservation – how did you guys go about preserving all of sites?

Emily Beck: Well, in terms of preserving this site here, we did have … The site itself, most of the buildings were here. A lot of the people, in terms of preservation, will ask us “When are you going to close in the round house?” or “When are you going to complete the round house?” And this is a ruin – this site that we have here at the Georgia State Railroad Museum, and we will probably leave it as a ruin. In the future, there may be a possibility that we would enclose it, but I think that sort of helps us to give people a more authentic feels for the site by leaving it the way that it is. We preserve the site, we make sure it doesn’t deteriorate any further, but we really haven’t done a lot of reconstruction of all of the buildings, necessarily.

Ruins of Machine Shop at the Georgia State Railroad Museum (Photo by Rich Burkhart) Ruins of Machine Shop at the Georgia State Railroad Museum (Photo by Rich Burkhart)

Maggie O’Neill: So you’ve done all of this preservation on the site – how do you interpret that to visitors? Preservation can be kind of a difficult concept for people to grasp sometimes if you’re not familiar with it.

Emily Beck: That’s very true and we have a lot of staff members who are preservationists or who have some sort of background in um, historic preservation. We actually do hard hat tours of the site, where we have classes come. They do tours through the coach and the paint shops, some of our historic buildings. We talk about preservation and one very popular tour that we had was … We had a [train] car here from another museum that we were restoring. One of our staff members took people through it to talk about the changes that had taken place within the car. I think that there’s really a lot of interest in preservation as well, because people want to know what this looked like when you first got it and what does it look like right now and how did you come about doing that.

Maggie O’Neill: So you guys have also done restoration of not just buildings, but also of trains.

Emily Beck: Yes! Yes, we also restore railroad cars and locomotives. In fact, one of our biggest projects was the restoration of the #30, which is a 1913 coal powered steam locomotive that we actually use. That’s wonderfully – that’s a wonderful resource for us to have, because to talk about a steam locomotive is very different from actually seeing one moving and actually operating in front of your face.

Maggie O’Neill: One of the main draws of Savannah is the historical tourism – how do you think that affects your site, with the fact that you guys operate so many different museums in the area?

Emily Beck: Well, I think affects our um, tours that we have because we have to compete with a lot of other sites in order to bring people to our sites. We have a little bit of an advantage, especially at Tercentennial Park, because of the Revolutionary War element. I think many people who come to Savannah are looking for a Civil War sort of experience, or they’re kind of thinking of it as a Victorian city. But then they see, when they come here, that there’s a lot of 18th century history here as well. And, of course, that affects other sort of more practical things like how long your tours are or how many tours you offer in a day, because like we said, we’re competing with, you know, the whole of Savannah is trying to get people to come here and be able to work the tours that we have into their schedules when they come here.

Maggie O’Neill: So what is your interpretation like on site? How many tours do you guys have, what do you do?

Emily Beck: Well, if definitely depends on which site. The railroad museum here is probably our most structured, in terms of interpretation, where we have back to back tours from 10:30 in the morning until 4 o’clock. We have a little bit of break in the middle of the day for lunch, but especially if we have a lot of visitors, we may sort of forge the break and have extra people here to do extra tours. So, we do walking tours, of different sites, and we also do site tours with our train. We don’t go very far – we have a locomotive and one passenger car and we go a short distance but we go into some other buildings on the site, which is a new development for us and this is kind of exciting for visitors.

A ride on a handcar is one of the activities offered at the Georgia State Railroad Museum (Photo by Rich Burkhart) A ride on a handcar is one of the activities offered at the Georgia State Railroad Museum (Photo by Rich Burkhart)

Maggie O’Neill: Do you guys do any special events?

Emily Beck: Um, We do special events on site – we have a Santa train, and that’s probably our most popular event out of all of our sites. That’s the most popular thing that we do, which is an all-day affair. It’s kind of like a Christmas festival that we have here. And then we have Santa here and we have the steam locomotive going, so that’s very popular. And one thing that we do as an organization, that we’ve done for many, many years, is this Siege of Savannah memorial march. Since most of Savannah – I think many people here are not really aware of Savannah’s Revolutionary War history; we have a march that commemorates the battle of 1779. October 9, 1779, when the French and the Americans and their allies were attempting to take Savannah back from the British. And it’s a sad story for the Americans and French – they lose the battle – a lot of causalities for that battle. It’s nice to sort of remember them. We take the same route – or approximately the same route – as they did. We march up Louisville Road and we have people lay wreaths. We’ve had some representatives from the Haitian government come, since the Haitians were a big part of the story as well.

Maggie O’Neill: Well thank you so much for sitting down with me today, Emily.

Emily Beck: Thank you! I’m so excited to always talk about the Coastal Heritage Society and what we do here in Savannah.

Maggie O’Neill: You guys can find more information about the Coastal Heritage Society at chsgeorgia.org.

Kevin Ammons: Thank you for listening to today’s show. If you would like more information, check out our Podcast show nights at www.ncptt.nps.gov until next time, goodbye everybody.

Maggie O'Neill speaks with Emily Beck, the manager of interpretation for the Coastal Heritage Society in Savannah, Georgia, as they talk about how to interpret a history spanning three centuries across five different historical sites.

May 12, 2016

71. Disaster Planning with Susan Duhl (Episode 71)

Transcript

Susan Duhl moving a water damaged painting during recovery work after Hurricane Sandy.

Kevin Ammons: Welcome to the Preservation Technology Podcast, the show that brings you the people and projects that are advancing the future of America’s heritage. I’m Kevin Ammons with the National Park Services national center for preservation technology and training. Today we join NCPTT’s Jason Church as he speaks with Susan Duhl, an art conservator and collections management consultant. In this podcast, Susan talks about disaster response and preparedness.

Jason Church: Susan, we’re here today to talk about disaster response. I know you do an immense amount of work with disaster response up and down the East coast. Tell us a little bit about, why is it important for anyone, an institution, a home owner, a museum, a library, to have something in place for disaster preparedness?

Susan Duhl: I am a conservator in private practice and I am a collections consultant, so my job is split into two. I still do studio work on paper based material, but most of my time is spent consulting with small to mid sized institutions, private and corporate clients on collections maintenance and disaster prevention.

I think I’ve found over the years the most important thing is that simple preparedness steps will save you from major disaster. Having supplies on hand, reviewing and assessing your current conditions whether it’s the condition of your building, your geography or your weather are very simple things to help you predict what might come your way and you can supply yourself including training, so that you know how to respond.

Jason Church: Give us an example, what kind of training would an institution need?

Susan Duhl: I think there’s a lot of excellent training opportunities available. Any training is better than no training at all and there are a number of resources both online and classes that you can take. Basic classes are taught through Red Cross and FEMA and local, regional, and state agencies and more specific classes on cultural collection recovery are taught through connecting to collections care, which is part of heritage preservation and the American Institute for Conservation.

Professional disaster responders are trained often on their own now. I think there’s 175 AIC CERT responders that were trained though the Institute of Museum and Library Service and most of those people have gone on to continue training the community.

Jason Church: You mentioned AIC CERT,[author’s note: the name was recently changed to National Heritage Responders (NHR)] tell us a little bit about that? What is that?

Susan Duhl: Sure. The American Institute for Conservation has a group called the collections emergency response team and it’s a group of trained conservators and museum colleagues, registrars, curators and art handlers who went through intensive training programs specifically to address disaster salvage and recovery for cultural institutions. It’s an all volunteer service, they respond 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to phone requests for information and support and in the case of disaster, the responders will go to the site and help with the physical recovery of collections.

Jason Church: You yourself, you’ve responded to quite a few of those, correct?

Exterior of Ringwood Manor. Exterior of Ringwood Manor.

Susan Duhl: Yes, I am a cert responder now. My first response was Hurricane Katrina, I was there a week after Katrina struck. I was along the Mississippi coast and the thing that became very clear was that we didn’t have any training. Since that time, I have trained myself, then I was fortunate to be part of the cert training and for AIC CERT, I’ve gone out on several volunteer responses for hurricanes and furnace puff backs, which are mechanical failures with furnaces. In my private practice, I also do fires and floods of all sizes. Could be as small as a pipe leak or again as large as a weather event.

Jason Church: Now, of course, we all know about Hurricane Katrina, and Rita, and Sandy and mentally we think about those as being the epicenter for disaster response. These huge natural disasters, but that’s not always the case and you mentioned the furnace puff back? Tell us about that.

Susan Duhl: Sure, well first let me say, I probably respond to small disasters more often of course than large weather events. Home mechanical failure is very common and museums and libraries often have mechanical failure. Something as simple as small leaking pipe or a full mechanical failure like a furnace breakdown are very common. I worked on two furnace puff backs and briefly the fuel is not fully combusted in the furnace and creates a sooty deposit which is blasted through air handling systems leaving a deposit of soot throughout the building.

Jason Church: You had a particular case where you worked on one of those recently, correct?

Susan Duhl: Right, well funny, I worked on two within the same year, both responding initially as an AIC CERT responder, but the big project I worked on was Ringwood Manor in Ringwood, New Jersey, and that is a state owned property. It’s a very interesting building made from 4 or perhaps 5 buildings that were built on consecutively and it had 4 furnaces. One of the furnaces malfunctioned and blew soot through 54 rooms.

Jason Church: Wow, what sort of collections were in those 54 rooms?

Ringwood Manor Music Room Ringwood Manor Music Room

Susan Duhl: Ringwood Manor is an especially interesting collection of decorative objects. The home was owned by the Cooper Hewitt family, which are famous for the Cooper Hewitt museum in New York City. This was their summer home and it was filled with art and antiques and decorative arts from around the world two of the daughters or sister collected over the years. There was just about everything you would find in a home including firearms, taxidermy, furnishings, textiles, clothing and wallpaper.

Jason Church: If you have a large institution like the one you are speaking of and you have such an immense collection, you’ve got ceramics and you’ve got taxidermy, it’s going to require different training to know how to deal with each of those different materials.

Susan Duhl: Right, that’s probably true, however, disaster prevention is pretty systematic and I think this institution was very successful in their response because they were prepared in advanced. Not necessarily for a furnace puff back, but they were sensitized to disaster response and knew the first basic steps to take to facilitate recovery.

Jason Church: So, because they had prior training in sort of prepared for the disaster, things went better than they could have?

Susan Duhl: I think so. It was still a very large project, but the curator was very diligent and aware. She made initial phone calls to get the support she needed from her state of New Jersey, and from the conservators, and her insurance adjuster, which insurance companies are a big part of disaster response. She was able to start the project very rapidly and called in the right expertise, which I think is imperative and AIC CERT generously donated my time and another colleague and we were able to help them identify priority steps to take. Within a few months, we wrote and request for quote for the state and it went out to bid and work started within a year.

Jason Church: Tell us a little bit about what it takes to remove soot from this collection?

Ringwood Manor Breakfast Room Iron Bust. Ringwood Manor Breakfast Room Iron Bust.

Susan Duhl: First, I think it starts with really good strategic planning. Soot is a very invasive and damaging material. It’s very bad, regardless of whether it’s a furnace puff back or a fire, the soot will leave a greasy residue that can cause long term permanent damage and it’s very important to systematically clean a house where you’re not causing additional damage. In every salvage operation, it’s possible that you can cause more damage by not being thoughtful. In fire recovery, figuring out the pattern that you clean the house is very important. You don’t want to track soot though the house and you don’t want to push soot into surfaces as you walk on them or touch them. They started work from the top down cleaning room by room from the ceiling down. Once things were cleaned, they were boxed and temporarily moved into storage area. Rooms were sealed and they continued down until they finally finished going out the front door. This project was very interesting. Initially, the insurance adjuster had thought individual items would be sent to specialist conservators, instead we were able to locate a number of conservators who had groups of conservators working together and they were called in with their various specialties and did all the work in situ. Each room was work on by that specialist group together, so that they could clean room by room.

Jason Church: I understand how you take out and clean from the top down, what do you have to do to get the H VAC system and the house controls, the environmental controls back during a disaster like this?

Susan Duhl: That’s a very big question and unfortunately this disaster happened in January and they felt it was a greater risk to turn the furnaces back on right away, so of course they had secondary problems without high heat. The curator and the site manager in charge of the property live on the same campus, so they were able to monitor the building. That was probably the longest delay was getting in mechanical engineers who could handle the problem and repair the existing furnace and get the four furnaces up and running. They explored every option including replacement of the furnaces, but the cost was prohibitive, so during that time, they maintained minimum standards of environmental control, I think monitored the house as best as they could to make sure additional damage didn’t occur. Unfortunately, in one room, condensation occurred and paint peeled. Thankfully, it wasn’t historic paint and no further damage occurred to the contents of the building, just the wall paint.

Jason Church: That story at Ringwood Manor ended up being a positive one and the house was able to reopen. How long did it take from start to finish?

Ringwood Manor South Ryerson Parlor. Ringwood Manor South Ryerson Parlor.

Susan Duhl: The project was slightly over a year and I would say this was a very successful project. It would provide an opportunity, I think the curator and the state representatives used this as an opportunity to review policies and procedures. They used the conservators and the staff to do a really good job cleaning and replacing items. The curator was very diligent in identifying unidentified objects and completing her inventory and the house just looks beautiful.

Jason Church: Is there anything else you’d like to add about that particular project or about things they could have done better that being prepared would help with? Anything like that?

Susan Duhl: I would say, in this project, as in all of my salvage projects, teamwork is the most important thing. It’s impossible for one person to know everything and everybody brings their expertise to the table. It’s important that it’s a team effort. In this case, the emergency wasn’t radical, so we had some time to think things through. The other thing I would say about any disaster is, every disaster is different and you can have a lot of training, but you may not be prepared for the specific details, which might be the type of disaster or magnitude of the disaster and it’s almost guaranteed that you’ll never have quite the right supplies on hand.

Jason Church: Susan, thanks for talking with us today and I’m glad to hear about the positive turn around when you’re talking about Ringwood Manor and we all don’t want to prepare for disasters and we don’t want to think that they’re going to happen to our institution and you mentioned earlier that training is a really important thing, both for the individual and the institution as a whole. Can you give us any examples of places we should look?

Susan Duhl: There’s a lot of excellent resources available, especially for cultural communities. For basic training, I would start by looking at the Red Cross site and FEMA online, which has classes that are free, as well as credited course work on disaster response. There’s also statewide EMA, and an EMA is Emergency Management Agency, so Pennsylvania is PEMA, Massachusetts is MEMA. They have education programs. There’s also regional organizations like the Alliance for Response. You can look online for that Alliance for Response in your community. There’s other resources for material that you can read online, most major institutions like the National Archives, Library of Congress and the Getty Institute have excellent online resources. Regional centers like the North East Document Conservation Center have a template disaster assessment and recovery plan, it’s called the D Plan as in disaster plan. You can look at that online for free. Heritage preservation has excellent materials and that’s been recently moved to the American Institute for Conservation website and finally, there’s excellent webinars on Connecting to Collections Care, which is also part of AIC. Those are video webinars and if you look back on them, there are webinars on prevention, preparedness, salvage and recovery. Last, I guess I would suggest that people look at the American Institute for Conservation collections emergency response team page. There’s more resources listed there as well.

Susan Duhl sorting damaged objects from a trunk. Susan Duhl sorting damaged objects from a trunk.

Jason Church: That’s a lot of places. You can complain that we couldn’t find good resources online. That’s quite a list of institutions to go and look at. Thank you very much Susan for talking to us today and I’m sure our listeners would be interested in catching up with you in the future and seeing what other projects you’re working on.

Susan Duhl: Thank you, Jason.

Kevin Ammons: Thank you for listening to today’s show. If you would like more information, check out our Podcast show nights at www.ncptt.nps.gov until next time, goodbye everybody.

Jason Church speaks with Susan Duhl, an art conservator and collections management consultant. In this podcast, Susan talks about disaster response and preparedness.

April 5, 2016

70. Going Exploring with Museum Hack (Episode 70)

Transcript

Kevin Ammons: Welcome to the Preservation Technology Podcast, the show that brings you the people and projects that are advancing the future of America’s heritage. I’m Kevin Ammons with the National Parks Service’s National Center for Preservation technology and training. Today we join NCPTT’s Jason Church as he speaks with Ethan Angelica, tour guide and VIP Partnerships Coordinator, and Diana Montano, Tour Operations and Project Coordinator. Both are with the New York-based Museum Hack. In this podcast, the pair are going to talk about how Museum Hack is changing the way we view museums.

