All posts filed under: Heritage Travel

Posts about travels to places around the globe that reflect our shared heritage

From the Stage of the Ryman Auditorium…

Published by

Even for a guy who gets to work with some amazing people and visit some of the country’s most wonderful historic places, yesterday was an extraordinary day.  (And not just because I passed 10,000 visitors to More to Come…the DJB Blog – thank you readers.) Nope, the picture says it all.  I was privileged to open the National Preservation Conference from the stage of the historic Ryman Auditorium. For a bluegrass loving preservationist to have a chance to speak from the place where Earl Scruggs came onstage some 60 years ago with Bill Monroe to play White House Blues and give birth to bluegrass music was an honor.  To be able to tell 2,000 conference attendees why this place matters was a thrill.  To be able to hear the bluegrass I’d chosen over the Ryman’s speakers for the 30 minutes before we kicked off the conference was just a rush.  I knew it was going to be a great evening when the Laurie Lewis tune Who Will Watch the Home Place? – with its haunting …

Union Station: A Personal History and a Preservation Success Story

Published by

Having just arrived in Nashville for the 2009 National Preservation Conference, I find myself in the lobby of the Union Station Hotel waiting for a room and for my meetings to begin.  That left me time to think…which can be dangerous. Union Station is a Nashville landmark.  It is a beautiful old pile of a building and the lobby (see photo) is stunning.  But I think it is a landmark and was – in the end – saved from the wrecking ball because it has so many personal connections to people in Middle Tennessee.  Take me, for instance. My parents were part of the post-war (WWII) marriage boom that begat the well-documented baby boom.  Both were from the small town of Franklin, located about 20 miles from Nashville.  My father had just graduated from Vanderbilt and he and my mom were married in the First Baptist Church in Franklin.  Before beginning his life-long career with the Tennessee Valley Authority, my father and his new bride had a honeymoon to take. Luckily, they had relatives (my …

Wright in Wisconsin

Published by

Over the past two days the National Trust Council has toured a remarkable collection of Frank Lloyd Wright architecture located in Wisconsin.  Along the way we saw icons and surprises. The surprises came first. We went to see a grouping of six houses on Burnham Street in Milwaukee that were designed by Wright in 1916 for what today would be called “affordable housing.”  I knew about his later Usonian houses, such as the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Pope-Leighey House, which were focused on the same audience.  But decades earlier Wright designed over 950 plans for “American System Built Homes.”  Approximately 25 were built and six survive along Burnham Street.  The Wright in Wisconsin organization owns several and has restored one which is open to the public.  It provided us with a fascinating look at how Wright approached architect-designed houses on a budget, as you’ll see in the photos below. Yesterday we visited three more Wright buildings.  The first was Herbert Fisk Johnson’s home in Racine, Wingspread.  This was Wright’s “last” Prairie style home and …

Milwaukee City Hall – Looking Back, Looking Forward

Published by

If Calatrava’s Milwaukee Art Museum is a symbol of the city’s optimism for the 21st century (see my previous post), then the City Hall is a fine example of the community’s spirit and optimism for the 20th. But not content to remain in the past, City Hall is primed – after a 1988 interior restoration and a beautiful exterior restoration completed in 2009 – to showcase this unheralded gem of a midwestern city. We were meeting across the street yesterday morning at the Pabst Theatre – another fine preservation project – when a number of us walked over to see what a colleague described as “an atrium you don’t want to miss.”  Man, was he right! The pictures here don’t really do the interior justice, but you’ll just have to take my word.  This well in the central section of the building in the portion behind the tower is 20 feet by 70 feet and rises the full eight floors. Enjoy the photos of City Hall (plus one I’ve thrown in of the Pabst Theatre).  …

Moved by Santiago Calatrava’s Milwaukee Art Museum

Published by

Oh my…what a building, what a sculpture, what a space, what an experience!  The power of place indeed. Just two weeks after seeing his bridges in Dublin, I had the opportunity to visit the Santiago Calatrava-designed Milwaukee Museum of Art today.  I had seen the building on a drive-by a few years ago, but this was my first time to see it both inside and out.  The internet is awash with both images and verbiage about this wonderful space.  I’ll only quote the dean of the school of architecture at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (and a member, along with our host, of the selection committee for the building) who told our tour group today, “We got Calatrava when he was unknown and yet at the peak of his creative powers – sort of like the early Beatles, before they became superstars and started adding too many orchestrations.“ What you’ll see below is a series of photos showing the “flapping” of the beautiful white wings (really a sunscreen)  from open to close.  Extraordinary as that sounds, …

