All posts tagged: Historic Preservation

Planes, trains…but no automobiles

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Unlike their American counterparts, European cities are known for their many transportation options. Copenhagen and Stockholm fit this pattern, and we tested it all during our recent trip to Scandinavian. With our family’s interest in preservation and urban planning, we headed into these cities with exploration in mind.  Andrew, after just six weeks in the country, knew Copenhagen like the back of his hand. So we had an expert guide for our first week. What did we find? First, people walk a lot. They walk to the market to get their produce, and flowers, as seen at the top of the post. Also, Copenhagen knows how to make bicycles part of a real transportation network.  One-third of the city bikes to work, and with dedicated signals and lanes with curbs, they make it very easy for everyone.  The picture above is of a cycle counter that clocks thousands of daily bike trips across a busy bridge in the center of the city. Copenhagen residents also “dress for the destination, not for the trip” – meaning …

Put on a sweater like Patti Page

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I loved the recent Treehugger post In Praise of the Dumb House. Go ahead.  Click on the link and read the blog post from Lloyd Alter.  When you get to the picture of Patti Page, you may laugh out loud.  I did. Alter talks about all the newfangled gadgets to keep your house temperature perfect – and environmentally correct. But he points out the problem with this line of thinking: As Victor Olgyay noted exactly 50 years ago in his book Design with Climate, comfort is not determined by temperature alone, but by a combination of temperature, humidity and air movement. The Nest thermostat turns an air conditioner or furnace on or off, where you might be just as comfortable opening a window or turning on a fan. That’s what you would do in a dumb home. Instead, the Nest causes you to use energy to do what used to be free. He then goes on to say: There is also another problem with the smart thermostat: people no longer put on such smart sweater sets …

Fallingwater (Revisited)

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Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater is one of the architectural wonders of the world.  In the midst of the depression, when the Kaufmann family of Pittsburgh commissioned Wright to design their vacation home along Bear Run in the mountains of southwestern Pennsylvania, they envisioned a location that would give them a view of the beautiful 30′ waterfall that ran through their property. However, as the world soon discovered, Wright – who was then in a period of critical decline among architectural critics and the public – saw things differently. The results immediately captivated the country when the home was featured on the cover of Time magazine in 1938, and it hasn’t stopped attracting visitors and attention since. Our family is no different.  After a business trip to the National Historic Landmark in early May 1998, I immediately booked a return trip a week later with Candice and our twins – Andrew and Claire – who were five years old at the time.  Both children were eager to see this place that mom and dad described with …

Still the most beautiful building on campus

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We were touring the University of Pittsburgh campus this afternoon at the suggestion of a friend who is a student there, when we turned the corner and it happened again… …the most beautiful building on campus was peaking out at me, seemingly atop a flower basket hanging from a light post, just waiting to be discovered. I’ve written before about how college chapels are often the most beautiful – and ignored – buildings on campus.  I have no idea if the Heinz Memorial Chapel is ignored on campus tours, but from my very brief visit and admittedly small sample size (having seen only about 1/10th of the Pitt facilities), there is no more beautiful building on this campus.  This is a wonderfully light and delicate Gothic design that is – as Andrew phrased it  upon seeing it head on – drop dead gorgeous.  I agree. We were in Pittsburgh for one major reason: to attend a Pittsburgh Pirates game tomorrow at PNC Park and check another MLB ballpark off my bucket list. (Look for that …

In celebration of Elizabeth

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(I don’t often use More to Come… for work-related posts, but last Friday evening at the National Trust we celebrated the retirement of a dear friend — Elizabeth McClung — and I wanted to share my admiration for this stalwart of preservation.  I was privileged to speak at Elizabeth’s retirement celebration.  The following are my remarks.) Leadership comes in many forms.  We all know of the alpha male, Type A personalities who are celebrated as leaders on Wall Street and in the halls of Congress.  These are the types who bark out orders and expect others to follow. These are the “born leaders” — or so they say. But there is another type of leadership that is — to my mind — much more effective.  It generally comes from people who learn to be leaders, rather than assume they know it all from birth.  I put more stock in these types of leaders in part because I am reminded of the tale of a group of tourists visiting a picturesque village not unlike nearby Strasburg.  …

Maybe I Should Come to the Office More Often

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I recently did the math. In one three month period this spring I am in the office less than one-third of the time.  True, I’ve been to some wonderful places, but if my two days in Washington this week are any indication, perhaps I should come to the office more often. When she was in fourth grade, my daughter told her class that her dad’s job was to “sign papers and go to meetings.” This hasn’t been one of those weeks. At the National Trust, we’ve been working hard to help Americans understand and protect the full story of our nation’s life together.  That  work was front and center yesterday and today. On Wednesday, our great friends at American Express announced a $1 million grant to the National Trust Historic Site Decatur House and our partners at the White House Historical Association.  The grant will help ensure that the site’s slave quarters – one of the few remaining urban examples of slave quarters – are preserved and used in the educational work at the site.  …

Remembering Their Sacrifice

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  Our last day touring in Europe was the most emotional. If you don’t cry, you may not have a soul. We saw Normandy, and the place names from the U.S. that will resonate through history:  Utah Beach, Omaha Beach. We walked among row after row of headstones at the American cemetery.  Crosses and Star of Davids.  Most with names of men who gave the ultimate sacrifice.  Some whose names are known only to God. And it was made all the more personal because of a chance encounter last week.  When we were headed out the door to leave on this trip, we saw our 90-year-old next-door neighbor and told him we were going to Europe and would visit Normandy. “I’ve never been to Normandy,” he said, “but I was flying over it on D-Day, trying to take out a German gun placement.”  We can’t wait to show August the photos of the beaches and,  yes, the craters that remain from the bombs that fell on that day. Heroes all — and they even live …

Bilbao: The Cliff Notes Edition

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  Wow! I had read the stories of how a gritty, shipbuilding city in Spain had reinvented itself as an arts and cultural center built around the signature Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim Museum. I had seen the pictures. But I wasn’t ready for the reality. We spent Sunday in Bilbao, Spain — after a drive through the lovely heart of the Basque country — and Candice and I found the first city where we are set on finding a way to return as soon as possible. Bilbao in the 1980s saw the closing of an iconic shipyard and had the foresight to think creatively and boldly about a new future which blended new and old. It is the last part — the blending of new and old — that is often missed in the write-ups about Bilbao’s renaissance.  You get the impact of Gehry’s Guggenheim, along with the works of Calatrava, Norman Foster and other modern masters. But what is often missing is the context for these works: a walkable and vibrant historic city dating back …