Jason Church: We are here talking about the company you’re both with, Museum Hack. Ethan, you’re a tourguide and also in charge of VIP partnerships?

Ethan Angelica: That’s correct. Yep I work directly with museums who want our help reimagining adult museum experience.

Jason Church: And Diana you’re with tour operations and also a project coordinator, is that correct?

Diana Montano Project Coordinator with Museum Hack. Diana Montano Project Coordinator with Museum Hack.

Diana Montano: That’s right, I just make sure the tours are running smoothly and behind the scenes with a lot of the projects I just make sure that all of the things are going well and all of the scheduling stuff is happening.

Jason Church: Tell our listeners a little bit about Museum Hack. Our listeners are used to sort of a whole range of technology and high-end things but you guys are doing something very different. Not necessarily technology, but you’re doing something very different with the museum experience. Tell us about what that is and what Museum Hack is.

Ethan Angelica: Yeah, that’s absolutely right. With a name like Hack a lot of people think that we’re tech folks and I get calls from app developers every single day, but actually we are far more low-tech than that. Museum Hack is trying to reimagine what adult museum experience looks like sort of on the ground level. It was founded by a man named Nick Gray, who is our fearless leader, who was not a museum regular himself, was not really going to cultural institutions or had a strong relationship with them. He came to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which is sort of our first location, on a romantic date and fell in love with the place and wanted to start creating tours specifically for his friend group, for people who are between the ages of 21 and 35, who may not have a relationship with these cultural institutions. Maybe they’re something that they go to visit when their parents are in town, but they’re not regularly, actively a part of it.

He created all of these tours. He created a tour on his own, and his friends started signing up and then their friends told their friends and it became this sort of underground thing to do in New York City. A blog wrote about him and over 1,000 people signed up for the tour, at which point he realized maybe this is a real thing.

So, that was when the first group of guides were brought on, that’s when I joined the company, and since then we’ve been trying to create non-traditional, reverently irreverent museum adventures in some of our favorite museums. We’ve taken an entertainment first approach to education. We move fast, we make people feel like they’re being a little bit sneaky, and we try to give them an experience that makes them fall in love with the space, learn a little bit more about it, and then really, really want to come back.

About two and a half years ago was when I joined up. You joined 8 months ago?

Diana Montano: About, yeah.

Friends on a Scavenger Hunt. Friends on a Scavenger Hunt.

Ethan Angelica: Yeah, 8 months ago. In that brief time we’ve moved just from one museum in New York to two museums where we run public tours and almost 4 or 5 more where we do private tours and then two additional cities. We’re in DC, at the National Gallery of Art, and San Francisco at the de Young Museum. Then we’ve worked with museums across the country and literally around the world on consulting and professional development projects.

Jason Church: You also teach classes for other people to learn, sort of this new style, correct?

Ethan Angelica: Oh, definitely. I just got back from a zoo in the state of Mississippi where I was teaching their zookeepers and some of the folks there about some of the story telling and activity design that we do. We also have started doing something we call Museum Hack Boot Camp here in New York City where we have museum professionals come to spend a long weekend with us designing and eventually presenting Museum Hack-style tours at the Met, which is really fun and really exhausting.

Jason Church: For you and the participants, right?

Ethan Angelica: For everybody. We all walk out feeling really good but also wanting to take a long nap.

Diana Montano: Yeah, absolutely.

Jason Church: What kind of training do your tour guides at Museum Hack get?

Diana: What kind of training, that is a really insane question with an even more insane answer. Our training takes a long time actually, from start to finish it usually takes about 2 to 3 months. That’s because what we do is not an exact science and everyone does it their own way. We usually bring people on as what we call a Co-host, and people will actually do a little bit each tour. They support their lead guides, who are leading tours for anyone from public tour people who are just visiting New York City or live in New York City and will sign up for a tour online, or our corporate clients who come in for a team building tour, or our private clients who want some sort of party or another event that they are looking to host with us as the runners of the event.

These Co-hosts watch what their tour guides do, they get feedback from their specific pieces that they present on the tours, and they’ll do a little bit of improvising themselves and that, like I said, that takes anywhere from 2 to 3 months depending on the guide, depending on how quickly they work, depending on how many tours they can be on. It does take a long time, and everyone does it in their own, very different way because every tour guide, actually, at the end of those 2 months, will be able to present 2 hours worth of content and be able to pretty much talk and entertain for two hours, which is a really hard thing to do, especially in the Museum Hack style, as you said, of education, not second, but entertainment before education. It takes a long time to get really good at that.

Ethan Angelica: I think one thing that is why it takes so much time, like Diana is saying, is that guides are empowered to create their own route. We give them training in story telling, we give them training in tour structure, we give them training in what we call scaffolding, which is our techniques to create a museum tour as being a fully social experience, but then they are tasked with building it themselves. We give them the toolkit, they have to build the castle.

They’re having to spend hours and hours in the museums doing their own research, developing content that they are really excited and passionate about so that they maintain that sense of energy and joy and wonder and inspiration that they have throughout the entire museum experience.

Diana Montano: Exactly. You can always tell which pieces the tour guides have done themselves and been really inspired by because they’re eyes light up, they get really excited, they smile a lot more, they get people moving around, and those are the pieces that we really encourage our tour guides to focus on because when they’re having a good time, the people on the tour are having a good time too.

Jason Church: Even if you’ve been to the Met multiple times, even with Museum Hack, you’re going to get a different tour with every tour guide.

Diana Montano: You’re going to get a different tour, probably a month after, with the same tour guide as well because they’ll discover new things, be bored of the pieces they showed the last time, be like, “You know, we’re not going to that one painting that’s upstairs. We’re going to this one painting that’s around the corner instead because I’ve talked about that painting for the last month and I want to show you something new.” We encourage all of our guides to do that because, like I said, that’s when their excitement really shows through and it allows the guests to get excited about the museum too.

Jason Church: Now, seeing some of the reviews online, it seems like the customers have a very positive response. Tell me more about the response the museums have to Museum Hack.

Ethan Angelica: That’s a great question. You know, when we’re working with museums in the capacity that you’d see us with online, going to buy a ticket to a museum tour, we are working with these groups sort of as a third party provider, meaning that we are buying tickets through their group services department, doing all of our own advertising to bring in an audience.

What museums really respond to and get out of the experience is we essentially act as a revenue drive and an audience drive for them. We’re reaching out to an audience that may not necessarily be attracted to the current offering that the museum has and we’re offering an additional access point. We’re reaching out, saying, “If this seems interesting, why don’t you come and try this with us,” with the goal that we’re sort of hyping up the museums so much that they’re so excited that they want to come back on their own and bring their friends and start that relationship with the institution. We’re not poaching people who are already coming. Everybody who comes to a Museum Hack tour is coming as part of a pre-purchased experience, meaning they reached out and came with us. We didn’t grab them as they were walking into the museum.

In many ways, that is really positive, but also we do bring revenue for a lot of the museums that we work with, it’s a donation to get into the museums. Through their group services departments, we’re paying the full museum admission, which can be as much as a third of our ticket price. In many ways we’re not only bringing these groups, new audience and people who might have been dubious about the experience initially, but we’re also bringing them a decent source of income, which I know is very inspiring for me. Museums tend to like those two things, I tend to find. That’s when we get a lot of positive feedback from them.

Every Tour Starts With a Cheer. Every Tour Starts With a Cheer.

Jason Church: Now Ethan, what is your background? How did you get involved with Museum Hack?

Ethan Angelica: Oh goodness. I came at this sort of backward-wise. I went to school for the incredibly useful combination of theater and Middle Eastern Studies which basically, I say, qualifies me to talk to people and research stuff. I fell into museums in a backwards way. I spent the first ten years of my career out of college as a professional actor and I traveled all over the country in film and in touring theater and here in New York, but my day job was doing education work for the Central Park Zoo. I was part of an outreach program that they have. I noticed that as my interest in being an actor was waning, the number of hours and the amount of work I was doing at the zoo was increasing significantly.

I realized that this whole informal education-type thing, the idea of, “How do I engage an audience that might not be expecting me to be there telling them about things?” was something that really got me excited and was something I really loved doing.

Just as I was sort of deciding I didn’t know if I wanted to pursue acting as much anymore, I saw an application for Museum Hack and I said, “This looks too good to be true,” and I applied and did an audition for them and they liked it and did some more research and story telling for them and they seemed to like that and was brought on. As the company continued to grow I sort of grew with them and suddenly I was starting to work with ticketing partnerships and then I started working directly with museums and I started negotiating some of our first workshop opportunities and helped design those workshops. At some point it just turned out that I was working at this thing as though it was a full-time job and so I decided to make it formal and I’ve been full-time with Museum Hack for a little more than a year now.It’s not where I ever thought I would be, but I’m certainly loving it.

Jason Church: Diana, some of our listeners may recognize you, I know I did. You used to have a YouTube channel called Diana Does Museums.

Diana Montano: You can’t tell, but I just put my hand over my face when you said that.

Yeah. I started that as a personal project during grad school because I realized that what I loved doing was teaching in really different ways. I had gotten my degree as an art educator in my undergraduate degree and found that the public school system was just not where I wanted to be. I started pursuing a lot of other ways that I could teach that wasn’t that way and I fell upon a YouTube channel that I really liked watching called The Brain Scoop. It’s hosted by a woman named Emily Graslie and now she’s at the Field Museum. I was like, “You know what, I want to do that. I want to do it a little bit differently, but I want to do something like that. I think that’s a great way to get a lot of people interested in museums and I can use this as an excuse to travel and see museums and also teach other people about museums while I go to see them.”

I did that for a few months. One of my last videos that I did was about Museum Hack. I pretty much had heard about it and I emailed Nick just on a whim saying, “Hey, do you mind if I do a video? It’s free. I’ll just do it because I like you guys, want to just talk about how awesome you are.” I went on a tour with both Dustin and Zach, who are at the National History Museum and Kate, who was at the Met. They kept bothering me for months, saying, “You know, we love what you do. Come on, come join us, we’ll figure out a job for you, that sounds great.”

I was, at the time, finishing a grad degree in Museum Studies and I said, “You know, I’ve got a lot on my plate right now, call me back in three months.” “I need a few more months, call me back in a few months.”

He would not leave me alone and I’m very glad that he didn’t. I’ve been working for Museum Hack since June of last year and I started just picking up things that people didn’t want to do because we’re all very busy people and creative people who are so good at this job and make this job exactly what it’s supposed to be, which is just having fun in museums, and they’re so good at it. Being good at that means sometimes you’re maybe not good at the operational things. What I learned is that I am good at those things and that was where I just decided to keep piling more stuff onto my plate.

Now I help with project management as well, helping to make sure that when we get these big projects with other clients, either museums or some corporate clients we’ve been working with doing brand hacking or any other kind of event that they’d like us to help with, I help lay out the timelines for those things, make sure that expectations are clear from our team and from the team that is hiring us and make sure that it’s totally on the right path.

Not the job I expected either. I though I would be a low-level educator at a museum. I do miss being in museums sometimes, but I get a lot of opportunities to be in them still, doing this job, and I’m very happy doing it.

Jason Church: Some of the tours that Museum Hack does are thematic, correct?

Guests on a Tour. Guests on a Tour.

Diana Montano: That’s right. Right now we have a feminist tour called Bad ass Bitches and that’s been running for a few months now, so super successful. We love that so much. The idea is that we talk about the ladies that either are or are not on display at the Met, of which there are many, and why it’s important to see the Mt from this perspective as well as all of the other perspectives that we or the museum provides. Another one we sometimes run is Jews at the Met: the Chosen Tour, which is a super fun historical look at Judaism and Jewish history from that perspective. In the Met we have Big Game Met which is actually hosted by Ethan himself.

That’s been in the works for a long time and we love that tour, it’s fabulous. We’re also right now developing a tour about the intersections of art and science and how the Met has a lot of ways you can see science from the artworks that are on display.

Jason Church: Very good. You said you’ve reached out, not only to the Met, but you said you have tours in DC and the de Young in San Francisco as well.

Ethan Angelica: That’s right. Those are public tours where you could just buy a ticket like you would at the Met.

Jason Church: Is there anything else that I didn’t ask, or you wanted to talk about, that you’d like to add?

Ethan Angelica: I guess I’m interested to hear a little bit from Diana about how, because I know your audience is one that typically thinks about technology and ways that you can use technology. We’re very much interested in what a social interaction in a museum looks like. Everyone’s in their phones all day, and we’re all on our computers, or looking at iPads. For us, the idea is to get people out of that mode and get them interacting with each other, but we’ve still managed to work technology into the equation in a more informal way that allows us to use things like our phones or tools that we have with them

I’m wondering if Diana can talk a little bit about what that experience looks like on a Museum Hack tour.

Diana Montano: Sure, yeah. We use technology in a lot of different ways. One of the ways is that we encourage our guides to have smartphones or tablets. Pretty much everyone does. To use that in a way that’s really beneficial when they’re standing in front of an artwork so that they can refer to other things. A lot of ways that our guides have used that is by comparing an artwork in the museum to one that is not currently on display.

For instance a tour guide talks about an artwork by Artemisia Gentileschi, who is a female artist from the Renaissance era and she compares her artwork to one that is one display at the Met and both of them are showing a really gruesome scene, but she shows the difference between the two. You really can’t talk about it if you don’t have that artwork right in front of you and she is able to sort of zoom in on the iPad and sort of show people like, “Check out these blood spurts, aren’t they amazing?” That’s because she talked to Galileo about the science that would make this work. It really allows her to show people artwork without it having to be on display which is really useful.

We also get a lot of our images from the Met’s collection online, which they have been so amazing, they have a lot of artworks that are online, just the photos and everything, and that helps us a lot to do, not just our research, but in person on the tour to use those photos, and they’re super high-quality.

Ethan Angelica: I’m curious, can you talk a little bit about how, maybe, we get guests to use the technology that they have to interact with objects or to help personalize the experience for themselves?

Diana Montano: Yeah, so it’s not just that. That’s the way a lot of our guides use them, but we also play a lot of games with our phones. We’ll create these activities that have people using both the people who are in front of them as well as their technology to interact with each other.

We play a game called Matchmaker and Matchmaker is really fun because it asks people, “Go out into this gallery and I want you to find a face, a face that you really like. Take a photo of it, zoom in on just the face, come back here. Take 30 seconds to do that.” They’ll come back with those photos and be like, “Okay, the person that you’re standing next to here in the museum, you’re now their buddy. Turns out, the photos that you’ve taken of the photos on your phones, those two people just fell in love. Awe. So sweet. I want you to make up a story. I want you to tell me how these people fell in love and tell me, did it end well? Give us a little bit of the details. Did it end well or was it kind of a sad love story?”

They take a few minutes, they talk with each other, they create this whole love story between themselves, not even looking at the plaques, maybe using a little bit of the rest of the artwork, looking closely and seeing what details are in the artwork that they may have missed when they were taking the faces photo, and then they come back together, they tell their story together. They’ll say the person’s name, tell how they fell in love, and we’ll go around the circle doing that entire thing with these people in pairs who often don’t come together. We often pair people up who didn’t come together and that way they’re creating a story with someone they didn’t even know before the tour.

They create the story, they tell out the story, and then we talk to them about a woman named Tracy Chevalier who actually goes to museums and writes stories sort of in this way, where she loves learning about the art, but what she likes more is actually just creating her own story. We use that as an inspiration not just to allow people to listen to the facts that we tell them, but also it’s okay to make up a story if you want, but also this is a great way to meet new people in the museum, just on the tour, or in your life.

The Museum Hack Team Posing. The Museum Hack Team Posing.

Ethan Angelica: What I really like about this is I think it is an imaginative way that we have remixed some of the goals that many museums have. In this way we’re asked people to look closely, to make personal connections, to bring a part of themselves to an object, whether that be a piece of art of an historic object, specimen from science, but we did it in a way that subverted their expectations. I think that is where a lot of our approach comes from, is that we are attempting to get people to do these things that make them feel closeness and connection to objects, whether they be art objects, historic objects, or scientific objects, but doing it in a way that almost tricks them into doing it without knowing that that’s what we’re up to.

I think Matchmaker is a great way to do that and it allows them to use that tool in their pocket. Taking a photo or looking something up on their phone, which is an activity we do outside of cultural spaces, in those cultural spaces.

