All posts filed under: Heritage Travel

Save ALL Of Ellis Island

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Last week I was in New York and had the opportunity to tour the South Side of Ellis Island. It was my first trip to this evocative place where as many as 40% of Americans can trace their initial experience in this country.  From the Save Ellis Island website, here are the basic facts: The Ellis Island Immigration Station opened on Ellis Island in January of 1892. It served as the primary immigration center for the United States from 1892 until 1954 when it was closed. Facilities were built to house and feed immigrants while they waited for their identification papers to be processed. A state-of-the-art hospital complex treated and cured most sick immigrants in order for them to be permitted entry into the country. More than 12 million immigrants passed through Ellis Island between 1892 and 1954, reaching a peak of 1.25 million in 1907. It has been estimated that 40% of Americans today can trace at least one ancestor’s entry into the United States through Ellis Island. It is the early twentieth-century state-of-the-art …

Summer Saturdays are the Best

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The joyful photograph at the top of the post – which comes from the wonderful photo/blog Real People Eat Local (check it out for their delicious pictures) – is a perfect encapsulation of our day.  Summer Saturdays really are the best! Today started relatively early (by Saturday standards) as Andrew had to be at the Cathedral for a choral practice at 8 a.m.  Our car is in the shop this weekend waiting for a leaky fuel pump to be repaired (one never wants to smell gasoline in your home garage), so Candice, Andrew and I had to juggle our schedules around the availability of Zipcars – the wonderful car sharing service we swear by.  Because we have some 25 Zipcars within about 3 blocks of our house, we picked one up (a little Honda) and were on our way by 7:30.  Urban living is great! Swim team meets the past six weeks have their own charm, but they have disrupted the Saturday morning ritual Candice and I established this year.  So we were pleased to …

A Takoma Park July 4th Celebration

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Yes, that’s a “precision drill team” made up of environmentally friendly reel mowers you see in the picture.  (See my update at the end of the post) Welcome to the Takoma Park July 4th Parade. Folks who live in the Washington area have a wide range of Independence Day festivities to choose from.  You can have your fireworks on the National Mall, as far as I’m concerned.  My favorite thing is to hop on the Metro, take a short ride to the next station, and then head into downtown Takoma Park, MD, for the annual 4th of July parade.  We’ve done it for years, and it takes some major event to pull us away from this family tradition. Takoma Park is known – to put it mildly – for its political activism and progressive outlook.  For instance, it is the only “nuclear free zone” in the DC metropolitan area.  Takoma Park also has a well-deserved reputation as  being a bit quirky.  Many of our friends from the pool and the twins’ schools live in the …

Oklahoma City National Memorial: The power of remembrance

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When in Oklahoma City last week, I made the time to visit the national memorial dedicated to the memory of those killed, wounded, or changed forever by the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995. It was a powerful experience that would  be moving at any time.  In these days of bombing attempts in Times Square and daily cable television rants against government, the power of remembrance seemed all the more important.  This place – forever altered in horrific ways 15 years ago by the act of an individual angry at the federal government’s actions at Waco and Ruby Ridge – is a somber counterpoint to the hysteria that counts as civic discourse in parts of America today. One enters the outdoor symbolic memorial through a gate marked 9:01 – the minute before the bombing – to represent the innocence of the city.  At the other end of a reflecting pool, the west gate is marked 9:03, after everything changed.  The best known feature of the memorial is the field of empty …

Dale Chihuly: Works in Seattle and Tacoma

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Recent travels have taken me to both Seattle and Tacoma, Washington – described by writer Margery Aronson in the book Fire as “the new ‘Center of the Universe’ for the medium of glass, a shift in no small part due to (Dale) Chihuly’s decision to return to the Northwest to live, work, and continue his early commitment to education.” Glass artist Dale Chihuly has been back in his home region since 1971, making amazing sculpture, seaforms, chandeliers, towers, and more.  He’s been in my consciousness for about the past 12 years, as I’ve come across more and more of his work in my travels. So it was great to spend time recently in Chihuly’s  hometown of Tacoma and his current city of Seattle, viewing works both very public and more private. We began in Tacoma, where the 2002 Chihuly Bridge of Glass offers much for the eye.  As a welcoming gateway to downtown Tacoma, the Bridge of Glass has two rising crystal towers, a seaform ceiling that is beautiful in any light, and a Venetian …

The Intersection of Preservation and Sustainability

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Portland, Oregon is a city with a well-deserved reputation for livability and sustainable development.   I visited Portland late last week and was reminded again of how much this community can teach other American cities about building an environmental consciousness and offering transportation options that decrease reliance on the automobile. In touring the city with friends and colleagues, I saw vibrant historic neighborhoods around an active downtown.  But I also learned of  preservation battles that ended with perfectly good buildings being demolished – even though preservation was the sustainable alternative.  Preservationists in Portland often feel left out of the discussions – and the decisions – on questions of livability.  It shouldn’t be that way. While in Portland, I joined two colleagues in a discussion with Mike Francis, editorial board member at The Oregonian. We talked about the intersection of preservation and sustainability, as well as preservation’s ability to prime the pump for economic development. In a piece entitled, To Be Sustainable, Use What You Have, Francis makes the case for preservation as a key to economic …

The beauty of the Dutch Antilles

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Late last month I had the opportunity to visit two of the islands of the Dutch Antilles – Bonaire and Curacao – as part of a National Trust Gardens of the Caribbean tour.  (These are the B and C islands of the A-B-C Antilles.  We didn’t make it to Aruba.)  This was a new part of the world for me and it was a great experience. The scene was set with enlightening lectures prior to our arrival by long-time Trust lecturer Paddy Bowes and Williams College professor Michael Lewis, which prepared me for the very arid conditions on the islands (8 variety of cacti on Bonaire), and the Dutch city-planning and architectural influence.  You can see the latter in the photo at the top of the post of one of the most photographed streets in Willemstad. Our first stop in the Dutch Antilles was the island of Bonaire and the town of Kralendijk.  The landscape and wildlife are the stars here, with clear blue waters and pink flamingos. Our last day of the tour took …

VOA Highlights Preservation of Rosenwald Schools

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Rosenwald Schools are unique in the American landscape.  Built in the early 20th century to educate African-Americans in the rural south, the 5,000+ schools quickly became  centers of community life as well as educational facilities during the difficult years of segregation. I wrote a blog post in October of 2008 after reading Mary Hoffschwelle’s insightful book on Rosenwald Schools.  Now Voice of America has featured the Rosenwald Schools story – along with information on the preservation efforts led by the National Trust for Historic Preservation with funding from the Lowe’s Charitable Foundation – in a new video on their web site.  Take a look below.  I think you’ll enjoy it. More to come… DJB

Rugby, Tennessee: Where my preservation career began

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Today’s PreservationNation blog has a story and video about Historic Rugby, a 2009 National Preservation Honor Award winner of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.  The blog post brought back great memories. Rugby was established in the 1880s by the successful Victorian-era author Thomas Hughes as a Utopian community for the second sons of English gentry.  Due to the system of primogeniture, these men would inherit little or no property and had very limited career opportunities.  Hughes established this colony in the beautiful but hard-scrabble Cumberland Plateau area of Tennessee.  After some initial success, the colony fell on hard times, ultimately failed and was largely forgotten.  In the mid-1960s, residents of the area began to restore the remaining historic buildings and over the course of five decades have saved this wonderful place and turned it into a thriving community and a favorite spot for tourists. That’s the official story.  The reason it is important to me is because it is where I undertook my first hands-on preservation work, leading to a career that’s now in …