This Place Matters – Vote for Your Favorites

Published by

What do you get when you ask the public to download a simple sign, find a place that is important to them, photograph themselves in front of that place holding the sign and then download it to the Internet? You get This Place Matters. More than 2,000 people took the National Trust for Historic Preservation (full disclosure: my employer) up on their offer, and the results are fascinating.  When you have some time, go to the site, click on the slide show, and sit back and watch.  I guarantee you’ll love it! And now, the Trust is having a This Place Matters photo contest where you can go online and vote once per day for your favorite This Place Matters photo.  The top three photographers win a digital camera.  (Full disclosure:  I am not eligible.) You can guess which photo I’m voting for: Miller’s Grocery (shown above) in Christiana, Tennessee.  (Full disclosure:  I do not know the photographer or the subject.)  I just love this picture. Perhaps it is because it comes from my home …

Serendipity and The Fretboard Journal

Published by

Last Friday as I boarded my plane in Dublin, I opened the overhead bin and came across a banjo case.  A nearby passenger asked if it was mine, and I said, “No, but I was going to ask the same question.”  A slight man with a female companion sitting across the aisle identified himself as the owner of the case, which he said held a bouzouki. Well, my antennae went up and I recalled an article I read on the flight over in the new issue of my favorite magazine, The Fretboard Journal. I dug in my bag, quickly found the article about bouzouki maker Edward Victor Dick and passed it along.  It came back as the bouzouki owner pointed to a picture of Tony McManus in another part of the magazine and said, “I know this guy.  He’s played on some of my recordings.” At that my new acquaintances were asked to change seats so I could enjoy having a family with two children under the age of 4 across the aisle for a …

Why Should We Care About an International National Trust Movement?

Published by

We have just completed a wonderful International Conference of National Trusts here in Dublin—the 13th in the history of the National Trust movement. I suspect that when a small group of Anglophiles gathered together in the 1970s in Scotland for what became the first gathering of the world’s National Trusts, they could not have imagined either the spread of their movement or the diversity of people, countries, issues and models that we have seen this week from among the 200+ delegates in attendance. To read my full post on the wrap-up to the ICNT13, visit the PreservationNation blog. More to come… DJB

Why Do You Hate Your Knife?…

Published by

…and other tidbits of cultural commentary from an American in Ireland. On our second night in Dublin we were enjoying a wonderful dinner in the historic Tailors Hall headquarters of An Taisce, the National Trust for Ireland.  I had the pleasure of sitting between the An Taisce past-president and a board member born in that far-away Irish town of Knoxville, Tennessee.  (His wife is Irish and as a software engineer he had the freedom to work from home.)  It was a delightful evening filled with laughter from the witty conversation.  I was on my best behavior, so I was surprised when all of a sudden my Irish seatmate – a distinguished botanist – turns to me and says, “Why do you hate your knife?” In typical American fashion, I was using my knife and fork to cut my food then placing the knife on the side of the plate while switching the fork to my right hand to eat.  She proceeded to give me a lesson on “eating Irish style” so that the fork stayed …

Irish History: As Fresh as Today’s News

Published by

As part of today’s International Conference of National Trusts, I joined a tour into the countryside to explore a bit of Irish history and see rehabilitation and interpretive efforts at work. Our host for the conference, An Taisce, the National Trust for Ireland, owns a 1748 canal running through Ireland’s valley of the kings along the River Boyne.  The canal is under restoration and we had a chance to meet with the energetic project manager and learn about his work. The lock at the top is where the salt water from the sea meets the fresh water of the river.  The picture below is a historical view from the An Taisce web site of the canal in operation. This important part of the Irish attempt to capitalize on the Industrial Revolution was only one of the sites we visited.  I mentioned earlier in the week about seeing the silver at Christ Church Cathedral donated by King William in honor of his victory in Ireland that solidified his hold on the English throne.  Today, we visited …