Jason Church: Sounds like a lot of fun. I hope to take one of your tours one day.

Ethan Angelica: Yeah, most certainly.

Jason Church: Well Ethan and Diana, thank you so much for talking to our listeners today, we really appreciate it and we hope everyone can come experience Museum Hacks.

Ethan Angelica: Yeah, definitely. If you want more information on us you can check out museumhack.com or we’re on twitter at @MuseumHack. Tweet us, we’ll tweet you back.

Jason Church: Fantastic, go out and tweet them.

Diana Montano: Thanks, Jason, so much. It was great talking to you.

Jason Church: You too, thank you.

Diana Montano: Thanks.

Ethan Angelica: Bye.

Kevin Ammons: Thank you for listening to today’s show. If you would like more information, check out our podcast show notes at www.ncptt.nps.gov. Until next time, goodbye everybody.

Ethan Angelica and Diana Montano talk about how Museum Hack is changing the way we view museums.

February 2, 2016

69. Bringing Cultural Landscapes into the 21st Century (Podcast 69)

Transcript

Leah, Steph, and Gina Belknap, Southeast Region (SER) Facility Management Systems Specialist (Network), prepping for plane ride over Cape Hatteras National Seashore, June 2015

Today we join NCPTT’s Maggie O’Neill as she speaks with Stephanie Nelson and Leah Edwards at the Olmsted Center for Landscape Preservation in Boston, MA. In this podcast they will discuss Stephanie and Leah’s work with the National Park Service’s Cultural Landscapes program and their past internships at NCPTT.

Maggie O’Neill: Hi, I’m Maggie O’Neill. I work in Historic Landscapes at NCPTT and today we’re sitting down with Stephanie and Leah at the Olmsted Center for Landscape Preservation. I was hoping you both could introduce yourself to begin, and what your role is at OCLP.

Stephanie Nelson: Well Maggie, my name is Stephanie Nelson and I am the Asset Preservation Coordinator for the National Park Service’s Washington Support Office Park Cultural Landscapes program. Leah and I actually work for Washington D.C. and the main headquarters for the National Park Service, but the Olmsted Center is kind enough to host us here and let us work out of their offices.

Leah Edwards: I am Leah Edwards, and my formal title is Asset Preservation Associate but technically I am a SCA working with Stephanie on the nationally significant cultural landscape inventories in FMSS (Facility Management Software System).

Maggie O’Neill: Can you clarify what SCA is?

Leah Edwards: SCA is the Student Conservation Association and it’s a national nonprofit organization that works to get people into conservation throughout. Whether its in the Park Service or any other nonprofits or anything like that.

Maggie O’Neill: So both of you work with cultural landscapes – I was hoping you both could talk about the role the Olmsted Center and you both play in relation to cultural landscapes and what your job is here.

Stephanie Nelson: Sure! Well, the Olmsted Center for Landscape Preservation started at Olmsted National Historic Site. It was a bunch of staff members who started to think about and act on how you make a landscape look and feel historic. Out of that, it has evolved to a center for landscape preservation planning, maintenance, and education. The Olmsted Center really is the Cultural Landscapes program of the Northeast Region of the National Park Service.

Maggie O’Neill: Your projects – they are part of the National Park Service as a whole – what specifically are you guys doing with them?

Leah Edwards: Our project is looking at all national parks, as a nationwide view. We look at all the cultural landscapes in all of the parks and their features. We can inventory them, in some cases, and we work to try and get them into the facility management database – FMSS, which is the database that the National Park Service uses to maintain all their facilities and organize them all. So whenever the times comes to get work orders or any funding needed for any projects in the park, they can use that organization and this database to work on the process. Our job is to basically include all cultural landscapes features out of 390 cultural landscape units and 190 parks.

with NAMA and National Capital Region (NCR) staff at the Washington Monument, August 2015 With NAMA and National Capital Region (NCR) staff at the Washington Monument, August 2015

Stephanie Nelson: 179.

Leah Edwards: 179 Parks throughout the entire country.

Maggie O’Neill: So even though you guys are located in Boston at OCLP, you work with all regions of the Park Service?

Leah Edwards: Correct.

Stephanie Nelson: Yes – I’ve been fortunate enough to work with all seven regions of the National Park Service. I got to go to Alaska to work with their regional cultural staff and do a site visit at Sitka National Historical Park. I was also able to work in the Pacific West Region at San Juan Island National Historic Site; in the Inter-mountain Region at San Antonio Missions National Historical Park. In the Midwest Region I’ve been to Keweenaw National Historical Park in the upper peninsula of Michigan, and Homestead National Monument of America in Nebraska. Let’s see- in the Southeast Region, we’ve been to Cape Hatteras National Seashore, and Wright Brothers National Memorial and Fort Raleigh National Historic Site, and Stone’s River National Battlefield in Tennessee. And then we’ve been in the National Capital Region, which is Washington DC, Maryland, and Virginia, at the National Mall and Memorial Parks, Washington Monument and Thomas Jefferson Memorial. And in the Northeast Region, specifically we’ve worked at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Parks and at Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site.

Pacific West Regional FMSS & Cultural Landscapes team with San Juan Island National Historical Park staff hiking through American Camp Cultural Landscape, December 2013 Pacific West Regional FMSS & Cultural Landscapes team with San Juan Island National Historical Park staff hiking through American Camp Cultural Landscape, December 2013

So our project is looking at a segment of cultural landscapes that are nationally significant, and that have completed inventories – completed inventories means that someone went out, looked at the park, looked at all the different things that make up a landscape, and determined whether or not they were significant or contributing. After that, the State Historic Preservation Officer (SHPO) and the park superintendent signed off on them. So in the National Park Service, we estimate that we have about 2,000 – 2,100 cultural landscapes. Only about 1/3 of those sites, 700 or some, have completed documentation (completed cultural landscape inventories). And we’re only working with the nationally significant ones – the crown jewels, the best of the best. That’s why our project, in four years, is supposed to encompass 390 cultural landscape inventory units and 179 of the 408 national parks.

Leah Edwards: Just to add to that, being part of the WASO (Washington DC Support Office) group, being out of the Washington Office, you kind of have an advantage of traveling all over the country, like Stephanie just said. She mentioned all the places she has been to and a few I’ve been to. But I have also gotten to work with Susan Dolan and her team at Mount Rainier National Park, to do Culvert Inventories on one of the park main roads. It didn’t have anything to do strictly with our project, but it was a cool opportunity. It was my first month being here and I got to go out and actually be in the field, which was a really spectacular thing to do. So it has had its advantages to work nationally.

Culvert survey team At Mount Rainier NP, November 2014 (Leah is second from right) Culvert survey team At Mount Rainier NP, November 2014 (Leah is second from right)

Stephanie Nelson: My favorite part of the project is putting research into action. What we do, really, is we take that research that has been written about a landscape, and what’s important in it, and translate that into facilities language. So all these reports exist that are great and have a lot of information about the landscape, but that information has not been efficiently communicated to facilities [staff]. And we rely on the facilities staff to maintain our cultural landscapes. So I kind of look at it is if we don’t have our cultural landscape information in the facilities system, you can’t track it and you can’t work on it.

Maggie O’Neill: There is a huge disconnect there.

Stephanie Nelson: Huge disconnect! And we are all one National Park Service; we are all tasked with preserving our resources – cultural, natural, and visitor services. I really like being the translator between the different services.

Maggie O’Neill: The relationship of cultural landscapes to the National Park Service is something that is continually worked on and it’s great to see it going in a positive direction; towards a better preservation maintenance mentality overall.

Stephanie Nelson: Exactly, it’s really exciting.

Maggie O’Neill: One of the most interesting parts about the three of us being here today is that all three of us have interned at NCPTT. Leah, you were there in 2014, and you [Stephanie] were there in 2010. I was hoping you both could talk about the projects you worked on or what you learned at NCPTT that you’re apply to the project you do now.

Sitka, Alaska, September 2014: Alaska Region Facilties and Cultural Resources STaff, Sitka NHP staff, and WASO PCLP staff in front of Russian Bishop's House Sitka, Alaska, September 2014: Alaska Region Facilties and Cultural Resources STaff, Sitka NHP staff, and WASO OCLP staff in front of Russian Bishop’s House

Leah Edwards: Yeah, so I was there in the summer of 2014 and I got to work on a project with Carrie Goetcheus from the University of Georgia. The project was creating a chronological timeline of literature, mostly, of cultural landscapes from its beginning conception in the National Park Service around the 1970s. We gathered all this literature and researched that and organized it into a single spread sheet or database that could be easily searchable, so that later when Carrie continued this project she could easily search those topics and those authors and who was talking about what at during what year. Kind of just organizing all of that information. It was a very general project but it was something that helped me – I came out of school not knowing a lot about cultural landscapes but knew I wanted to get into them. It was a good learning project to learn about the field as a whole and to delve into it later on in my career. So that’s what I did for three months.

Stephanie Nelson: I worked for the Historic Landscapes program at NCPTT. One of my tasks was to create a landscape preservation maintenance video. I also worked through the summer and beyond on various landscape preservation maintenance tasks. A video came out of it –Preservation Maintenance of Turf Using Resource Sensitive Techniques in Historic Landscapes, available on the NCPTT website.

And I got a chance, with that, to work with Debbie Smith and Charlie Pepper, here at the Olmsted Center, on the landscape preservation maintenance curriculum for field workers. So we put together a workshop on the topoic and a group meeting led me to meet Charlie Pepper. Charlie had an internship available at the Olmsted Center, so I came to work with him on the landscape preservation maintenance curriculum. After I left NCPTT and came up here to Boston, I worked in education and preservation maintenance. I’ve gotten to meet different people in the cultural landscapes program across the country while working with Charlie and Celena Illuzzi, the education specialist here at the Olmsted Center – working with youth programs, and working with field worker programs. I had the opportunity to move into this landscapes FMSS role, working with Susan Dolan whom I met through all of my various experiences working here at the Olmsted Center. If it weren’t for my time at NCPTT, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be where I am now. Getting to work there, even though it’s in rural Louisiana, really was an entry into the National Park Service’s Cultural Landscape Program for me. It introduced me to people who I started to work with and who I still work with in following in the footsteps of and bringing the program along into the 21st century.

Maggie O’Neill: Alright guys, well thank you so much for talking with us today and I look forward to working with both of you in the future.

Kevin Ammons: Thank you for listening to today’s show. If you would like more information, check out our podcast show notes at www.ncptt.nps.gov. Until next time, goodbye everybody.

Today we join NCPTT's Maggie O'Neill as she speaks with Stephanie Nelson and Leah Edwards at the Olmstead Center for Landscape Preservation in Boston, MA. In this podcast, they will discuss Stephanie and Leah's work with the National Park Service's Cultural Landscapes program and their past internships at NCPTT.

November 10, 2015

68. Modern Problems with Early Motoring: The Replica Ford Quadricycle (Podcast 68)

Transcript

Today we join NCPTT’s Alex Beard as she speaks with conservation technician Andrew Ganem and former performance engineer at Ford Racing Mose Nowland at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. In this podcast, they will discuss the restoration of a reproduction of Henry Ford’s first vehicle, the 1896 Quadricycle.

Mose Nowland working in the conservation laboratory Engineer Mose Nowland working in the conservation laboratory at The Henry Ford

Alex Beard: How are you guys doing today?

Mose Nowland: We’re doing fine, Alex. Thank you.

Andrew Ganem: I have no complaints.

Alex Beard: Oh great. I wanted to start by asking what you guys do at the museum and could you tell us a little bit about the projects you’ve been working on?

Mose Nowland: My name is Mose Nowland and I am a volunteer here at the Henry Ford Museum. I’ve only been here about three years now after a lengthy tour with Ford Motor Company. Retired in 2012 on a Friday and came to the museum on Monday because I knew it would be very interesting and diversified activities.

Andrew Ganem: My name’s Andrew Ganem. I’m a conservation technician. I go where I’m needed and then I do miscellaneous work. That’s working on cars to cleaning up someone’s office. I’ve been here for about five months, since the end of May, and I’ve enjoyed every day.

Alex Beard: Sounds great. I remember you guys had talked a little bit about a quadricycle project. Could you guys maybe tell me a little bit of the history of the quadricycle and let me know what you guys are doing right now, working on it?

Mose Nowland: Of course.

Andrew Ganem: Henry Ford had an experience in his youth and he saw a steam traction engine. That amazed him that something could move on its own power. Ever since then he always wanted to replicate that. As gasoline engines came to be in the 1890’s there was kind of a boom of inventors who were coming up with horseless carriages.

Henry Ford finished his in 1896 and that would be the quadricycle. It’s a two cylinder, about four horsepower horseless carriage. Finished it in late spring. At 2:00am he finished his project and he was about to roll it out of his workshop and he realized that the door to his workshop was too small for his creation to be rolled out. Very frustrated, he took an ax and he busted down the wall and he pushed his creation outside. Technically, the second horseless carriage in Detroit started its life and it’s made its journey all the way to here and it’s been replicated with the piece of equipment we have in the lab that we’ve been working on. It’s been here for 52 years?

Mose Nowland: Since 1963. We acquired it from a Ford engineer. He was actually an illustrator at Ford Motor Company. His passion was restoring Model A’s and Model T’s. Then he saw the quadricycle, its simplicity and the interest that people had towards the car and decided to replicate it. There were no plans available or anything like that, but being an illustrator, was quite gifted at design and methods of design.

Andrew Ganem working on the replica quadricycle Conservation Technician Andrew Ganem working on the replica quadricycle

The original quadricycle was on display in a museum in a glass cage. He was not allowed to approach the glass cage for measurements or even get inside of the glass cage. That did not deter him. He developed methods of estimating lengths, distances, diameters by standing out in the aisle and sometimes would adapt a little device that he could ratio the view of a part and make a drawing. He preceded that way.

He got about 50% of the parts made and the museum realized how serious he was with his project and the passion that he had for completing this thing. They did allow him to approach the original car and take some measurements, but that was towards the end of the program. He pretty much had his information he needed. From there he would buy ready shelf available material. When it came to special machine projects, he would rely on the Ford experimental machine shop to make a part. They cooperated, it was sort of an under the table project. They cooperated with him and finally after the museum got wind of it and some other areas of the company got wind of it, it became an above board project and everybody cooperated.

He finished his version of the first quadricycle in 1963. That is the piece that we have here now. We are maintaining it and operating it as required for special events in the village.

Alex Beard: Thank you so much for that history you guys. I had a couple questions about that. How close is it to the original?

Mose Nowland: Well, it would take a specialist to pick out the differences. There is a slight mystery about the ignition system that is a mechanical grounding system inside of the combustion chamber. We’ve never been able to look inside of his original for his design, shape, and material he used for those moving pieces. But, George had imagined what they would be. I’m sure that he’s replicated pretty darn close because there were certain geometries that had to be accomplished that could only probably end up looking alike whether it was replicated or the original.

Alex Beard: How would the original quadricycle- still currently at the Henry Ford Museum correct? How is that displayed now?

The original 1896 Quadricycle on display at The Henry Ford Museum The original 1896 Quadricycle on display at The Henry Ford Museum

Mose Nowland: Yeah. That is displayed in a time, what would you say? Evolution of the vehicles. It’s right at the head of the row of the progression in automotive technology and models that were built.

Alex Beard: Not in a glass case anymore.

Andrew Ganem: Not anymore.

Mose Nowland: You still can’t get close to it.

Alex Beard: How many reproductions are there actually?

Andrew Ganem: There are numerous reproductions around the world. I don’t know if we could count them. George made three. Two are here at the museum, one running, one is said to be in running condition, although I’ve never seen it running. The third one is non-runner made specifically for the Ford Motor Company and it’s in their world headquarters on display.

Alex Beard: The one that you guys have been working on, you guys have gotten it running. How is it running? Is it running smoothly? Can you just talk about the challenges of the project?

Mose Nowland: It’s quite a challenge to keep it running, Alex. The engine runs with a tremendous amount of vibration and it’s very hard on components and connections throughout the car. We have successfully, and we understand our predecessors had maintained the car and used it, has had the same problems. It’s been problematic from day one I’m sure.

Anyway, Andrew here had a nice experience this summer at the Old Car Festival. I was not part of that, but I understand that they got it to run 30 minutes at a time before something fell off of it or whatever. No disrespect for the vehicle. It’s designed to destroy itself.

Alex Beard: Andrew, can you tell us a little bit about your experience driving it around?

