All posts filed under: Historic Preservation

Exploring LA

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Having been in Los Angeles the last four days for work-related meetings, I haven’t had an opportunity to post More to Come…updates.  But I have had time to explore parts of the city with colleagues involved in historic preservation.  As is always true when I’m in Los Angeles, I learned more and more about this city’s many wonderful historic places.  Our meetings were in Santa Monica, and I took some time to visit the historic pier and to sample a nice Spanish restaurant in their funky Main Street – which is more like a neighborhood commercial center these days.  Don’t think I spent hours on a sunny beach – it was cool, rainy at times, and in the 50s. But on Saturday, when we spent 8 hours touring around town, the weather gods cooperated.  While the temperature stayed in the 50s, the rain gave way to partly cloudy skies.  We began our tour on bus and went through a number of neighborhoods off Wilshire Boulevard, before we ended up downtown.  It was my first chance to see …

Random Moments from a Holiday Weekend

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Random moments of grace from the first half of a special holiday weekend here in Washington… Having the time to read the New York Times slowly.  Many Saturdays I’m so busy with errands I zip through the Times and the Washington Post.  I’m glad I didn’t yesterday.  Gail Collins has a sense of humor that I love, and the start to her Saturday column had me laughing out loud. Right now you may be asking yourself: How am I going to celebrate Barack Obama’s inauguration? You may, of course, have something else on your mind entirely. Like what the chances are that the next time you get on a plane, geese could fly into both engines. Or what the heck geese are doing in New York in the middle of winter when their relatives who worked hard and played by the rules had all gone south months ago. Or you may just be wondering how that rescue in the Hudson River would have gone if it had been led off by the Department of Homeland …

Inauguration Planning – Sites to See Off the Mall

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Well, our little place on earth is getting pretty excited about the next ten days.  Washington is making plans to keep Virginians from coming into the city.  (I would have thought they’d be treated better since they actually voted for Obama, going blue for the first time since Jamestown was founded, or so it seems.)   While Candice and I will be passing each other in the airport on the way to and from town, the children are busy making their plans.  Claire has a good friend on Capitol Hill, so she’s already set for a sleepover and a morning hike to the mall.   Andrew is vacillating between hiking to the mall with friends and watching it all in the comfort of the restored AFI Theatre on the big screen.   I just hope I can see the actual ceremony before I have to head out of town. But for those looking for something to do in Washington during the inaugural week, my organization, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, has put together a great list of …

Hope for Passenger Trains?

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I love riding trains.  On my business trips between Washington and New York, the train is always my preferred mode of transportation.   So I’m glad to see the pundits like Neal Peirce commenting on the train ride that Obama and Biden are taking to Washington for the Inauguration as a positive metaphor for passenger rail. Rail enthusiasts, for decades spurned by presidents of both parties, were elated by the news that Barack Obama will travel to Washington for his inauguration by train from Philadelphia. “The symbolism is magnificent and the message very positive for all of us who for so many years have labored to create a more balanced American transportation system,” said James RePass, president-founder of the National Corridors Initiative that’s pressed since 1989 for upgraded rail passenger service in America. Rail service is wonderful.  Compared to air travel, getting on a train is about a simple as stepping in  your car.  On a train you can plug in a laptop and work uninterrupted and with sufficient space.   From the first second to the …

Save Mid-City New Orleans

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The National Trust for Historic Preservation is working with the Foundation for Historical Louisiana and other partners to try and stop the demolition of significant portions of the historic Mid-City neighborhood in New Orleans.  The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and Louisiana State University recently announced the selection of the Mid-City neighborhood for the site of their new hospitals. As the National Trust website PreservationNation.org states: The new hospitals would needlessly destroy the historic neighborhood around Charity Hospital where residents have been rebuilding and restoring their community since Hurricane Katrina. We believe this decision was a serious error and urge LSU and the VA to explore the alternative sites that would restore needed health care facilities faster and at less cost, while preserving much more of the historic Mid-City neighborhood. The video below is just one of several prepared by the Foundation for Historical Louisiana where the affected residents talk about the decision to demolish their neighborhood.  Click on the link above to see more videos and learn what you can do to try and reverse this …

