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Present: Present: Jack Alvarez, Bill Barry, Bart Bauer, Matthew Bronski, Cynthia Chabot, Christina Contis, Mike Dechano, Leslie Donovan, Sarah Gray, Carl Jay, Kimberly Konrad, Ellen Lipsey, Laura MacKowiak, Doug Manley, Henry Moss, Susan Schur, Malcolm Smiley, Jonathan Smith, Laurie Soave, Stacey Thomas, Erin Tobin, Sara Wermiel 1. BSA Education Committee Workshop: Historic Massachusetts, Inc. (HMI) organized a session with the BSA Education Committee to focus attention on the Commonwealth's revised, more positive attitude towards rehabilitation of existing school buildings. None of our committee was able to attend. HMI has mobilized well-known architects such as Tad Stahl and Jim Alexander, and engineers such as Wayne King, to help present more informed approaches during HMI's earlier initiatives at the state level. [Perhaps HMI will be able to bring the committee up-to-date at our next meeting. There have been more directly encouraging statements about rehabilitation in representations from the state to communities that are contemplating school modernization and expansion. At the same time, some of the open space requirements that added momentum to the movement towards abandonment and new construction have been altered.] 2. Save Fenway Park: Kimberly Konrad reported on a proposals within the Boston City Council (initiated by Councilor-at-large Peggy Davis-Mullen) to block City takings by eminent domain for a new Red Sox stadium in the Fenway and a related notion to block or limit further financing for the project by the City. 3. Metals Preservation Conference/AIA National Historic Resources Committee Boston Meeting: Susan Schur described the preliminary schedule for events that piggy-back (what was the origin of this verb form?) a technical conference devoted to 20th Century metals and their conservation problems with a Boston setting for the national AIA HRC meeting in April, 2003. Mark this date on your perpetual calendar. [Since July, the program content has grown in depth and expanse. The list of speakers, an interesting mix of scientists and conservation practitioners, is rapidly taking shape as well. The emphasis of the Metals Conference will be architectural and sculptural metal components and their finishes rather than to tackle entire assemblies, such as curtain walls with their sealants, movement joints, insulation, venting, and glazing details. This will allow new areas of interest a place in the spotlight: anodized surfaces, plated coatings, bonded metal panels, and different types among classes of metals, such as aluminums, stainless steels, weathering steels. The location at MIT is confirmed and will allow laboratory and specimen building visits to provide concrete examples. On a related note, Cindy Chabot asked about structural analysis of ornamental wrought iron railings to assess their ability to meet current code loadings (300 lb. force at any point). Sarah Gray recommended J. Stanlety Rabun's book, "Structural Analysis of Historic Buildings" for more information on analyzing historic metal components. 4. Portland Brownstone Quarry Tour: On Saturday, July 14 about forty architects, engineers, conservators, historians, and a desultory sprinkling of their offspring converged at Mike Meehan's Portland Brownstone quarry. Co-sponsored by the bright new presence of the Association for Preservation Technology/Northeast Chapter and our own BSA Committee, the event drew folks from New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. It was a day crowded with the physical aspects of quarry management, stone removal and handling, demonstrations of tools used for working stone prior to shipment, close inspection of Mike Gnazzo's work on two brownstone buildings at the Wesleyan campus, with a final act at the workshops and stone yard of the Joseph Gnazzo Company in Union, Connecticut. (Gnazzo's new workplace is the successor to a Dickensian assemblage of charcoal burners' kilns and a series of hovels that served as dormitories for transient laborers and locally notorious felons. The change of use to an industrial stone yard was a delight to abutters.) While Mike Meehan's quarry operation gathers momentum, he also plans to start rough cutting and finishing brownstone before shipment. Gnazzo now has large-scale equipment for fabrication of most routine masonry shapes and a well-established connection to specialist fabricators who have extremely sophisticated cutting machinery. On one project, for example: a 16' diameter ogee section marble fountain basin is being turned for Gnazzo to install. Lisa Howe and Matthew Bronski deserve an accolade for organizing the outing at the consumers' end. Mike Meehan, a generous and articulate presence in the world of historic brownstone preservation; and Mike Gnazzo, an impressive organizer of contracting services from fabrication to installation, both deserve our gratitude and our business. APT-Northeast Chapter and the BSA Historic Resources Committee will organize future combined visits and workshops. Tell us what you want to see. 5. Lowell Folk Festival - Conservation Crafts Area: For the first time in its 15 year history, this year's Lowell Folk Festival featured hands-on