Andrew Ganem: I can. Our Old Car Festival is two days in September. All of our trial runs with the vehicle before that weekend were on very hot, humid days and it would only want to go for about 10, 11 minutes on a good run. The Old Car Festival weekend we were having very cool weather in the mid-sixties, which was absolutely perfect, and we were able to get around this factor of weather and humidity, which was actually freezing the gasoline as it was going into the engine, which is a whole ‘nother scientific thing that I won’t get into.

We were able to get around that factor and see what was actually- what the other problems were and then work them out. The biggest problem we found was that the way you set the timing is you have to remove the head of the engine and get inside of the cylinder and adjust a screw that’s on a hammer that ignites the spark plug. Those timing screws were either advancing themselves or more commonly retarding themselves and the engine wouldn’t run correctly and it would eventually peter out after about 20 minutes of run time.

We were extremely happy with being able to run it for longer than 10 minutes, but we were still very determined to get it running in a reliable way. After every 20 minute run, we’d have to take it apart and reset everything and then put it back together. Let it cool down first because the only thing slowing us down was how hot that engine gets.

Alex Beard: What type of fuel does it run on?

Mose Nowland: It runs on gasoline. And, a moment ago Andrew mentioned the gasoline freezing, which has been a terrible problem for us, because it’s actually a frosting of the carburetor and the air/fuel mixture goes wacky at the time. It’s not stoichiometric enough to support combustion. It appears down in the deep throat of the intake manifold. You never know what problem you’re up against whether it is the carburetor icing or if it’s one of the other things that commonly fails.

To get a lengthy run is, as Andrew pointed out, appears to be with the humidity and air temperature will either let you run for a continued period of time or maybe 30, 40 feet in travel.

Alex Beard: Yeah. That’s so cool too. I know that in the village they do the Model T rides so I bet it was interesting for people to see you actually driving around a quadricycle reproduction.

Andrew Ganem driving the replica quadricycle Conservation Technician Andrew Ganem driving the replica quadricycle

Andrew Ganem: It was a lot of fun because it wasn’t just the Model T’s going in the village as they do every day, it was everybody who brought their car was also driving around. It was a lot of fun being in traffic in a car that’s from 1896.

Mose Nowland: It’s probably, without a doubt, the oldest vehicle for the weekend event.

Alex Beard: Still going strong, kind-of.

Mose Nowland: Yes, sporadically.

Alex Beard: On a good day.

Andrew Ganem: Right now we’re currently- it’s partially disassembled right now because we’re going to make it very reliable over the winter.

Alex Beard: Is it still in the conservation lab? Do you guys have any plans on putting it on display on the floor possibly next to the original?

Mose Nowland: It is still in the conservation lab. We’re preparing and collecting material to make our modifications. We had a terrific learning period this last fall at the Old Car Festival because the boys were able to run the car at a greater consecutive amount of minutes than we’ve ever had. When you do that then you begin to sort out what the problems are.

The vehicle’s currently in our lab and we will be making some new pieces for the ignition system. I’ve never known of it to be displayed out on the floor in competition with the original, but we do use it as a utility vehicle for different film events and on display at the Old Car Festival.

Alex Beard: How are you guys going to make some new parts? Do you guys have molds that you guys are able to use?

Mose Nowland: Basically it’s just flat stock material that you mill into shape. I have the privilege of using a Bridgeport mill to make items like that and then round stock for shafts and so on. We purchase tungsten rod for our contact surface so it won’t erode under the high voltage discharge. It’s basically whittling it out of metal and they’re one of a kind parts.

Alex Beard: Thank you guys so much. I’m really glad that you guys are able to get that car running. It’s a great piece of history and a good learning tool. I hope you guys just continue to learn more about it and work on it a little bit more in the conservation lab.

Mose, could you just tell me a little bit about how you became a volunteer at the Henry Ford Museum after your long career at Ford Racing?

1967 Ford GT40 Mk IV that won Le Mans in 1966 & '67 1967 Ford GT40 Mk IV that won Le Mans in 1967 on display at The Henry Ford Museum

Mose Nowland: Certainly. My career at Ford was pretty intense for the most part because of being in the racing group and attending race season and fixing things promptly. In the Ford racing activity if something failed on Sunday, it better be fixed by next Sunday.

Anyway, I became acquainted with a lot of processes and suppliers and things like that through that program. Everything handled expeditiously. Then the museum started to acquire some of the cars that I was involved with on the track. Our automotive curator at the time, Mr. Bob Casey, was aware of my affiliation and experience with these vehicles. When he had a question or acquired a new car and wanted an evaluation of that car, he would call me to come over to the museum and spend half a day with him inspecting the vehicles and getting him acquainted with it.

About that time he kept leaning on me, what are you going to do when you retire. He knew that I liked to stay active, so I decided that when I did retire that there was two places that I was going to spend time effectively as a volunteer. That was at the Henry Ford or with the Yankee Air Museum. The Henry Ford being very close to home and easy to access and such a diversity of things to work on, I chose to come to the Henry Ford. That’s the path I took to get here and I’m enjoying every day of it. I don’t need to be here as much as I am, but I try and apply my skills wherever they fit.

Alex Beard: What are a couple of the automobiles that we have on display that you worked on?

Mose Nowland: There’s five vehicles out here on display that I have worked on, because I have such a variety of racing experience and fabrication machine shop activities. We have, of course, the 1967 Ford GT40, the Mark IV that won Le Mans in 1966 and ’67. I did work on that car and service it in France for the 24 hour race. I was also fortunate enough to work on a Jim Clark/Dan Gurney Indianapolis cars. That was in ’63, ‘4, and ‘5 and pitted the cars at the races in those years.

Then there’s a couple of NASCAR stock cars here that I worked with the owners and teams engine wise, engine design and development of the special parts. Then there’s one car, we have a presidential limousine that I was a shop supervisor when the Ford Motor Company was building that car for Washington DC and the Secret Service. That car is also here. There’s five cars that I’m acquainted with out on the floor.

"1972 Lincoln Continental Presidential Limousine Used by Ronald Reagan. President Ronald Reagan was getting into this car when he was shot by John Hinckley on March 30, 1981. The car carried Reagan to the hospital. Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter, and George H.W. Bush also used this car." - ref. http://collections.thehenryford.org/Collection.aspx?keywords=reagan “1972 Lincoln Continental Presidential Limousine Used by Ronald Reagan. President Ronald Reagan was getting into this car when he was shot by John Hinckley on March 30, 1981. The car carried Reagan to the hospital. Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter, and George H.W. Bush also used this car.” – ref. http://collections.thehenryford.org/Collection.aspx?keywords=reagan

Alex Beard: How do you feel about that Mose, walking to work every day and passing some of the things you’ve worked on?

Mose Nowland: I’m very proud of the fact and I’m very appreciative that I get to walk by them and work on them today if needed.

Alex Beard: Yeah. We’re actually going to put some images of some of those vehicles and put some images of the quadricycle running in the village and put a short video online too if any of the listeners would like to see some of these cars that we’re talking about. It’ll be online on NCPTT’s webpage along with the transcription of the podcast.

Mose, also from a preservation standpoint, are there any things that you would’ve changed or modifications you would’ve made to some of the things that you had worked on at Ford Racing now that you know about using archival materials or trying to prolong the life of some of these vehicles?

Mose Nowland: Without a doubt there’s some changes I would make. I have been constantly thinking about some of the activities I was involved with. I’ve also followed technology connected with those components and yes, we would get about four years more current in technology usage.

When I left the company we were in 3D design. That was a big leap forward from the early years of racing. Even since then, the technology’s advanced tremendously. Things can move faster and better and more accurately right now. Absolutely.

The 1965 Lotus-Ford Race Car with which Scotsman Jimmy Clark won the Indianapolis 500 The 1965 Lotus-Ford Race Car with which Scotsman Jimmy Clark won the Indianapolis 500

Alex Beard: An interesting mix of keeping the performance in mind for the vehicle, but trying to preserve and extend the life of the vehicle now being at a museum. Are there any projects that you did work on while you were at Ford Racing that you look forward to seeing conserved?

Mose Nowland: Oh yes. In fact, every one of those cars out on the floor I am very proud that I’ve left footprints on them somewhere. It’s very comforting to know that they’re being conserved and other people are enjoying them.

Alex Beard: Andrew, have you worked on any of the cars that Mose has worked on?

Andrew Ganem: Alex, I have. I’ve had the privilege to do that with you.

Alex Beard: Oh yes. The race car.

Andrew Ganem: Yes. Mose has worked on a NASCAR stock car that was driven by an underage driver and the driver won. Was it the Daytona 500?

Mose Nowland: Yes.

Andrew Ganem: Won the Daytona 500. Since he was underage, they couldn’t spray champagne, so they sprayed Coca Cola. This car is on exhibit covered in Coca Cola and confetti. About every year it attracts a lot of dust and they take foam cosmetic wedges and gently remove the dust without disrupting the confetti. When the confetti is disrupted, it has to be re-adhered to the car.

Alex Beard: We don’t want to disrupt any of the signatures of the people that worked on the race team.

Andrew Ganem: Of course. not.

Mose Nowland: I just wanted to add that the- It is a Wood Brothers car, number 21 Fusion that Bayne (Trevor Bayne) drove. They stop in here twice a year, the Wood brothers do, just to take a look at the car and see how it’s being treated. They’re very, very fussy about don’t knock off any of the confetti or change anything. We’ve got terrible black scars on front and rear bumpers where the boys get into the commonly known drafting exercise on a track at 190 mile an hour. We’re not allowed to clean that up. It’s sitting there just the way it had come off the track. They’re keeping tabs on it.

The 2011 Ford Fusion Stock Car with which Trevor Bayne and the Wood Brothers Racing team won the Daytona 500. The 2011 Ford Fusion Stock Car with which Trevor Bayne and the Wood Brothers Racing team won the Daytona 500.

Alex Beard: Yes. I did remember that stuff actually sitting there. I didn’t know if it was dirt, but I sure didn’t touch it. Do you guys have anything else you’d like to add? Everything you’ve talked about today has been really interesting.

Andrew Ganem: I’d like to make a concluding statement to the quadricycle. I’d like to say that our replica quadricycle has built up a reputation of being the quadricycle everyone sees running around the village during Old Car Festival and has made its own impact in history that’s probably just as important as our original quadricycle.

Alex Beard: Yeah. I can see that the visitors aren’t as far removed from the original nowadays that they see this one actually functioning and running around and having a life of its own.

Andrew Ganem: Carrying on the torch if you would.

Conservation Specialist Alex Beard dusting the 2011 Ford Fusion Stock Car Conservation Specialist Alex Beard dusting the 2011 Ford Fusion Stock Car

Mose Nowland: I’d like to add one thing if I may. A previous year when I was out at the Old Car Festival in charge of the quadricycle, I had two different occasions where gentlemen would approach me and ask me for particular pictures of the car. I’d kind of pull the ropes to one side and let them come in and photograph it. Both of them claimed at the time that they were replicating a car like it also. I offered my email address and phone number. I’ve had contact with them on both occasions, both fellas that are attempting to build them, on suppliers and style of material that was used on it.

That’s an example of the interest that the car has had. People see you going down the village road and wanting to ride with you and things like that is just tremendous. It’s always a big hit and that’s why we’re so dedicated to keep the thing running.

Andrew Ganem: Definitely.

Alex Beard: Yeah. Maybe someday, Mose, some people will try and make some reproductions of cars you’ve worked on.

Mose Nolan: I’m sure they will.

Alex Beard: Thank you guys so much for taking the time to talk to me today. I appreciate it.

Mose Nolan: You’re certainly welcome. Thank you for the privilege of joining you this morning.

Kevin: Thank you for listening to today’s show. If you would like more information, check out our podcast show notes at www.ncptt.nps.gov. Until next time, goodbye everybody

Modern Problems with Early Motoring: The Replica Ford Quadricycle Alex Beard speaks with conservation technician Andrew Ganem and former performance engineer at Ford Racing Mose Nowland at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. In this podcast, they will discuss the restoration of a reproduction of Henry Ford's first vehicle, the 1896 Quadricycle.

October 13, 2015

67. Preserving Henry Ford’s Legacy: Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, MI (Episode 67)

Transcript

Kevin: Welcome to the Preservation Technology podcast, the show that brings you the people and projects that are advancing the future of America’s heritage. I’m Kevin Ammons with the National Park Service’s National Center for Preservation Technology and Training.

Today we join NCPTT’s Alex Beard as she speaks with several collections specialists, technicians, and conservators at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. In this podcast, they will discuss their jobs at Henry Ford and how they are preserving American history.

Alex: Hi. My name is Alex Beard. I’m here recording today at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, and I’m with a couple members of the Conservation and Collections Management team. First, I’m going to be talking to Collections Specialist, Julie Dzurnak.

Julie: Here in the museum when you look around, you can see a lot of different artifacts that we have on exhibit, such as the Rosa Parks bus. We have the chair that Lincoln was shot in, but most of the objects that we have you don’t actually see on the museum floor, although we do have a large percentage here. They’re in off-site storage locations. What was hired on to do here was help with the re-housing and relocation of a majority of those collections from one of our storage facilities to a new storage site a little bit closer, in much better conditions than we currently have. Oftentimes, the need for the collections will outweigh the resources that a museum has in terms of funding or even workforce.

Basically what my job entails is re-housing objects. This can be anything from toasters to baby carriages to auto parts, anything really. We’re re-housing them in safer storage conditions, just in smaller boxes with the proper packaging to make sure that they can withstand the move, and then also that they’ll be safe and properly stored for years to come, which is kind of preventative conservation, making sure that the conditions are good for the objects now will ensure that they last longer into the future. That way our conservators will have not as hard of a job to do.

Alex: Do you work closely with the Registrar’s Department and Conservation Department? Could you tell us a little bit about that?

Julie: Yeah. It definitely is a team effort between all of the departments. Registrars are really responsible for maintaining the records of the object, and then conservators, too, are constantly working with them to make sure that we as collections managers are making the right decisions in terms of different materials to use when packing objects, which kind of goes with collections management, too, just taking steps to ensure the well-being of the objects in the future. Especially with a collection like the one that the Henry Ford has, there’s a lot of different materials that we see.

It’s a huge, diverse collection, so we have to make sure that we’re working with the conservators. I think it’s really interesting to see different things that the conservation labs are working on, whether its textiles or things related to the IMLS Communications Grant. But then also, too, I think it’s been really interesting learning how to move large objects, which is part of the move from off-site storage facility. We work closely with the exhibits team to get things like automobiles onto the museum floor. I will definitely say that has been a learning experience, and often entails a lot of all hands on deck kind of mentalities.

Alex: I bet you have some stories for us.

Julie: Yeah, some of these older cars, they’re just extremely large. They’re boats of cars, so it might take about 5 or 6 guys to be pushing it, and also steering. You need someone to be in the car to steer. You need to be making sure that you’re not going to hit anything as you’re navigating through the museum with all the other objects on display. Also, too, you have to make sure you get it through the doors, which our doors are 20 feet high in some cases to accommodate for the larger artifacts that we put on the floor here. The Allegheny train came through some of those doors. We also have airplanes and buses, just a lot of large artifacts here that it takes quite a crew to move sometimes.

Alex: That’s really fascinating. That sounds like such a fun, unique place to work. Thanks so much, Julie, for talking to me today.

Julie: It is.

Alex: Right now, I’m here with Collections Specialist, Jake Hildebrandt, Conservation Specialist, Cayla Osgood, and Conservator, Jessica Lafrance-Hwang. They have been working on the IMLS Communications Grant-funded project for the past 2 years or so. Could you guys tell us a little bit about that project, and start by saying what IMLS stands for, please?

Jessica: IMLS stands for the Institute of Museum and Library Services. They’ve given us a grant to work on communications equipment from the collection over a 2-year period. As Julie mentioned, we will eventually be moving the collection from numerous storage buildings to one storage facility that’s closer to the museum. The objects in this IMLS grant are all coming out of a storage facility on-site that houses mixed collections, including the communications equipment. Our goal for this project was to catalog, conserve, photograph, publish online, and rehouse 1,000 objects from this collection. We passed the goal already, but we get to continue working for a few more months.

Cayla: So far in the grant, we have been working on televisions, radios, computers, recording equipment, typewriters, and cameras, and we just acquired the Apple One, which isn’t part of the grant, but was a fun acquisition.

