BSA Historic Resources Committee Meeting Notes for December 2005
Present: Jillian Adams, William Barry, Maia Brindley Nilsson, Matthew Bronski, Rich Cecconi, David Coe, Taya Dixon, Sheila Donahue, Marilyn Fenollosa, Allan Galper, David Hart, John Hecker, Lyn Hovey, Wendall Kalsow, David Kelman, Ellen Lipsey, Doug Manley, Henry Moss, Kate Murphy, Charles Parrott, Zac Sargent, Susan Schur, Malcolm Smiley, Karen Stahl, Eric Ward, Douglas Wohn, and Eleena Zhelezou
1. Historic Storefronts: Chuck Parrott and Jillian Adams presented examples of their work with preservation and design guidance in Lowell's historic districts that aimed to protect historic material and its configuration in existing storefronts, or, where historic storefronts are lost, help owners and leaseholders reconstruct something in the character of the building, often very close to what was originally there. Chuck drew examples of storefront design and construction representing different historic periods from Lowell's Central Business District. Jillian described her color studies for individual storefronts based on published analyses of available pigments and paint systems in different time periods, and matched the color ranges of antique paint cards to their counterparts in the current Benjamin Moore Historic Colors series.
Lowell's long 20th century sleep under a blanket of economic stagnation kept its commercial architecture unusually intact. Even so, many shop fronts were removed or radically changed more than once. Some were covered with modern panels of various materials. Those that survived were often expedient mixtures of new and old-typically altered to enlarge the amount of uninterrupted glazed area for display.
Chuck Parrott is an architect who works for the National Park Service (NPS) at the Lowell National Historical Park. Chuck traced existing storefronts back to historic photographs of their previous incarnations. This research enabled him to identify stages in the architectural development of Lowell's shop fronts from the 1830's through successive decades into the 1920's. It also provided a documentary basis for restoration and reconstruction at specific sites. The NPS has assembled a remarkably comprehensive archive of historic photographs and other graphic documents that may make this type of research less frustrating than it would be in other cities, but the precedent is set for convincing visual comparisons that can show skeptical owners and regulators which elements of existing streetscapes and particular shops are original and what the visual grain of their city has been at street level during the past.
Chuck showed photographs of an elegant bow front with granite stall risers and multi-paned glazing with no lite larger than 1' x 2'. In the late 19th century, the same shop front was rebuilt with large panes of plate glass. A similar comparison showed an early 19th century frontage with an entry door set in the center of a fully glazed façade- glazed stall risers (to allow light into the basement), narrow multi-paned display windows on both sides, and a fixed glazed transom the full width of the shop. Perimeter cast iron columns were set back a few inches from the storefront, with the storefront running past, as was typical in that period. The 20th century makeover retained the transom, installed a new narrow door at one side, and enclosed the enlarged display window with butt-glazed panes rising from the display shelf to the height of the door head.
Electric lighting made glazed stall risers unnecessary. In recent years, Lowell has restored or reconstructed many glazed stall risers. Despite numerous predictions by building owners that glazed stall risers would be prone to frequent breakage at "kick-height" along the sidewalk, Chuck, Jillian, and Steve Stowell report surprisingly few incidents of breakage. Commercial buildings grew deeper at the end of the 19th century for a variety of reasons, including improved artificial lighting, but natural light remained at a premium on shop floors. Ceilings were higher and huge areas of display window were topped by 3' tall bands of diffusing, translucent glass in small panes held in metal frameworks. These sparkling glass streetscapes reflected none of the bunker mentality that dominated new storefronts introduced after World War II, prior to the 1979 establishment of the Lowell National Historical Park. Stark brick storefronts with small punched windows and flat panel doors (sometimes with applied moldings) ignored the design precedent of devoting as much of the street frontage to transparent and translucent treatment as technology could accommodate. Building owners and tenants followed no historic design guidelines and communicated a fearful, embattled attitude toward the public realm.
There is a high level of documentation of 1860's shop front design and construction. Glazed stall risers rose about two feet from pavement level sills to display shelves at the base of the display window, although individual heights varied from store to store. Ghost images of paint on structural columns often record a section of the original storefront profile. The framework of the stall riser system was quite robust. Storefronts were not cased lumber. A common subdivision of the storefront derived from narrow, glazed double doors placed centrally between multi-paned display windows using as large a lite as possible- often several feet square. Doors were not typically full height, but allowed for a glazed transom. Some storefronts has transom lites, while others did not. Where present, the pattern and materials of storefront transom glazing varied. Cast iron columns at the edges of the storefront often followed the pattern of column grids and party walls. Chuck showed an example where octagonal cast iron columns were detailed to receive window frames for the shop front. Canvas awnings with soft trim and shop names were common on the sunny side of the street. In the 1880's, large sheets of polished plate glass were introduced, but the basic framework remained unchanged for several more decades.