demonstration booths by building conservation craftspeople. Our own Brian Roche of Lyn Hovey Studio represented the stained glass trade, in the shadow of the Tiffany Windows they restored at St. Anne's Church. The Boston Ornament Co. ran ornamental plaster molds and cast medallions. Carl Close demonstrated blacksmithing and art metal work. Jim Ialeggio showed custom reproduction of missing historic wood windows, and clever, sympathetic solutions for wood storm glazing. The NPS submerged underwater recovery unit used remote robotic cameras (at times guided by ecstatic children) to examine the depths of the Merrimack canal, showing how underwater industrial archaeology may be applicable even on 19th century mill sites. Steve Stowell, who visits our committee when his schedule allows, helped to conceive this event and bring it to reality. Ask Steve or Matthew Bronski what next year's plans include. 6. Retracing Sherman's March to the Sea: Malcolm Smiley shifted our attention to far away Georgia and South Carolina by presenting a Yankee commentary on the physical evidence and fragmented oral history at sites along the route of Sherman's march. Malcolm gave an idiosyncratic, highly personal account of the physical difficulties of soft road shoulders, indifferent or differing accounts of what may be physical evidence of burned saddle and pistol factories, unburned Milledgeville government buildings, surviving water pumps, lost depots, the hospitality of strangers, useful and useless historic markers, and the uninstitutionalized communal memory of long past, bitter incidents in our country's sectional history. Unhampered by political correctness and passionate about the minutiae of his subject, Malcolm reports on the South as if had landed on Georgia's red dirt in a spacecraft. This distance enables him to communicate his personal joy in nosing out local evidence of Civil War events in a way refreshingly physical and light years away from the static quality of any documented and interpreted site. In some odd way, Malcolm's welter of back-to-front and sometimes inverted images reinforced the personal quality of his quest. 7. Gettysburg Reenactment: Expanding on Malcolm Smiley's subject matter, Henry Moss showed slides from the July, 1998 reenactment of various Gettysburg battles including a full-scale replication of Pickett's charge. Complete with 200 horse-drawn cannon firing black powder charges in concussive, deafening, smoke-producing barrages; almost 1,000 saddle horses, and over 100,000 armed men, the reenactment reproduced the full, mile-long, walking front of Pickett's suicidal advance. Photos of the reenactors' encampments, settlers, living history demonstrations (U. S. Sanitary Corps, temperance advocacy groups, undertakers, and commercial photographers…), and hordes of sunburned onlookers wearing wife-beaters, scout uniforms, and glitzy modern sports clothing helped suggest the unique ambience of this fin de siecle gathering. The main point of the talk, however, was to underscore the sensory, emotional impact of this vast multi-media event, an event organized in a rogue, parallel universe alongside orthodox verbal mechanisms for communicating history and awakening the ghosts that populate historic battlefields. The reenactment took place on a private farm, about three miles from the actual site of Pickett's charge, on almost identical topography. 8. Historic Neighborhoods: Bill Barry announced a coming charrette organized by Historic Neighborhoods' Downtown Committee that will concentrate on historic resources in the area of Downtown Crossing. 9. AIA New England 25 Year Award: Henry presented the idea of the committee's supporting the nomination of the Old City Hall for this year's award. The committee suggested that if the nomination is unsuccessful this year, a group nomination be considered for next year containing the Old City Hall, the Prince Macaroni Building, and Quincy Market. The Honors and Awards Committee will pick this up following announcement of this year's AIA NE awards. 10. The Stone Foundation: Cindy Chabot announced schedule for the Stonework Symposium 2001 in Charlottesville, Virginia. [The core program took place from August 11-August 16.] The interests embraced by the Stone Foundation are far reaching, and range from architectural masonry to dry stone walling techniques and stone sculpture. Contact them at 116 Lovato Lane, Santa Fe, NM 87501, tel (505) 989-4644 and visit their web site at www.stonefoundation.org 11. Future BSA Historic Resources Committee Meetings: Matthew, Sara, and I are looking for ways to build highly condensed presentations of lessons learned from members' work into our meetings as ways to explore specific professional topics. In October, we are planning a session focused on the special technical problems of historic (pre-rain screen) towers and steeples. This is the year when the State Board is redrafting Chapter 34 and the BSA Codes Committee is giving it their full attention. We plan to organize a session on that critical medium for our interaction with local building inspectors. There is no shortage of ideas for these portions of our meetings, so contact one of us to be sure your interest reaches the spotlight: hmoss@brunercott.com |