Alex: So, conservators. Could you guys tell us a little bit about some of the obstacles you guys face dealing with the IMLS artifacts. I would imagine it would be a little challenging dealing with some of them considering some sat in a storage facility untouched for half a century.

Jessica: It has been a challenge. One of our biggest challenges have been hazardous corrosion products, like cadmium and lead, that form because of just … Part of it is the way the objects are built, and then another factor is just how they were stored for so long. We’ve also had challenges with asbestos, which is normal to find in objects that would have had heat sources, and as well, we’ve had problems with cellulose nitrate, having been left inside cameras that were acquired and then put into storage. The cellulose nitrate degrades over time, and also causes degradation of everything around it.

Cellulose Nitrate Degraded Cellulose Nitrate Film

Cayla: Some of our other issues on this grant have been mold, which, the storage facility that we have been pulling the communications objects out of had a mold problem in the past. We have taken extra precautions to make sure that we protect ourselves from the mold to avoid overexposure, and to prevent another outbreak from happening in the new storage facility.

We have also encountered a lot of tape on objects, and the adhesive on the tape is extremely hard to remove, especially when it’s been on the object for half of a century. Another thing that we have encountered a lot of is objects that have no information with them. They have no tags.

That is a problem not only for us, but for the registrars and collections management departments, so we’re working on tracking down the information for those. Also, we have encountered a lot of grease on objects, but that is due to the nature of the objects themselves, but it’s quite a challenge to remove all of the grease. In order to protect ourselves and the other people in the lab, we make sure to clean the objects before we bring them into the museum. That way we don’t have spores create another outbreak in the museum or in our new storage facility. Since mold thrives in a warm and wet environment, we make sure that we aren’t putting ourselves at risk.

Jessica: As you just heard, a lot of these challenges are a little bit hazardous to us, and also a lot of the general conservation work can be hazardous, just because of the amount of solvents and the amount of particulates that are created when you’re removing corrosion products and dust. We take a lot of safety precautions when we’re working. This includes wearing a half mask and the proper cartridges with your mask, but also running ventilation and disposing of hazardous materials properly.

My piece of advice to people at home who may have objects of their own, is to treat them with care, keep them out of the light, keep them dry, keep them covered to avoid dust accumulation, and don’t over-clean them. If you really have something that you can’t figure out, or an object that’s in poor condition and you’re not sure how to handle it, definitely call your local conservator. There are conservators all across the country who would be more than happy to help you out, even just to answer your questions. You can also contact the conservation department at the Henry Ford for advice and treatment options, and they can also help you get in contact with somebody in your local area.

Alex: When dealing with potentially hazardous artifacts or precious family heirlooms, it is always best to contact your local conservator or the head conservators at the Henry Ford Museum for treatment consultation.

Alex Removing film Removing Degraded Cellulose Nitrate Film

Jake: One of the really interesting parts of this project was the inter-departmental nature of it. It’s a really good excuse to work with registrars, photography, certainly conservation is one of the big major players of it. But some of the stuff we’ve uncovered has been interesting stuff for the public, so we’ve been doing a little bit of talk with marketing and all that, so it’s really been a whole-institution project, which has been great for all of us to meet people and to see how all kinds of things work. A little bit about what I’m doing on the project, I’m sort of the last step on the pipeline, basically figuring out the best way to store these artifacts.

Our plan is not real long-term for them to be in deep storage, anyway. Hopefully we’re getting our new storage building in 2 to 5 years or so, but we’re playing on the cautious side, planning for decades. We’re using Ethafoam and corrugated plastic, which is a lot like corrugated cardboard, but made out of a stable, long-term stable inert plastic, so it’s water-resistant. It’s very sturdy, so a lot of these artifacts are very heavy for the small size, so it’s good to have sturdy handles that they can be carried around in and everything should be protected mechanically and chemically, and from water.

Alex: That’s great, Jake. Jessica mentioned earlier that the goal of the project was to stabilize and preserve at least 1,000 artifacts. How many boxes would you say you’ve made, and what do you think’s been the most difficult box to construct so far?

Jake: A lot of them have been big enough that they just live on pallets with dust covers and things like that, so I haven’t made 1,000 boxes, but maybe 5 or 600. They’ve all been relatively similar in how to make them and pack them. The hard ones are the artifacts that have a lot of stuff sticking out, like rods and knobs and things. It’s a little bit harder to pad them out so that they don’t jab into the side of the box and that kind of thing. Where the really challenge comes is … The verb we’ve started using is Tetrising, basically fitting boxes into larger boxes. We have these big 4-foot cube pallet crates that the boxes I make go into, so it’s a real challenge of packing them efficiently.

One of our earlier things was this computer system from the mid-’80s that had all these big, really heavy parts that were fragile. They all have glass picture tubes and all that, so trying to fit that into a reasonable number of pallets was strenuous physically and mentally, but it’s really satisfying when they all sync into the pallet neatly. One of the really interesting things for us with this project is that a lot of the artifacts we’re bringing in are not historically significant per se, although a lot of them were, but a lot of them are just mass collections that were done a long time ago, which was sort of Henry Ford’s MO, to get just truckloads of things.

His original idea for a lot of the museum was to show a bunch of similar things in a row to display them evolutionarily, so that you could see the stylistic and engineering progress as it went. It was kind of a precursor to current open storage ideas, where there’s not too much curation basically. You look at all the things and you can see the difference on your own, which we were able to do a bit here and there as we worked, and it was really interesting.

Alex: Now I’m speaking with Senior Objects Conservator, Clara Deck, and she’s here to shed some light a little bit on some of the interesting projects she’s worked on through the years, and her involvement in the IMLS Grant project.

Clara: Yeah, I’ve been here for 25 years as a conservator, and I’ve worked on many great things, including moving our 1914 carousel, and reassembling the Dymaxion House inside the Henry Ford Museum was a 3-year project and an ongoing responsibility. But as a Senior Conservator in place so huge with about a quarter of a million 3-dimensional objects, ranging from thimble-sized objects to steam engines, it’s important for conservators to be multi-taskers, but also to understand the basics of risk management. Conservators in a big history museum need to understand what are the greatest risks to collections, and to address those first and foremost. We don’t want to be rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, and working on a tiny little item when whole storage rooms full of materials might be in jeopardy.

Copper Corrosion Copper Corrosion on a Film Camera

That was definitely the case with the IMLS Grant. It was actually initiated because I found mold in that huge storage facility, so it’s a warehouse sized building, and we found mold, and mold does spread everywhere, and so we realized that if we wanted to move the collections – we have a big plan to consolidate all the collections into one storage location very close to the museum – we needed to deal with that mold problem. Part of the grant application was to get the staffing we needed to start on a pilot project to clean that storage building. In my view, the IMLS project is really a mold remediation project, and all the benefits and the great staff that has come to us as part of the project are sort of icing on the cake.

Alex: Thank you so much. That was great. I’m here with Paper Conservation Specialist, Brooke Adams. Could you tell us a little bit about what you’re doing at the Henry Ford and what your favorite project has been so far?

Brooke: My favorite project that I’ve been working on is also a project that I’ve been working on with the IMLS team of conservators, and I’ve been working on the boxes that Spindizzy cars come in, and boxes of really everything that IMLS or a collector had held onto, so a lot of boxes. I think I’ve gotten very good at repairing boxes and surface cleaning the paper that is found, and the cameras and the toy boxes. A lot of those also had little guarantees, instruction manuals. I like working with IMLS because I get exposure to all these toys and photographic processes that I’ve never been able to handle before. These are all way before my time.

That’s part of what I like in general about working in conservation. I love working with papers. One of my favorite exhibits I worked on here was the Abraham Lincoln 150th anniversary of his death. That was incredible. You never get to touch those things. I got to surface clean and mend one of the pamphlets for the theater show that he went to see the night he was murdered. That was really interesting. There are a lot of wood block engravings that they had for his memorial. I got to mat a lot of those.

Yeah, surface cleaning things, that’s normally what I do, flatten things, mend them with Japanese tissue, and archival adhesive. I did re-house 200 glass plate negatives of the Wright Brothers, one of their flights in France, but I did that with Minoo, the paper conservator. We just brushed them off and had fun holding them up to the light to see what was on there. They were being re-housed for storage. They had been sitting in one of the storage areas for many years in the box that the donor had put them in, so an acidic cardboard box.

Ferrous Corrosion Ferrous Corrosion inside a Magic Lantern

They were all piled together, touching one another, so Minoo and I were putting them in the little paper folders that they were supposed to be in so they could properly be in their own little folders, not touching anything. We brushed off the dust that they were on. We made sure that they weren’t flaking horribly. If they were, she’d set it aside or if it was broken, because some of the plates were cracked, she would put it on board between more board to hold it all together so it was one cohesive piece for storage. I don’t think something like that could go on exhibit, really, because it would be damaged from all that light exposure.

Alex: Well, thank you, Brooke. That was really interesting. That concludes our podcast here today at the Henry Ford. I just wanted to thank all of you guys one more time, and I look forward to speaking with each of you again in the future.

Kevin: Thank you for listening to today’s show. If you would like more information, check out our podcast show notes at www.ncptt.nps.gov. Until next time, goodbye everybody.

Collections specialists, technicians, and conservators Alex Beard speaks with several collections specialists, technicians, and conservators at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. In this podcast, they will discuss their jobs at Henry Ford and how they are preserving American history

August 31, 2015

66. Why Historic Preservation? Talking with Historic Preservation Students about their career choices (Episode 66)

Transcript

Kevin Ammons: Welcome to the Preservation Technology Podcast. The show that brings you the people and projects that are advancing the future of America’s heritage. I’m Kevin Ammons with the National Park Services National Center for Preservation Technology and Training. Today we join NCPTT’s Jason Church as he speaks with members of the Student Preservation Association at the Savannah College of Art and Design. In this podcast SPA members talk about why they chose historic preservation as a career path.

Davis Allen: Hi I’m Davis, I am a senior undergraduate student, and I am from Atlanta, Georgia.

Derek Llamas: I’m Derek Llamas, I’m also a senior undergraduate student. I’m from Waynesboro, Georgia, I’m also the president of SPA.

Jaime Dail: I am Jaime, and I am a second year grad student, so I will be graduating with an MFA.

Maggie O’Neill: I’m Maggie, I am the SPA communications director, I am also a senior undergraduate in historic preservation, and I am from Montvale, New Jersey.

Eli Lurie: I’m Eli, I’m from Boston.

Jason Church: So you guys have all chosen to come here to SCAD to study historic preservation, why is it? What is it about historic preservation that interests you?

Derek Llamas (BFA, Historic Preservation 2016) cleans a grave marker in Laurel Grove Cemetery North during Preservation Week 2015. Derek Llamas (BFA, Historic Preservation 2016) cleans a grave marker in Laurel Grove Cemetery North during Preservation Week 2015.

Derek Llamas: It’s sort of funny, whenever this question comes up. The original reason I got into preservation always seems so silly to me, a little juvenile, because honest to god, the original reason, I just thought that old houses were pretty. It sounds very simplistic, but that was the original reason. I originally came to SCAD and entered the interior design program. But I transferred into this department under the recommendation of a high school history teacher of mine, who told me to check out this department; history was a pet subject of my high school. I was already interested in beautiful architecture, and architectural interiors. Obviously my interior design degree that I was pursuing at the time, and so I thought this was a great way to get some history and some beauty and some architectural 101, and of course since I’ve been here I think now my reasons have expanded, certainly there is a community aspect that I enjoy, and I think it’s a good way to bring communities together, which is important I think as the world grows smaller from technology.

Maggie O’Neill: I kind of had a similar path, when I was, even now, I always really liked stories. Everyone who knows me that I will talk endlessly and will just tell stories constantly given the opportunity. But I started off on photography actually and worked my way through stories that way and worked my way through people that way. Like in high school you see a lot of people doing photo shoots in abandoned places, it was definitely my niche, so it was definitely where I liked to go. I liked to break into things and shoot there, but over time I drew less away from the physical photography aspect and more towards, “Okay why is this place abandoned? What was someone doing with it? Oh my god they’re gonna knock it down” which did not sit well with me.

And much like Derek, I ended up in this department through a recommendation of my AP art history teacher in high school, who recognized that I liked the art history side of it, but that I also really preferred the architectural history side of it, and even then I would end up coming in with stories about all the places we were studying in class. So she knew that I was looking at SCAD, and she said they had a great historic preservation program why don’t you check that out before you fully commit yourself to photography, which I’m glad that I did. I don’t know if that would have ended well for me.

Davis Allen: I grew up in Atlanta and it was pretty infamous for knocking down anything that was relatively historic. So I was always surrounded by that, and I’d get really passionate about saving historic buildings. From just when I was a young age, and I knew growing up that I wanted to do something related to architecture or design, but I wasn’t really passionate about new contemporary design, or polished glass and steel buildings. I thought they were just kind of there, and I was really drawn to historic buildings. So when I found out about this program, I thought it was definitely a good fit for me.

Jamie Jamie Dail (MFA, Historic Preservation 2015) removes failed mortar from a historic brick wall.

Jaime Dail: I guess for me it kind of started at a young age because I grew with a family farmhouse that we used to go visit, so it was built in 1855, and at the time I didn’t know anything about it other than it was this old building that my family had. So that actually started me into my path for undergrads, I did architecture so that I was really interested in the building environment. So I went through that and as I was doing my studies, I actually did a study abroad in Spain. So at the time we went and saw a whole bunch of, all these sort of buildings that a lot of things were going on with, and at the time I was really interested was the adaptive reuse part of it. So taking these historic structures that were no longer relevant for what they were originally built for and kind of seeing how people were using them for current times. So that they kind of got this new life instead of being torn down.

So I got offered a recommendation from one of my professors, they were like oh well if you are really interested in this, you should really think about preservation. And so at the time I didn’t really know what that was, and so I started looking into it and found out that the department was here at SCAD. So I was like oh that sounds really cool and so the further I’ve gone into it, the more that you see every building has a story to tell and not just the new architecture that’s being built. And why its built but then why they were built originally whenever they sustained so long.

Eli Lurie: I was accepted to SCAD for architecture and it was my first quarter here and I was going through architecture alone, and then I found out about the historic preservation department, which I had never thought would have been a career and a job and a future path for me. So I sort of talked to my parents about preservation and all the things it could offer for me, for the future, financially, that type of thing. My dad was just not for me going for this career path, there wasn’t a good money outlook for it, there wasn’t a good financial future for it. So that really worried him, so after that I decided that I was going to do a double major with architecture and historic preservation, and with that came a minor of architectural history.

So here I am with all three of those and hoping to do adaptive reuse one day with that. So that I can do both architectural plans for that and have a preservation outlook with that, that most architectural offices don’t keep with them. They don’t really keep with that preservation mindset that I feel like is very crucial whenever you are doing anything involving historic or older structure.

Davis Allen uses a Faro Focus laser scanner to document a historic structure on Lantau Island in Hong Kong. Davis Allen uses a Faro Focus laser scanner to document a historic structure on Lantau Island in Hong Kong.

Jason Church: Well we can definitely hear there’s a passion in all of your stories, but you all came about it in a very different way. What do you hope, once you leave school and enter the job force hopefully, and start a career path, what do you all hope to do with your preservation degrees?

Davis Allen: Our program, I found, is pretty unique in regards to a lot of preservation programs in that they really stress adaptive rehab and adaptive reuse of historic buildings, and how you can accommodate modern needs into a historic building. So I myself, along with I know a lot of other people, would really like to go into that field, a lot of times through architectural firms. So that’s eventually something I would really enjoying doing.

Derek Llamas: Well, sort of riding-on-the back of Davis’s statement. I fall into that category. I find adaptive rehab to be the biggest draw in preservation to me. I’ve always enjoyed doing projects and taking something that other people might look at as being older or obsolete, maybe unusable … Taking it and transforming it into something amazing. I think I got some of that working with my grandmother. My grandmother works on vintage and sometimes antique furniture. Sometimes it’s refinishing, sometimes it’s re-purposing, but I’ve worked on that with her for a few years, and I enjoy doing that and I think that’s the draw to adaptive rehab for me. I like to see a project from beginning to end.

My family also questioned a little bit, much like Eli’s, the profitability aspect of it, but I think that preservation is going to be, especially adaptive rehab, is going to be a growing field. I think its going to be a trend really as more people are saying, empty-nesters as well as people from our generation are wanting to live in historic districts, in down towns. I have a positive outlook for it, and I’ve got a little bit of entrepreneurial aspirations, so I hope to have my own adaptive rehab business.

