All posts filed under: Historic Preservation

In Praise of Independent Coffee Houses

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Dolores emailed me this morning to say that our neighborhood coffee house here in Silver Spring – Kefa Cafe – was having a customer appreciation day with free food.  Candice and I had been looking for a time to have a coffee together, so we braved the remnants of Hanna that are making their presence felt in Washington today and enjoyed our coffee, pastries, and good company. There’s a nice post on Kefa on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s This Place Matters site where Dolores tells why this is her Third Place in Silver Spring.  Run by two sisters since 1996, it is a great place to hang out, enjoy good food, and meet interesting people.  Candice and I shared our table today with two middle age guys who just returned from their weekly basketball game at a local gym…a tradition they’ve continued for 20 years. Support that special independent coffee house in your town.  Like all unique and special places, they are going too fast. More to come… DJB

Montpelier’s Restoration and the Importance of James Madison

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Many of you know that the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Montpelier Foundation have undertaken a complete restoration of Montpelier, the historic home of James Madison in Orange, Virginia.  The home will be opened Wednesday, September 17th, after a five-year restoration.  Preservation magazine has a terrific story on this work in the September/October 2008 issue.  The Father of the Constitution’s house will be reopened – appropriately enough – on Constitution Day.  The opening also comes three days after the extension for yet another year of the national state of emergency first declared on September 14, 2001. Madison – one of our most underappreciated Founding Fathers – is still very relevant today.  To see Madison’s warnings about “experiments with our liberties” read his Memorial and Remonstrance.  More to come… DJB

Driving On 16th Street

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I love 16th Street, NW in Washington.  A drive today reminded me why. Most of my commutes between work and home take place on the Metro.  But since we moved to Silver Spring in 2000 – just a couple of blocks over the DC line and two streets over from 16th – I’ve driven up and down this main north/south thoroughfare countless times to get to and from my office on Dupont Circle or to drive the children to or from school. Today is Labor Day, and I needed to run into the office early this morning for a short errand.  So I took 16th Street with the luxury of driving slowly so I could soak up the character of this special place. Wikipedia will give you the basics of the street’s history.  Part of the original plan of Washington, it was an early location for both embassies and churches.  Most of the embassies have left, but one of the charms of the street is the beautiful church and institutional architecture that’s interspersed throughout the …

Pandora Radio and Ben’s Chili Bowl

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A couple of random topics about unique institutions that you may find of interest… Pandora Radio – My friend and colleague Scott Gerloff introduced me to Pandora Radio, the Internet radio station that allows you to program your own music.  If you’ve never tried Pandora, I recommend you pay it a visit.  No matter your musical taste, you’ll enjoy it…because you get to program it! In a posting today on the Bluegrass Blog, there’s a story about the difficulties Pandora is facing due to royalty issues with the music industry.  Check out the blog, learn more about Pandora, and become a listener.  Let’s hope we can all enjoy it for a long time to come. Ben’s Chili Bowl – There’s a Washington institution celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, and the blog at PreservationNation captured the celebration at Ben’s Chili Bowl on historic U Street in a posting today.  The Washington Post also had a terrific article earlier this week that covers the history – and future – of Ben’s.  After coming back from two weeks …

Stadium Memories

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Some people read 1000 Places to Visit Before You Die and think about how many they can check off in a year.  My quest is more modest:  to visit all the major league baseball stadiums in the next ten years.  I’m about 1/3 of the way through my list, but I have to admit that given stadium demolitions, I’ve had to make up my own rules about what counts.  Essentially, I’m just trying to get to at least one stadium  per team. So along that line, I wanted to let you know there’s a great online story – accompanying a magazine feature in Preservation – of Yankee Stadium memories on PreservationNation.org.  If you like baseball stadiums and/or baseball stories, check it out. FYI, this has been a good year in my quest.  So far I’ve visited three new (for me) parks this year:  Oakland (with Anthea and all the folks from the Trust’s Western Office), Coors Field in Denver (with Mountains/Plains Office Director Barb and Dolores), and – of course – the new Nationals Park …

A few “classic” photos

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I mentioned in an earlier post that my daughter Claire took black & white photos during our western trip on my old film camera that she calls “the classic.”  We just had that film processed (since Claire doesn’t have access to the dark room at school during the summer) and I thought I’d post a couple of her shots for all to see.  The shot above was taken in the church yard of the 1760 mission church in Las Trampas, on the High Road to Taos.  Claire said this was her favorite of about 140 shots she took during the trip.  The second photo I’ve posted is from Acoma, where Claire took two full rolls of film.  She loved the mission church at Acoma, so I’ve posted a shot she took of the bell tower early in our tour of the site.  There are so many great opportunities for photos at Acoma — the buildings and landscape are so evocative both individually and together.  In the photo at right, I liked the interplay of the …

Bluff(ing) our way to Canyon de Chelly

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When last we were in the land of Internet connectivity, we left you in Bluff, Utah – population 320.  After driving through Monument Valley with a stop at Goulding’s Trading Company for some great Navajo tacos, we arrived in Bluff to spend the night at the historic Decker House Inn.  We were met by Sandy the innkeeper in one of the town’s more substantial homes, and shown to a wonderful double room where we could all spread out.  Needless to say, Andrew and Claire were pleased! Bluff is located in the middle of a very harsh landscape of red sandstone and deep gorges.  The town was settled by Mormon pioneers in the middle of the 19th century, and some of the buildings from that era (such as the Decker House Inn) have survived.  Even with such a small population, Bluff had some good restaurants, probably the best quality trading post we’ve seen so far, and a historic preservation organization which had prepared walking tours and great brochures of the town’s history.  After a scrumptious breakfast served …

Summer Reading

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An email from the husband of a friend who shall remain nameless showed up in my home email in-box recently with a list of books on his table ready for his summer reading.  There were a lot of very serious titles—some of which I’ve read and many of which I’ve missed—but the one that caught my eye was War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges.  Now I’ve read that book, and I don’t consider it light reading.  In fact, it is pretty depressing.  For while Hedges calls for humility, love, and compassion as the only chance for the human race, he writes of the addiction of war and its unifying force.  When you read this, our chances seem pretty slim. But that’s NOT why I’m writing about Summer Reading Lists.  There are 9 other months of the year to read books like War is a Force…  Summer reading is different.  Here are three books (two on baseball; one only tangentially on architecture but really on love) I think are great for …

Travels in India – Establishing the International National Trusts Organisation

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This November I’ll head to Slovakia for the annual meeting of the Executive Committee of the International National Trusts Organisation (yes, we use the British spelling).  While there, I hope to post some comments and photos about both the work and the historic buildings we tour.  In preparation for that posting, I am linking to the posts made on the PreservationNation blog last December, when I was in India for the establishment of INTO.  It was an extraordinary trip which included an opportunity to share the stage with the Prime Minister of India, Dr. Manmohan Singh (who just last month survived a vote of no confidence in India).  Slovakia will be with a much smaller group, but we are looking forward to reviewing the progress we’ve made with INTO in the first six months.  More to come. DJB