Wrap-Up from Vienna

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As promised, I’m posting a few additional photos from my travels to Vienna, Austria last week.  The top two photos are a detail from Hofburg Palace and a view of St. Peter’s Church in the rain.                   The next is a detail from St. Peter’s.   Finally, the last two are shots from St. Stephansdom:  the organ on the left and a detail of the pulpit and nave on the right. More to come… DJB

The Best Places to Raise Your Children…Murfreesboro Edition

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(NOTE: See my 2020 update to this post here.) Business Week magazine just included Murfreesboro, Tennessee as one of the best places to raise your children.  Well, if they’d just asked me I could have told them that a long time ago. For years now, I’ve been using a little vignette about growing up in Murfreesboro as a part of a talk I give about the livability of towns and cities.  While Business Week focuses on Murfreesboro as a recession-proof college town, I believe there’s a lot more to it. When I think of home, I remember 407 East Main Street in Murfreesboro.  I grew up in Murfreesboro when it was a city of 35,000 people.  My parents bought a simple 1880s-era home on Main Street because it had an apartment where my grandmother could live with us.  Over the course of twenty years, four generations of our family lived under this roof. Murfreesboro has a history that was very real and very present to me as a child.  I could walk four blocks to the town square, …

A fitting day for a Viennese funeral

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Today was cold, gray, and rainy in Vienna.  But since it was also the only day I had to tour the city, I hit the streets early bundled in my winter coat and sheltered (somewhat) by my travel umbrella.  It turned out to be a fitting day for a (Viennese) funeral. For someone interested in history, architecture, and cities, being in Vienna for only one day on your first visit can be as frustrating as being a kid in a candy store with a very strict parent.  There are only so many things you can choose.  Luckily, my friends Jim and Janet (they of the great Western trip itinerary) had steered me to a wonderful (and relatively inexpensive) little family hotel that sits astride the St. Stephansdom and Hofburg districts of the city.  These are the names for the medieval city and the imperial city respectively.  So I could jump back and forth with ease and, in the course of a day, see 4 of the best churches in the city while also spending an hour …

When You Need More Water…Have St. George Slay a Three-Headed Dragon!

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Last evening in Bratislava, i went with friends and colleagues from the International National Trusts Organisation (INTO) to a lecture and reception hosted by the Slovakian Ministry of Culture and the National Trust of Slovakia.  The evening was at a former palace for the Roman Catholic Cardinal in Bratislava, and so was very opulent and grand. We entered through a courtyard and came across the statue of St. George slaying the dragon that you see at the left.  We were admiring it when someone said, “I didn’t know St. George had to kill THREE dragons.”  Well, we looked closer and there was only one dragon, but this variety had three heads.  One bit of speculation was that the Cardinal simply wanted more water in the fountain and a three-headed dragon was the answer. Whatever the reasoning, it was another good day for our meetings, which were held at the University Library in Old Town.  The library was part of a complex of three historic buildings, which have been adaptively reused.  The courtyard (see photo) made …

Dinner along the Danube

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Bratislava, Slovakia is the only world capital that borders two other countries.  (Isn’t Wikipedia a wonderful thing!)  And last evening I had the chance to enjoy some of the best of this city with my friends and colleagues from the International National Trusts Organisation (or INTO). After my all-night flight on election night, I arrived in Vienna around 9 a.m. local time and caught a bus from the airport that took me the 45 minutes to Bratislavia.  The countryside between the airport and the city was very rural, broken only by the occasional wind farm and two delightful small historic towns (one of which still maintained its historic city wall surrounding the town).  Since the hotel where I’m staying didn’t take guests until 2 p.m. and I needed to do something to stay awake, I ate a bit of breakfast and then strolled the streets of Old Town Bratislava. And I’m here to say that the historic core was hopping.  I was on the streets at lunch time and those streets were swarming with people eating …