Maggie O'Neill and classmates measure the Savannah Powder Magazine to create HABS Standard documentation. Maggie O’Neill and classmates measure the Savannah Powder Magazine to create HABS Standard documentation.

Maggie O’Neill: Going in a completely different direction from everyone else. I definitely really, really love the adaptive rehab aspect of preservation. However, as I have gone through this program, I’ve realized my draw tends to be more towards historic landscapes and advocacy in general. I’ve always been for, a vast majority of our projects, the one’s coming to mind is my preservation law class. We had to do an advocacy project, which is something I was excited about to being with because I love getting the word out about things, I like talking to people. I like communicating about preservation and getting the word out, raising awareness. However, with that class I became kind of infamous for promoting the preservation of landscapes in general, whether they’re natural landscapes or urban landscapes, or things like that, just anything that’s threatened because of the build of a mass building or development, general development.

I’ve become infamous for this. If I don’t bring up The Palisades in New York and New Jersey at least once a class per quarter, its been a very strange quarter for me. I will scream about it. Actually, while I was presenting about that project, broke a chair. I was so involved and getting so hyped up about it, but I tend to fall under just sustainability and environmentalism and really promoting the conservation of land and landscapes for both preservation purposes and also for preservation planning and climate change awareness and planning for that as well. I think preservation fits into that niche very well and it’s somewhere that we can definitely expand too, and promote the general sense of preservation with them.

Jaime Dail: I think mine, mine’s kind of similar to the two stories we’ve heard. Just from my previous experience being in the architecture field and then also coming into preservation, a lot of what I’ve seen is that you have the architects that do architecture and you have preservationist that do preservation and so there seems to be somewhat of a gap between the two. There is some that, you know you have preservation architects but they just don’t seem as prevalent as I feel like they should be. So I guess my goal is to help be that bridge between, even if it’s a small scale, just being able to do the architecture drawings but then also have the understanding of the preservation and how to address these buildings if it comes up in project or something else, to be able have the mind set of those so that they can both have equal parts instead of one being less than the other. So just being about to mix the two together.

Maggie O’Neill: I think jumping off that, just I speak for everyone here, correct me if I’m wrong. We would all long term within preservation like to see it be promoted more as something that’s not a scary word. You see a lot of people won’t call themselves preservation architects because preservation can be seen as old ladies in tennis shoes or chaining themselves to a building they don’t want to be knocked down. Again, I speak for everyone, our department and everyone that we’ve encountered through conferences or just general meetings, is not like that. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but our generation is much more making preservation more accessible to everyone. I think long term if we can make it accessible to everyone we will all be content and have achieved our goal.

Derek Llamas: Yeah, I would definitely say we’re maybe not the house museum generation. We’re looking into how we can make these historic places relevant to today by making them usable by people of all walks of life. There’s also a lot of talk about universal design. How can we make places compatible with ADA, special needs, all sorts of things, and I think that we’re the generation that’s very interested in that. And I think it’s a good point in time for that, because again I stress I think people are getting more interested in that rehab. People want buildings with character, and hopefully we can capitalize on that.

Jaime Dail: I think one of the big things is, preservation is typically seen as, you capitalize things. So you take it an older building and you stop it right whenever it, or landscape. Whenever it gets to that stage of significance in fifty years, when people don’t want to touch it anymore because, they go its frozen in time. I think something that’s an in opportunities that’s missed because then if you freeze it like yes you get to see all these great things, but then it may actually end up hurting it in the long run because it’s not longer relevant for the future generations that want to use it. So that way if you can find. I think that’s adaptive reuse is such a good thing and you can still keep the integrity of the building and the character of the building and put a new function inside of it. So just being able to use both of them without having to stay such hardcore into “You can’t touch anything.”

Derek Llamas: And as its often said by some of professors, the building that is already there is the “greenest” building. So it’s also environmental, it really is.

Eli LurieEli Lurie: That’s one thing I found in the architectural program is that its just inconceivable for most people. Most people will be like “Yes, this is going to be very green building LEEDS Silver“, Net-Zero, that type of thing. What they don’t realize is if it’s on a property that’s already has a structure, tearing that structure down, all of the waste within that one building from building it, living in it, tearing it down, moving it offsite, putting it in a landfill, that’s a lot more harmful than their Net-Zero building that’s going to be there for probably thirty to forty years, which is the lifespan cycle of a current building that they are building in these days.

Derek Llamas: Think we have to plug that back in to the part. Cause some people do have trouble…

Jamie Dail: …understanding that.

Maggie O’Neill: Well I think from my end as the SPA communications director, you’ll hear a lot about people talking about social media and social medias role in things. I think because the next generation of preservationist is starting to move in, you’re seeing a lot more social media presence. You will see a lot more house museums, “like our house museum page”.

Now, okay that’s great but then a lot of social media campaigns to save things. Like the first one to pop into my head, unfortunately, is Glenridge Hall which was just completely demolished and I am still heart broken about. There was at least something to do. There was at least a protest managed and organized because of social media and you see a lot of things like that starting to pop up now that younger people are starting to moving in. It’s definitely something to take advantage of both as professional, well professional organization and as a professional, like young professional joining in because if we have a presence. Like SPA has a presence on social media and a lot of people follow us, and a lot of people have tweeted us and let us know about things, and that’s important because without having that outlet to speak no one is going to listen.

Derek Llamas: Yeah, I think we certainly have to take control of all of it, make use of all the tools that are available to us. I think maybe that that’s the area where we are definitely going to improve upon. Not just social media, one of the ideas that was presented more than once during this past year’s National Trust Conference was the idea that sometimes when preservationist are looking for allies, looking for people to back their projects you don’t go to other preservationists. Sometimes you go to people who have a different reason that they might help you save this building. They might not care that much that the building is historic or that it’s beautiful, that’s its got this perfect neoclassical facade, they might not care. Maybe a city needs a new health center and you can show them how this building is perfect for them.

I think making use of all those tools, all of the connections and sometimes that means going outside our comfort zone. You know, going to speak to people that we aren’t always so use to speaking with; real estate developers certainly come to mind. But I think its important that we start getting our place at the table that’s the thing. If you shut off communications with anyone you don’t have a place at the table and they are never going to get any of your input at all. I’d rather be at the table putting in my preservationist’s penny, you know where I can rather than not have any influence at all.

Jason Church: Well thank you for all of you and coming and talking to us today and we hope to hear from each of you in the future about projects your doing and as your careers develop and thank you again for talking with us.

Derek Llamas: Well thank you for speaking with us.

Kevin Ammons: Thank you for listening to today’s show. If you would like more information, check out our podcast show notes at www.ncptt.nps.gov. Until next time, good bye everybody.

Talking with Historic Preservation Students about their career choice Today we join NCPTT Jason Church as he speaks with members of the Student Preservation Association at the Savannah College of Art and Design. In this podcast SPA members talk about why they chose historic preservation as a career path

July 30, 2015

65. HOPE comes to African House: Talking with Monica Rhodes and Molly Dickerson about the HOPE Crew Program (Part 2) (Podcast 65)

Transcript

Melrose Plantation Melrose Plantation

Kevin Ammons: Welcome to the Preservation Technology podcast, the show that brings you the people and projects that are advancing the future of America’s heritage. I’m Kevin Ammons with the National Park Service’s National Center for Preservation of Technology and Training. Today we join NCPTT Jason Church as he speaks with Molly Dickerson facility’s manager of the Melrose Plantation And Monica Rhodes, manager of the HOPE Crew Program for the National Trust for Historic Preservation. In this episode, Jason is talking with them about the recent HOPE Crew project at Melrose Plantation.

Jason Church: In our last podcast, we spoke with Monica Rhodes about the HOPE Program. Today, we are here at Melrose Plantation where the HOPE Crew is finishing work on the African House. Molly, can you tell us a little bit about Melrose?

Molly Dickerson: Absolutely, well Melrose Plantation is owned and operated by the nonprofit Association for the Preservation of Historic Natchitoches. They’ve been in operation since the 1940s, they gained Melrose in 1971 through a petition that they made to a land company that had recently purchased Melrose. At that point, they began restoration efforts on the plantation with the goal of operating it as a house museum. They were able to accomplish that goal but of course, their cyclical maintenance on all of our buildings and the need to undertake larger projects at times and African house was one of those projects.

African House African House

I came on with APHN about two years ago and they were speaking with a local architectural engineer firm in regard to the needs of African house. Although this firm was incredibly experienced in new construction and modern construction, they didn’t have a lot of experience when it came to preservation. Certainly when it came to a building like African house, there is no other building like African house so there were some red flags, there were some recommendations that were incredibly inappropriate for our desire to restore African house appropriately. At that point, I contacted National Center for Preservation Technology and Training to see if they could put us in touch with somebody with experience in preservation engineering. It was Sarah Jackson that put us in contact with someone and was a lifesaver. I mean, she really helped us with that project immensely.

Simultaneously, we gained the attention of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Stephanie Meeks, the president and CEO, visited Melrose. In addition, I submitted a nomination for African house as a National Treasure that was accepted and then, Monica was in the South, Monica Rhodes, was in the South looking for locations for a HOPE Crew project and it was Sarah, once again, that brought her to Melrose and when she explained the program, and we compared that with our needs African house, it just seemed like a perfect fit. We needed to do a restoration, we wanted to- it was a preservation restoration effort jointly. We wanted to reach out to people of great experience so part of the hope model is that they use a preservation trades expert and a preservation advisor.

In this instance, our preservation advisor was NCPTT and Sarah Jackson as well as Andy Ferrell. Then, our preservation trades expert was Alicia Spence and Gerald David. They had great experience in traditional timber framing, which is the construction of African house. It has a masonary base and then, the upper story is all hand-hewn cypress. They had a lot of experience with that so our relationship with all these parties brought us into a great partnership and we’re really happy with the results. Another great aspect of it, the model uses youth, young men and women who have some experience in construction or carpentry but want to learn more about preservation in particular.

Melrose Arts Festival Melrose Arts Festival

The Texas Conservation Corps, they identified young men and women that were interested in learning more about hands-on preservation and particularly, timber framing. Our group, for the most part, was very enthusiastic and learned so much. To see them grow and experience over the eight weeks that the project went on was exciting and to know that we were passing on this traditional trade to the next generation was also a great thing that we didn’t initially intend for when it came to the restoration of African house so it was a wonderful byproduct.

African house, in particular, had so many hands that touched it that made it what it is from William Metoyer, our plantation founder, he had it built. He was actually born a slave and went from being a enslaved person to a land owner and patriarch in the Cane River, Isle Brevelle community that’s still rich today. Also, it was constructed by enslaved people so the Africans it, it tells their story. Melrose, from 1919 to 1940ish, was an artist’s retreat and it housed artists that came to visit so it tells their story as well. Also, it houses the African House Murals that were done by Clementine Hunter, interestingly she became the most famous artist to leave Melrose but she was not an invited guest. She was an employee of Melrose so all of those things make African house so special and the construction method, it shows the way they constructed things before we had modern conveniences that we have today in construction but it was built very sturdily. I mean, it stood for almost 200 years before we needed to intervene so even that alone kind of tells a rich story that we wanted to make sure to preserve by using those same building methods when we went to preserving it.

Jason Church: Thank you Molly for telling us about Melrose and APHN. Now Monica, would you tell us about your involvement here in Melrose?

HOPE Crew saws timber for the African House roof structure. HOPE Crew saws timber for the African House roof structure.

Monica Rhodes: Sure, so they are working with a very experienced preservation professional, Alicia Spence who is also connected closely with the Timber Framers Guild. Alicia has worked on projects both in America and internationally so she is well known for the work and her work in the timber framing world. We are working- we have six corps members out there right now working alongside of Alicia with her guiding their work. They’re working on, right now they’re reframing or they’re doing some framing work around the structure. Their learning how to hew timbers, which is something that they probably wouldn’t have been … timber hewing is not something a lot of jobs call for but when you have those specialty skills and you can stand up and say, ‘well, I’ve done this before,’ makes all the difference.

They are learning those skills, their learning how to pit saw, they’re learning the process from beginning to end what it takes to really restore and rehabilitate a timber frame building. I think, it’s my hope that there really gaining something from being connected not only to a project and learning those skills but to the stories of these places. That is also what’s important about the hope crew program is gaining some real skills that in the next few years are going to be critical if we are going to be good stewards of our historic resources in America. We are going to need those trained professionals to be able to do that work.

Then, on the other side, it’s my goal that they connect closer to the history that’s in their own backyard. I mean, I’ve worked on projects where corps members have lived down the street and have never had a reason to come to the National Park Service and never come to that park. Had an idea what the story was about but if there is no reason to come there or if the park isn’t … there’s nothing for them to do or if there is no programming that really brings them into it, well, there is still that disconnect. There are now only getting the skills but they are getting to know a historic resource in their own backyard, like I said.

Then, the stories that are in these places are extremely important. I mean, you’re working on a- to think about the Africa house, these core members are working on a structure that was built in the 1800s. I don’t know what they think about when they go home and they lay their head down at night but at some point, it’s going to have to sink in like, ‘man, I’m working on something that was probably around’- was definitely around before their great-grandparents were even born. It was there, it was on this landscape and maybe it will sink in with them a few years from now or something along those lines but it’s not everyday that you get an opportunity to work on such a historic place, a historic building with such a rich story.

A member of the HOPE Crew shaves down a timber. A member of the HOPE Crew shaves down a timber.

What they also don’t get is, I think with preservation, is really knowing the people who built these buildings and in the case of Africa house, this is slave labor that built these buildings and other types of labor, rehabilitated over the years. Now, they are part of that story so they can see how this place was constructed, how the bricks are laid, how the timber has come together. If that says- what I think it could also do kind of turn or change their minds around what slavery was about. It wasn’t about people out, you know, picking cotton. The people were constructing things, using building technology. You can look at African house and you can see its connection to African architectural style so it provides all of these types of things.

For a corps member who really wants to get into it, there are these layers. I mean, if they’re interested in gaining more experience about preservation planning, they can look at Melrose plantation and kind of see how these buildings are situated. How the APHN curates these buildings and once they’ve got that, they’ve got their interpretation or if they want to get more into timber framing, I mean, there’s countless examples around Louisiana where they could take the same skills and go out and be paid for the skills that they started here at Melrose. I think you’ve asked me this question but this program has so many implications and we are just getting started here so I’m very excited to be a part of it and just plant seeds in people’s minds

The HOPE Crew team pauses for a photo after completing the major framing work. The HOPE Crew team pauses for a photo after completing the major framing work.

Just know, okay, working out and being a part of a project from seven until five every day and working with your hands is not your thing, then, are you interested in interpreting stories? Because that’s a part of preservation. If that’s not your thing, well, are you interested in the legal structure that supports our field? If you want to be an attorney in preservation law. There’s marketers specialize in marketing to preservation communities. There’s so many ways you can cut our field and this program just provides a little peek into everything that we do. If you want to wear a lab coat, you can be in the lab testing water and making paint.

There’s so many things that we try to introduce these corps members to if working with your hands or being out and hammering and pit sawing isn’t your thing, there are so many other ways you can be involved in preservation. We’re just trying to train and introduce a new generation to such a field that touches every single person in this country that we just haven’t done the best job at really selling and really marketing what we do nationally but we are everywhere. We touched a lot of corners and to get young people involved in that at 18, 19, 20, 21, it can be life-changing.

Jason Church: Thank you both for talking with us today and I hope to hear from each of you in the future.

Kevin Ammons: Thank you for listening to today’s show. If you would like more information, check out our podcast show notes at www.ncptt.nps.gov. Until next time. Goodbye, everybody

Monica Rhodes on the HOPE Crew Project at Melrose Plantation Today we join NCPTT Jason Church as he speaks with Molly Dickerson facility's manager of the Melrose Plantation And Monica Rhodes, manager of the HOPE Crew Program for the National Trust for Historic Preservation. In this episode, Jason is talking with them about the recent HOPE Crew Project at Melrose Plantation.

July 7, 2015

64. Where Preservation is Needed, there is HOPE: Talking with Monica Rhodes about the HOPE Crew Program (Part 1) (Podcast 64)

Transcript

Kevin Ammons: Welcome to the Preservation Technology podcast, the show that brings you the people and projects that are advancing the future of America’s heritage. I’m Kevin Ammons with the National Park Service’s National Center for Preservation Technology and Training. Today, we joined NCPTT’s Jason Church as he speaks with Monica Rhodes, Manager of the HOPE Crew program for the National Trust for Historic Preservation. In this episode, Monica talks about recent HOPE Crew projects and the program’s youth outreach.