Chuck and his colleagues at the LNHP were able to influence shop front alterations and the design of new shop fronts inside the park through the instrument of a generous grant program administered by the Preservation Commission until its discontinuance in 1995. Many of the Commission's grants reached five figures and the rehabilitation of building frontages could be extensive. The Bon Marche, once home of F. G. Mitchell & Company, and a recent flagship restoration downtown, is an example of a significant stretch of a main street frontage. There cast iron columns were reused in a new design. One surviving original floral capital was recovered and lost capitals were replaced by identical forms in molded fiberglass. Many masonry facades rest on beams that did not necessarily depend on intermediate support from storefront framing. The NPS does not object to structural improvements, such as the replacement of wood beams with steel sections.
Historic doorway configurations and dimensions present a challenge to accessibility. It is often impossible to get two 3' wide doors into the original entry width. Typically, shops had symmetrical double doors with 25" wide leaves. Wide frontages in later buildings often provide plenty of recessed doorways to modulate facades, and equal panels can be used side-by-side-one to provide a 3' door leaf, and the other a fixed panel that looks like the door but functions as a window. In a narrow door opening, where the door must be widened for egress or accessibility requirements, trying to "squeeze" symmetrical sidelites can completely ruin the proportions. Chuck has found it is often better to save one properly proportioned sidelite, and expand the door to one side, rather than to have two mis-proportioned sidelites. Where doorways and storefronts are close together, and one larger business now occupies the space and multiple storefronts formerly held by several small shops, Lowell has often required "dummy doors", in the non-used doorways, to maintain the rhythm of the original storefront and streetscape. Existing flat panel doors and storefront bases with applied wood molding from the 1970's and 80's that are trying to imitate traditional wood construction are the bane of Chuck's existence. Today, Chuck, Steve Stowell, and others with the NPS and LHB in Lowell strive for more traditional and enduring construction.
Sidewalk lites were often visually striking assemblies with glass lenses that lit excavated basement areas, sometimes finding their way into stair and riser configurations. In the 1880's-90's, they were often clear or green glass circular lenses in cast iron frames. [See Boston's Leather District and Fort Point Channel areas for surviving examples.] The underside of the glass lenses were prism shaped (inverted pyramids) to horizontally distribute the light below. By the early 1920's, sidewalk lites were usually purple squares of glass in grid-like concrete frames. Whether early or later versions, Lowell has had little success with the preservation of sidewalk lites. The originals are usually broken, leak, and are not readily reparable. Custom cast glass replacements for broken lenses are expensive without an economy of scale, and inexpensive plastic replacements quickly yellow, embrittle, and break. [Does anyone know a source for new glass lenses?]
During the life of the Preservation Commission's storefront program from 1980-1995, over 60 Lowell storefront projects received grants and many more were done with guidance from the National Park Service without grant aid. After the meeting a couple committee members urged Chuck to publish his outstanding research and work on historic storefronts.
Davis Block Storefronts, Merrimack Street, Downtown Lowell, before and after restoration.
Jillian Adams's work with appropriate color schemes for historic storefronts was done while she was the Assistant Administrator for the Lowell Historic Board, working with Steve Stowell. Lowell has thirteen historic districts. The Lowell Historic Board offers free technical assistance to owners and their designers who plan to alter storefronts (and other properties) in the historic districts. Jillian and the LHB had no budget for paint analysis. Her color schemes were derived from black & white photographs' tonal variations, primary sources- such as A. J. Downings 1842 "Cottage Residences" , color charts produced by manufacturers like Harrison Brothers 1871 "Town and Country" paint card, and secondary sources like Roger Moss's books. Jillian noted that while paint schemes for houses are well-studied and extensively documented, those for commercial buildings are less well understood.
Early storefronts were often gray or green. When multiple colors were used on 19th century storefronts, they were often "harmonizing" color schemes - subtle variations in earth tones for example, as one might see in AJ Downing or the Harrison Brothers paint card. Chemical innovations allowed for newly affordable pigments later in the 19th Century [English church clock faces suddenly went from black to blue.] Color choices were expanded remarkably, but storefronts were not typically like the high-contrast "Painted Ladies" resurrected in the 1970's. Roger Moss worked with Sherwin Williams to recreate historic paint colors. Today, twenty five years later, paint companies are less academically constrained. Despite the considerable enforcement power of the Lowell Historic Board, Jillian is a strong advocate for an amiable and cooperative approach to the regulation of paint colors in a historic district, rather than the more common dictatorial approach. Jillian typically presented 3 period appropriate color schemes, each a palette of comparable tonalities in different hues for owners to choose among. She prepared and presented her preferred option as a hand watercolored elevation of the building façade. She tied these watercolors to Ben Moore paint chips, then insisted on full-height painted mock-ups that provided continuous, contiguous samples of the chosen colors in situ before granting final approval to proceed. Excited by their watercolor rendering, and empowered by their choice of three color schemes, owners and developers often became excited about the period colors and feel positive about this cooperative effort with the LHB. After this initial positive encounter, several owners and contractors have voluntarily called Jillian to show them some interesting building fabric or finding uncovered in their rehabilitation work, and the LHB has learned things about these historic buildings they otherwise never would have known.