Jason Church: Tell our listeners a little bit, what is the HOPE Crew?

HOPE Crew at Little Bighorn. HOPE Crew at Little Bighorn. (Montana Conservation Corps)

Monica Rhodes: Sure, the HOPE Crew stands for the Hands-On Preservation Experience. It is a new program of the National Trust For Historic Preservation to connect preservation projects with youth corps all around the country. Identifying trained professionals to come in and lead the work. Craft experts is what we call them in the program. Generally, that person has 10, 15, 20, 30 years of experience working on something like window restoration. That’s their specialty. That’s how they made their living. Working with those professionals to guide the work of youth corps who, Youth corps are in every state. They do all types of work, trail clearing, road work, for example, but never really gotten into preservation as a movement before. Again, the youth corp movement, they do a lot of things. Their roots are with the CCC.

If you imagine that type of work and what those young people were able to accomplish, you can copy and paste 1930 onto 2015, and you got that same labor force is still out there working. Now, it’s called the corps movement. If you imagine CCC, imagine them doing preservation projects and working on places that matter to American history or a part of our collective story. Connecting those young people to preservation projects, to teach, what really I found is a skill that is quickly leaving the workforce.

Most preservation professionals who have these hands-on skills are 50s, 60s, 70s. I even met someone who are in their 80s. They’ve done an excellent job with their career. Now, it’s time for them to have a real way to pass those skills on, and that went off times. We see the program is really stepping up to create that connection. There’s an inter-generational dialogue between people who are very interested and work very hard and want to learn about preservation, providing them opportunity to learn and connecting them with someone who does their job very well. That’s a snapshot of HOPE Crew and who the major players are in the program.

Jason Church: You mentioned students who are already in the Conservation Corps movement. What background do these students have that makes them interested in preservation?

Monica Rhodes: They’re large range. It runs the range of interest. Just to step back, the program is partnered with the organization called the Corps Network. They are the major voice behind the youth corps movement. Corps like AmeriCorps and SCA all fall under the young brother of the Corps Network. Whenever we need a corps, the Corps Network connects us to that particular corps in Wyoming, for example, or Montana.

Corps members, Some are completing their GED. Some are just finishing up high school or headed to college. There are corps members who have worked with and known, who have completing a 4-year degree and are looking to either if their background is architectural history and they did an undergrad, where they’re looking to get hands-on experience and learn a little bit more about preservation. We’ve had corps members who’ve done photography and journalism as their educational background in the university setting, and they still want to learn about preservation. They didn’t have an opportunity to do it.

We see the programs really introducing the feel to a larger audience who normally wouldn’t have an opportunity to work on a building that we’ve built in the 1800s. That’s not an everyday thing, get that. That doesn’t come by that often.

Jason Church: How would a student who has interest in this or hears about the HOPE program get involved?

HOPE Crew members at Little Bighorn. (Montana Conservation Corps) HOPE Crew members at Little Bighorn. (Montana Conservation Corps)

Monica Rhodes: Easy, they would join a youth corps. That’s typically how the program operates. We work within the infrastructure of youth corps. Youth corps is our wheel-oiled machines. This may be too much in the weave of things, but they have worker’s compensation, for example. They go through safety training. This is typical, this is their routine. On any project, they take someone out on, we know that a corps member is protected and is well trained to be on that job site. They also do job skills for corps members, how to fill out a resume, how to do those types of things or people or how to make a resume or put together a very strong resume. They do all the types of work.

For someone who’s interested in getting involved, the first step is join in a youth corps. They may be working on non-preservation projects. They may be in the backcountry clearing some trails or moving some stones around or working on a dam project, for example. Then a HOPE Crew project will come along as a part of their tenure with the youth corps. The first step is getting involved in youth corps and when there’s a project in a local area, then you reach out to that corps. As simple as they’re requesting, that they’re interested in getting into preservation.

Jason Church: Now, did they ever recruit specifically for preservation projects?

Monica Rhodes: Yes, they do. I was saying about 20% to 30% of our corps we worked with, they’ve already had a ready-made corp together already. A group of people that they just move around to project-to-project, and it happens to be a HOPE Crew project that they’re moving to as a next stage, as a part of their time with the youth corps. Most times, we’re working the Park Service or NCPTT and other organizations who are interested in having someone who has a construction background, for example. We will ask the youth corps to go out and recruit for someone who has roofing experience or window restoration experience not because we’re trying to exclude anyone, but because the job requires that they have a baseline understanding of how power tools work or be comfortable with working on scaffolding, for example, if the jobs calls for that type of work. When that type of request is made from the property owner, then we go out and we try to recruit the best people to fit that particular project.

Jason Church: Tell us a little bit about some of the projects that you’ve worked on.

Hinchliffe Stadium before the HOPE project. Hinchliffe Stadium before the HOPE project.

Monica Rhodes: Sure, we’ve worked on in the first year of the program, and we just celebrated the first year, March 10th of this year. Again, just about a year old. We completed 18 preservation projects around the country. We worked with over 100 young people and veterans on these projects. We worked at all 37 structures, helped support $3 million of preservation work that are, again, that federal partners and non-federal partners are putting in to historic sites. We’ve been a part of those types of projects. We’ve worked everywhere from Little Bighorn, working on the Custer National Cemetery with the Montana Conservation Corps. Working down at Texas, the Texas Conservation Corps on LBJ’s National Historic site. We’ve worked up in High Park New York on FDR’s garage roof.

We’ve worked in a lot of different places and a lot of time zones. We’ve worked down in Atlanta with the Greening Youth Foundation, supplying corps members and working to repair shotgun homes that happened to be right across the street from the birth home of Martin Luther King, Jr. We’ve done some pretty high profile projects and looking to do much more in this coming year.

In April of 2014, the National Trust did a project in Paterson, New Jersey. What I did mention before is the Hinchliffe Stadium is a national treasure for the National Trust for Historic Preservation. What a national treasure is a place that has national significance or place where we can show it has national implications for the preservation movement. If we’re working with lighthouses, for example, the strategies that we used to save that lighthouse can extend beyond that project, and other partners can use that as a grounding to what their doing on their lighthouses. Hinchliffe Stadium is national treasure. It was significant because it’s a Negro League baseball stadium. It’s the only Negro League baseball stadium that has NHL Designation, so a National Historic Landmark status.

One of the strategies for Hinchliffe Stadium was to come up with a day where we needed to involve or wanted to involve the community in the cleanup of Hinchliffe Stadium. The stadium had been closed for about 20 years, filled with graffiti. There was no real connection for this baseball stadium and community members. In its hay day, the stadium, of course, had a baseball history, had a racing history. They played football games in that stadium. People in their 30s, 40s, and 50s had those memories of Hinchliffe Stadium being a place where they went on Friday nights to watch football. Anyone in their 20s and 30s and teenage years didn’t really have those types of memories they could recall about being in the stadium and just knowing the space and really didn’t even know anything about the history of that stadium and what it represented for the Paterson, New Jersey.

As one the strategies there, again, was to involve the community, and so we came up with an idea to repaint the interior of the stadium to get rid of all the graffiti. Of course, it was really what we saw as a cosmetic in the sense, but I think what it provided for the community was a deeper connection like they walked in, graffiti everywhere, they left that stadium, and it has completely changed. We worked with our partner Valspar Paint to provide 1,000 gallons of paint to put 2 coats of paint onto the stadium.

HOPE Volunteers painting at Hinchliffe Stadium. HOPE Volunteers painting at Hinchliffe Stadium.

The way that we organized it, we had the young people or anyone under 20, 30 come in and put the first coat of paint onto the graffiti. They had the roller rolling right over all of this graffiti so they could really see every time they rolled, they were being a part of the preservation of the stadium. They immediately saw their efforts. We had the individuals who worked 30, 40, and 50 and had other experiences with the stadium come in and apply that second coat of paint on. It was 700 volunteers that we had to be a part of this day. Not to confuse it with a regular, typical HOPE Crew program with a crew size that is 4 or 5, 6, 7 people. It’s a smaller, more longer project scheduled for this type of project.

With Hinchliffe Stadium, that was a 1 day, 700 people came in, participated, painted. It was all hands-on deck there. We feel very good about the work that we were able to accomplish, how we’re able to organize all of those people, and then what it means for the stadium in itself. We’re talking to the city about doing some bond financing and funding and going to reuse plans for the stadium. I think what it also did was it showed the city of Paterson and the community members of Paterson what was possible when people came around and worked together for a very short period of time, what they could accomplish as a community. Yeah, I think, we did a pretty good job down there working with that project.

Jason Church: For our listeners, if we have a project that we think would be a good project for the HOPE Crew, how do we involve as a property owner, as a steward of historic site in trying to get the HOPE Crew to come out?

Monica Rhodes: Sure, we’re interested in working on all types of structures. I’d like to call our … What the work of a HOPE Crew is typically low-hanging fruit. It’s basic window restoration, basic carpentry projects. We wouldn’t ask them to do anything or we don’t do projects that are overly complicated or 3-year projects. We want to make sure that people have a real sense of accomplishment when they leave a job site. They saw it at the beginning and they’re walking away from it, 6 weeks later, and it’s dramatically different. It’s from their work that they can really see a tangible difference.

If people are interested in and getting involved or they have a site that they’re thinking about, we’d like for those projects to be fully funded. HOPE Crew members are paid for their work. We see this … We take it very seriously as a job training opportunity for participants. Not only funded to support the labor, but have the funding in place to have the materials there and also to bring on a preservation expert to be a part of that because that’s essential to them or to the project, meeting Secretary of Interior’s standards, we have to have that person in that position to be able to do that.

Hinchliffe Stadium after the HOPE volunteer's work day. Hinchliffe Stadium after the HOPE volunteer’s work day.

Fully funded, we like projects that are straightforward, not overly complicated for corps members. We have worked on and are open to working on projects in the backcountry but the more visible they are, connected they are to communities or in places or even if it’s in a rural community, if there’s a neighborhood around it or a community surrounding these historic resources, that’s better. We can pull people from that area to be a part of that project.

Those are the main things we look for, for these projects, fully funded, visible and have a public benefit, try to not work on private, places that are in private ownership, just because we want to make sure that corps members can’t take. Bring their families to these sites and walk around it or just really be a part of that. Those are some things we look for. It’s pretty easy, pretty straightforward.

Jason Church: Thank you so much for talking to us today, Monica, about the HOPE program and introducing us to the kinds of projects you do, the kind of people, the students and youth that you’re empowering. We really appreciate it. We hope to hear more from you in the future about future projects.

Monica Rhodes: Yeah, I look forward to sharing more. We have a very busy second year coming up, so I’m more than happy once every everything calms, my sanity to sit down with you and look back at year two together. We certainly appreciate you for inviting me on to the show to talk to you about the HOPE Crew program and all of the good work that the National Trust is doing to engage a new generation in historic preservation and really highlight the very good work that all of the partners are doing. It’s a pleasure.

Jason Church: Thank you very much.

Monica Rhodes: Thank you.

Kevin Ammons: Thank you for listening to today’s show. If you would like more information, check out our podcast show notes at www.ncptt.nps.gov. Until next time. Goodbye, everybody.

Today we join NCPTT's Jason Church as he speaks with Monica Rhodes, Manager of the HOPE Crew for the National Trust for Historic Preservation. In this episode, Monica Rhodes talks about HOPE Crew projects and the program's youth outreach.

May 12, 2015

63. Saving Art Environments and Unpermitted Dinosaurs: Talking with Jo Farb Hernandez about SPACES (Podcast 63)

Transcript

Kevin Ammons: Welcome to The Preservation Technology Podcast. The show that brings you to people and projects that are advancing the future of America’s heritage. I’m Kevin Ammons with the National Park Services and National Center for Preservation Technology and Training. Today we join NCPTT’s Jason Church as he speaks with Jo Farb Hernández, Director of SPACES. In this episode, Jo Farb talks about SPACES and the organization’s efforts to bring awareness to our environment and their self-taught artist creators to documentation and preservation.

Jason Church: Jo, tell us a little bit about what is SPACES and what you do there?

Hernandez lecturing, at a Spanish film festival about a film on Josep Pujiula, summer 2014. (Sam Hernandez) Hernández lecturing, at a Spanish film festival about a film on Josep Pujiula, summer 2014. (Sam Hernández)

Jo Farb Hernández: SPACES is a non-profit organization. The acronym stands for Saving and Preserving Arts and Culture Environments and this was a non-profit that although it wasn’t formally incorporated until 1978, it actually began in the late 1950’s with a group of people that bonded together. Just community activists and artists and architects and people that were aficionados of the earth to save the Watts Towers when the city of Los Angeles decided that they were public news and its needed to be take it down.

Originally, it was really centered on the Watts Towers. I think that the people thought that this was an anomaly. The fact that there was this monumental piece of public art. Then, they started realizing that there were some other sites in California and then they thought it wasn’t just the California thing. Then, they realized as people traveled and as information about the Watts Towers grew and other people heard about its stuff that in fact this is an international phenomenon.

Originally, it was interesting because the founder, Seymour Rosen thought that, “They’d be out of business in five years,” because he thought that they would identify the sites, they would advocate for them, everything would be fine, and then they’d be over. As it turns out, we’re discovering more and more sites. I don’t remember exactly how many we have listed right now in the website right now. Probably, close to 1,500 around the world. We discover new ones every week. People come to us with information about new sites, new images, new texts, that kind of thing.

Jason Church: When people contact you about a new site, what’s the approach that SPACES takes?

Jo Farb Hernández: People usually contact us through our website which is www.spacesarchives.org. Sometimes, they contact us at the eleventh hour when the bulldozers are at the other and they’re block practically and they all of a sudden realize that they want to try and save the site.

Stacy Mueller, archivist, working in the SPACES offices in Aptos, CA. (Sam Hernandez) Stacy Mueller, archivist, working in the SPACES offices in Aptos, CA. (Sam Hernandez)

Depending on what they need at the time and we do try and help them in those kinds of situations. There’s not too much we can do at that point except write letters, make some phone calls and try at least stave off destruction until we can see what the situation is and see what might be negotiated.

Sometimes there were issues like non-payment of taxes or somebody’s has a hold of building permit, those kinds of things. Sometimes those kinds of things could be easily resolved. Sometimes there are other more public health kinds of issues that seem to be a little more difficult to resolve.

One of the reasons that we think SPACES is so important is because it documents all these sites, identifies them, it advocates for them but it documents them. Therefore, if these sites do turn out to be ephemeral, if they do come down and many sites do, at least we have the records of what used to be there.

That’s helpful certainly in preservation if a site has become degraded and people bend together to save it. We have the documentation of what it used to look like so that conservators can look at it and they can form decisions about the procedures that they undertake.

I think the bottom line really between whether something’s going to work or not in terms of saving is whether the local community is behind it. I can come in from afar and send a letter to a congressman or to a city council person saying you have to appreciate what’s in your backyard but if I don’t vote in his district, he is not really going to pay any attention to what I have to say. It really is about getting community support, getting community organized to save their sites that have become part of the identity of the region where they live.

Jason Church: For our listeners who might not be familiar, describe to us what you mean by an art environment.

Hernandez at Basanta’s house, squeezing thru a door he made purposefully small so his wife couldn’t escape. (Sam Hernandez) Hernández at Basanta’s house, squeezing thru a door he made purposefully small so his wife couldn’t escape. (Sam Hernández)

Jo Farb Hernández: Art environments are sites that are generally monumentalist. Some level, it could be either in terms of their size. It could be a castle or a building or cathedral or something that’s been radically modified or altered or decorated or it could be monumental in number of components. Sometimes we see situations in which a sculpture has created 300 smaller sculptures but they’re all in a small little place and they’ve just become monumental in their impact.

They’re typically created by artists who do not have formal art or architectural engineering training. They typically start in a very modest fashion. Maybe, somebody fashions a birdbath and it’s successful and then they’ll make a little pond next to it and that’s successful and then they’ll go on and on. Typically, they have really no sense of the monumentality that they’re going to achieve until they look around 20 or 30 or 40 years later and see what they’ve done.

I think sometimes, people that really haven’t studied these works as much have a tendency to believe that the intent from the beginning was monumentality. The artist that I’ve studied and spoken to, I think out of the hundreds, maybe there’s one or two that have this overall intense idea of what they’re going to create.

They have success in sculpting, in embellishing, in creating and so they sculpt more, they embellish more, they create more. Success breaths success. As they do it, they learn they developed their technique, they developed their skills. When you’re making art, you’re thinking about making more art. It just kind of keeps going.

Jason Church: If someone contacts you, they didn’t necessarily have a space but maybe they had documentation of one, they visited one when they were young. Maybe they were related to or had some connection. Do you also take documentation and that sort of thing. How does that work?

Jo Farb Hernández: Yeah. Absolutely. We are absolutely thrilled when anybody contacts us with the possibility of providing information of art environments or actually any kind of self-thought art to us but particularly art environments as where our major focus is.

We will give them a good home. We are digitizing as many documents as we can. Legally, some documents are copyrighted and we don’t have the permission to digitize or post them online so those are available in our offices for personal review. But as many as possible, we’re digitizing so that we can get the word out about these materials on its wider basis as possible, a worldwide basis.

Jason Church: Can you tell us about some projects that you’ve worked with, some sites that you’ve worked with? Will you help them in their preservation efforts?

Jo Farb Hernández: Yeah. We’ve had several successes. We don’t always have happy endings given the circumstances of this field in which usually as I said because artists aren’t starting out thinking that they’re going to be making this monumental thing. They don’t pull a permit or they don’t do the right kind of foundation or they don’t do whatever they need but we have had some successes.

The most recent one that I’ve been really proud of about has been the site in Spain, Joseph Codulla, who has been working for 45 years on this site that unfortunately the land wasn’t his. He was actually forced to demolish the site three full times. He had to demolish it. He was grumpy for about a minute and then started over, build it all up again and then have to demolish it again and it happened the third time. Finally, the community got involved and really, really banned together because they realized that it had become part of the identity of their village.

Jo Farb Hernandez with Julio Basanta, artist who created the Casa de Dios, in Épila, Spain, 2014. (Sam Hernandez) Jo Farb Hernández with Julio Basanta, artist who created the Casa de Dios, in Épila, Spain, 2014. (Sam Hernández)

Last fall, the county designated to local heritage site which means that there will be some money and some thought at the very least about how to protect the site and how to provide some public access without having a potential for public safety issues. That was really super because we did a worldwide petition to get people to sign that. They were able to go in with look, we got thousands of international supporters as well as your local community. You need to pay attention at the fact that this is important.

There have been other circumstances that have just been kind of smaller successes. There was another site in Spain that a guy had built. Full size dinosaurs, Tyrannosaurus Rex and some other dinosaurs. They got after him because he did not pull a building permit. It’s like, “Really. You have building permits for building dinosaurs? Who knew that?” They want to come and take them down. These guys get so energized by building. Once somebody makes them start, they lose a lot of the drive, they lose a lot of inertia of building stuffs as well.

So, I wrote to the mayor and explain to him. A lot of times if we can point them to the SPACES website and so that they can see that there’s the genre of work of people that have built monumental things in their backyards and it can become a draft for their villages rather than something that they need to be confronting and fighting against. They got back off. They rescind the penalties and now they are off just happily building again.

Those are really important steps I think in terms of expanding the definition of art especially in situations where there hasn’t been formal art education. People have the sense of the only thing that’s artist, what’s on the museum and it’s usually in a frame and usually has a picture of Madonna or something on it.

Just to wrap their minds around the idea that people can be creative in these different kinds of ways using different kinds of materials is a leap for a lot of people. We feel that as much as possible, they get the information about the fact that there are hundreds of these, thousands of these around the world. It will help to support all of the artists.

Just in general, we are actively soliciting images for the website. We are actively soliciting texts if people know about a certain site. If they’ve visited the site, they like to write a small text on the site, we’re thrilled because we’re trying to populate the website as much as possible. There’s so many site, there’s so many environments that we’re just raising to keep up. Any help that anybody wants to volunteer, we’re thrilled to take anybody’s documentation, images, etc. Of course, if somebody writes or let us post photos at the website, we apply full credit to the artist or to the writer and photographer.

Also, we don’t give the exact address on the website if that’s a problem because sometimes either the artist doesn’t want visitors or the site may not be secured or stable enough to have visitors come by. We would like to maintain the database as closely as possible to the reality of the world situation so we can keep the information in our archives yet just post the general information on the website so people know it exists that they can’t quite figure out how to get there.

We’ve been working with people all over the world to do this. We’re really very excited to find major sites in all kinds of places and really encourage people to keep their eyes open. If they find a site or if they have questions about the site to contact us and all our contact information is on the website.

Jason Church: Now you work for sites all over the world, do you see any major commonalities with the artists all over the world?

Jo with artist Juanita Leonard on Montgomery, Louisiana. (Jason Church) Jo with artist Juanita Leonard on Montgomery, Louisiana. (Jason Church)

Jo Farb Hernández: I tried to look at singularities rather than things in common because these aren’t like a group of artists that all went to school together or are all working at the same time and all had the same kind of influences and all were responding in a certain like the artisms of history.

I try not draw too many threads between them. In general, you can say they’re men. As I said they don’t have formal art or architectural engineering training, in general they’re self-taught and use the tools of the trade that they had prior to retiring which is another one. Generally, they’re older when they start.

Of course, there are exceptions to every statement that I just made. I think that the only thing that really is something that we can in general say even to much greater extent that those other caveats is that they often face existential issues. The house they’re building doesn’t look like the house next door, or the house across the street and the neighbors get upset or whatever or they’re building a 15-foot high dinosaur or they’re ornamenting a tomb in a way that seems unseemly to their neighbors. It could just be that they weren’t very good crafts people and they didn’t build in a way that would enable the material to survive. It could be that they used material itself that was ephemeral.

There are existential issues for most of these sites. That’s again why documentation at all levels are so important. One of the things that people do ask me this, “Well, you know, I have documentation of site but I see you already have photographs of it.” I say, “No, no, no. Any photograph, all photograph, we’re happy to have.” Every photographer of course has a different eye. They see it on a different day. They see it on a different time of the year. They see it in a different year. All of those documents and photos, we’re thrilled to add to the archives.

Jason Church: And, I know that most sites are constantly changing.

Jo Farb Hernández: Constantly changing. Right. Absolutely. We really encourage people if they’re going to go specifically to document a site that they be really clear about the exact date that they took it because if it’s looking like this on Wednesday, it may not look like that on Thursday.

Try to get the artist’s name for the different components of the site if that exists. Try to make sure that you get large wide shot views as well as detail shots. A lot of times, people are so taken with the details that they focus on those and then we don’t really have an overall sense of the site as a whole.

Any documentation. Of course, we can suggestion people do site plans and full inventories and that kind of thing but that comes later. If people are just passing something or on a Sunday outing or whatever, we’re happy to take any kind of shots. You don’t have to be a professional photographer.

Jason Church: Thank you so much, Jo, for talking with us. I hope listeners will go check out the SPACES website. I know I’ve donated things to it and I think it’s so fantastic mission that you guys do.

Jo Farb Hernández: Thank you, Jason. Thank you so much. We really appreciate your support.

Jason Church: We hope to talk to you again about future projects.

Jo Farb Hernández: Looking forward to it.

Kevin Ammons: Thank you for listening to today’s show. If you would like more information, check out our podcast show notes. That’s ncptt.nps.gov. Until next time. Goodbye, everybody.

Talking with Jo Farb Hernandez about SPACES Today we join NCPTT's Jason Church as he speaks with Jo Farb HernÃ¡ndez, Director of SPACES. In this episode, Jo Farb talks about SPACES and the organization's efforts to bring awareness to our environment and their self-taught artist creators to documentation and preservation.

April 23, 2015

62. Digital Documentation and Reconstruction of Old Sheldon Church with Chad Keller (Podcast 62)

Transcript

Kevin Ammons: Welcome to the Preservation Technology podcast. The show that brings you the people and projects that are advancing the future of America’s heritage. I’m Kevin Ammons with the National Park Service’s National Center for Preservation, Technology, and Training. Today we join NCPTT’s Jason Church as he speaks with Chad Keller, professor of historic preservation at the Savannah College of Art and Design. In this episode Chad talks about a SCAD class project to digitally document and reconstruct Old Sheldon Church in Yemassee, South Carolina.

Old Sheldon Church Old Sheldon Church

Chad Keller: This was a ruin that was constructed in 1751 in Yemassee, South Carolina. It’s an angelican church and at this point it’s a ruin. One of the things that we are really interested in and excited about this was the fact that it is a ruin, that it had been destroyed twice. The first time was during the Revolutionary War and then it was subsequently reconstructed around 1825, and then it was destroyed again in 1865 during the Civil War.

Since then it has sat as a ruin. More recently, probably in the last 10 to 20 years there’s been more interest in the site and it has been cleaned up. Have images from about 1940 where you can see all the growth and things like that that have been embedded within the brick work and such. That has at least been taken care of.

This project was really part of a new class that was introduced at SCAD and it’s called Digital Technology and Historical Preservation. Really what it’s about is utilizing newer digital technologies within the research process. Primarily what we want to do is we want to be able to create new avenues of research, new types of documentation, and then thinking of ways that we can reuse the material that we have collected for site interpretation so that eventually it can be disseminated to the public.

To that end, this project involved using both traditional analog methods but then also digital methods of documentation. When I say analog, that’s just basic, traditional tools that we’re all used to with pencil, paper, and a tape measure. Some other things that we ended up doing with that project was also laser scanner and also photogrametry. It might sound in some ways like over kill, but this class was focused on introducing students to different ways of documentation.

Some of the things that we do with that is that with the laser scanning we were able to convert those back into two dimensional drawings. Some people might question, well why if you’re collecting this three dimensional data because that is what you’re collecting with the laser scan data. Even with the photogrammetric data you’re collecting three dimensional points. Those three dimensional points can be pologomized, turned into a 3-D model. As I said previously, people might question why you’re converting those back, but according to HABS standards, things need to be in two dimensional drawings. The whole point of this is to be able to at some point, to possibly submit them to HABS but then, even for students that are going to be working in different industries like per se construction, that they’re still going to be requiring, at least at this point, two dimensional forms of drawings.

Maybe 10 years from now we’ll be looking at things at 3-D on a construction site or on some sort of hand-held portable, but at this point the most accepted method of measured drawings is in two dimensions.

Jason Church: Now you say HABS wants them in two dimensional. Is that for view-ability, or archives, why is HABS

Professor Chad Keller with students at Old Sheldon Church. Professor Chad Keller with students at Old Sheldon Church.

looking for the drawings?

Chad Keller: It’s primarily I think for the way that they have set up their archiving. With the methods that are important to HABS with the 500 year old of ink and then the fact that needing to be carbon based you can’t have digital. That’s the methods that they’re wanting you to be able to submit these things. That’s all about archiveibility at this point. That’s some of the reasons of having to create the 2-D drawings.

Jason Church: The church you’re talking about, what is it’s surrounding area, what’s the landscape? Is it situated in a town, is it in a rural area?

Chad Keller: Yeah, it’s outside of Yemassee, South Carolina. It’s called Old Sheldon Road, the name of the church is Sheldon Church. It pretty much sits in the middle of nowhere, but at one time it sat pretty centrally to some major plantations within the area. It was the seat for the Bull family. The Bull family was instrumental in laying out Savannah. William Bull was instrumental in doing that. There’s evidence through the written record of where there was the Bull family crest that was located within the church. As the Bull family would walk into the entrance of the church, which at that point would be on the south side of the building, on the north side of the building is where the family crest would be. As they walked in they would be able to view upon their family crest.

Jason Church: You collected this digital data. What’s your plans to do with it, with these scans and the photogremetry?

Chad Keller: At this point one of the things was it was primarily an exercise for the class to be able to understand the differences between collecting data through the traditional methods. Doing this documentation traditionally and then being able to see what it was like using these newer, digital technologies. That was the main goal of the class, but what could be done with this information is that it could easily be handed over, with definitely some more work to create some sort of HABS format for that.

Some of the other things that could be done is that this digital information could be re-purposed for site interpretation. At this point there really isn’t any interpretation of the building on site and there really isn’t much of an interpretation of the building on the web so that you could have more of a web presence with that.

With these laser scans you can create 3-D models out of them. One of the things that the students did with this project, as I said it was a ruin, one of the things I was really excited about was the fact that they actually reconstructed the building and created a 3-D version of what they thought the building looked like in 1825 when the building was reconstructed the second time.

One of the things too is that in choosing the fact that it was the 1825 period and not the 1752 period from when it was originally constructed, is that there just wasn’t much information within the historic record. The students, through their research, were finding more information about the 1825 period and we agreed upon that that has the most information, and that should be the route of restoring that period.

How they ended up doing that was through the written record, through traditional research, and then also going around and looking comparatively at other churches within the region that were constructed around the same time period. Taking into consideration that this was a bit of a rural church and you wouldn’t find necessarily the same ornamentation that you would might find in a church in Charleston, but they were looking at other rural churches within South Carolina within the period at that point.

This could easily go onto a web site. They create a 3-D model of it that was put into Google Earth so this is something that could easily create some walk through or fly through at least to give people an idea of what it looked like. The other thing too is that this project could easily be continued because with 3-D modeling, sometimes people get the perception that, and especially with a rendering, that this is the final product and that’s really not true. This is more or less the first iteration. One of the things that could happen is for this to be passed on to other scholars of angelican churches of the period and for them to be able to vent this model and be able to say, “Well this isn’t accurate here. You might want to go back and re-think this aspect of it.” It could be an integrative model. This might be just the first generation of it.

Jason Church: It could easily be taken out and interpreted further and built onto.

Chad Keller: Exactly. Yeah, and then we could easily begin to show the whole process of creating the model and showing the different iterations and the different interpretations of that. In ways that through documentation and recordation, we always talk about process, especially in 3-D you can begin to show this process as well visually of how you first started out with the model and you have this first idea of what you thought and proposed it would look like. But then after further research and further discussion with colleagues and experts in the field, you’ve come to find out that maybe there was initial errors but then you’re going to go back and change that.

Jason Church: We need to keep in mind as conservators and historic preservationists doesn’t mean we’re architectural historians or curators so it’s good to involve the other fields into those decisions.

Chad Keller: Yeah and I think that brings up another point is that with the way the technology is going, there are so many other people that we’ve been able to work with through digital technology. That’s been exciting and I think it opens up opportunities to work with people that traditionally we haven’t worked with in the past. In some ways the field is expanding, but it gets a little bit smaller at the same time too. That’s been nice.

Jason Church: What other projects do you have planned in the future for your students?

SCAD students scanning the church grounds SCAD students scanning the church grounds.

Chad Keller: Well, this is actually for the first year it’s going to be mandatory. For all students in the preservation program, like last year was the first year that it was offered, it was an elective. Now it’s going to actually be part of the program so every student is going to have to take this course. Which is great because this is the way that the field is going as we see here with the summit. We know a lot of people from other industries and other universities are talking about these things, doing research, so all of these students are going to be getting exposed to that.

It’s really going to be on a per-project basis. I’m not set on this sort of model that we did the last time which was the project at Old Sheldon. Those things will be discussed, but we’re looking at other projects, other opportunities to do things in Savannah. For instance there’s been talk of doing more historic GIS projects. It’s really going to be dependent on what sort of things are available at the time.

I do want to try and mix it up. As I said, this year might be GIS, maybe the following year we go back to more reconstructions and things like that. It’s going to vary but still stay within the core of looking at these different digital technologies that are available.

Jason Church: Well thanks for talking to us. We look forward to maybe talking to you in the future about other work that your students are doing.

Chad Keller: Yeah that would be great. Thanks, it was nice talking to you and thanks to NPS and NCPTT.

Kevin Ammons: Thank you for listening to today’s show. If you would like more information, check out our podcast show notes at ncptt.nps.gov. Until next time, good bye everybody.

Today we join NCPTT's Jason Church as he speaks with Chad Keller, professor of historic preservation at the Savannah College of Art and Design. In this episode Chad talks about a SCAD class project to digitally document and reconstruct Old Sheldon Church in Yemassee, South Carolina.

1 …

of 16

Contact Us

Episodes

Transcript

Transcript

Transcript

Transcript

Transcript

Transcript

Transcript

Transcript

Transcript

Transcript

Transcript

Tags