In some cases, non-original but historic storefronts exist in older buildings (e.g., an 1890's storefront in an 1860's building). In such cases, Jillian proposes the "later period colors" for the "newer" historic storefront, as an 1860 paint scheme never would have existed on an 1890's storefront.
Jillian reminded us that her procedures allowed the Lowell Historical Board to achieve color schemes that were valid for specific historic periods, but not necessarily exactly accurate for Lowell. Paint colors in an industrial city like Lowell might have been somewhat more drab and less lively than those shown in the Harrison paint cards, or those shown by a taste maker like Downing. Color differences and tonal distribution might be quite accurate for specific storefronts if historic photographs exist, but the hues would depend on external references except where her archive of colored postcards included her site. Colored post cards often show great detail. Jillian's studies of the tonal variations on historic black and white photos of Lowell has shown that the darker colors in a multicolor scheme were not always used in the more recessed elements to heighten the natural play of depth in the façade, as one might expect.
Jillian described one scheme with adjacent storefronts. One shop has dark brown sashes, olive frames and black columns. The other shop was compatible with dark maroon sash and lighter olive frames. Jillian worked out the color scheme for a fire house conversion with guidance from a colored post card then went to the Sherwin Williams 1880 Color Plate in Roger Moss's "Century of Color-American Building 1820-1920". She also recommends his "Victorian Exterior Paint Colors", 1987 edition as a good reference.
Jillian Adams is now a Project Manager at Historic Boston.
2. The Big Uneasy - Heritage at Risk in New Orleans and the Gulf South: Bill Barry encouraged us all to keep trying the website relating to Hurricane Katrina relief efforts that he, SBRA, and the HRC have established: http://project1.sbra.com/heritageatrisk The site can also be accessed from the HRC website: http://committees.architects.org/hrc/neworleans.htm. Click the link to register as an "author," which allows you to post thoughts or info. Bill noted that the canned format for this site is not very intuitive for navigating. If that just compounds your frustration, call Bill at 617-423-1700 x281 (office) or 617-817-3480 (cell) for help.
Bill Barry, Bill Barlow, and David Hart all recently returned from separate relief efforts in the Gulf South. David Hart reported on his trip to New Orleans as part of a group of preservation professionals whose efforts are coordinated by the Preservation Resources Center. He noted that the accommodations are severely limited. Offers of help can get to the Preservation Resources Center via their list serve, but if you are asked to come, perhaps months later, you will have only five days' notice. These are individual efforts and you will be the sole bearer of risk. David observed that New Orleans's commissions and committees are active-but terribly overstretched and not well coordinated among themselves. Their counterparts in Mississippi face more immediate losses of historic structures along the coast, but the Governor of Mississippi has been the key to a better-managed response to their coastal catastrophe. David and Bill Barry say that New Orleans lacks a single charismatic figure who can pull efforts together. David, Bill, and Bill Barlow all say that the devastation is far more drastic than the media has been able to convey. [Bill Barlow spent a week in the Biloxi area and returned with vivid descriptions of houses lifted high off their foundations then dropped to the ground or smashed against other structures on adjoining lots; of docklands where steel freight containers and giant rolls of newsprint were broken away by 30' surge tides and hurled into streets of timber frame houses like asteroids. His group was sleeping on the floor of a deserted house (without utilities?) during the period when they surveyed buildings for structural soundness and architectural significance.]
[For evocative photographs of Post-Katrina New Orleans, see the Robert Polidori images in the New Yorker, "Portfolio- The Waste Land- After the Waters Receded", January 9, 2006 issue.]
3. Brick Conference: Susan Schur distributed registration material for the upcoming conference, Clay Bricks in the 21st Century: Design, Preservation, & Care of Contemporary and Historic Architecture. Poster proposals were due Dec. 15, 2005, but the deadline has been extended - get them in now! The conference will be held at MIT March 25-26, 2006.
4. Brownstone Symposium: Mark your calendars for the one-day symposium at the Victoria Mansion in Portland, Maine on May 13, 2006 entitled Recent Research and Technical Innovations in Brownstone Conservation. The symposium will feature members of the current brownstone restoration team at the mansion (including Ivan Myer), as well as researchers from Penn and Princeton. For more information visit: http://www.victoriamansion.org/events.html
5. Japanese House Tour: Professor William Coaldrake has confirmed that he will lead our tour of the Japanese house that he helped erect at the Children's Museum in the mid-1980's sometime in March. We are shooting for a late weekday afternoon visit, ideally Thursday, March 23 at 4:30. To be confirmed….
Featuring Katherine McGuinness, Susan Hollister, and Jonathan Smith on:
"Accessibility and Historic Resources"
*Note: The BSA Access Committee (Chaired by Katie McGuinness)
will be joining us at this joint meeting.
8: 00 a.m., Thursday, January 12, 2006
The Architects' Building
52 Broad Street, 5th floor, Boston, Massachusetts
Henry Moss, Matthew Bronski, and Sara Wermiel co-leaders and scribes