BSA Historic Resources Committee Meeting Notes for March 2006
Present: Fred Atherton, Olga Bachilova, Bill Barlow, Bill Barry, Matthew Bronski, Sara Chase, David Coe, Taya Dixon, Marilyn Fenollosa, Allan Galper, Jack Glassman, Meghan Hanrahan, Jeffrey Harris, David Hart, Cathleen Hoelscher, Wendall Kalsow, David Kelman, David King, Bill Mack, Doug Manley, Anakin Michele, Ed Moll, Henry Moss, Ivan Myjer, Beth Nathan, Stephanie Reinert, Susan Schur, Malcolm Smiley, Jay Stanbury, Eric Ward, Sara Wermiel
1. Heritage at Risk on the Gulf Coast - updates from the field: Several HRC members and friends have recently traveled to the Gulf Coast to evaluate the condition of historic buildings damaged by Hurricane Katrina and floodwaters, with the aim of helping owners save what can be salvaged. Four of them came to update the HRC about their work and the prospects for saving historic buildings on the Gulf Coast. Bill Barry, who served in a volunteer planning capacity in New Orleans, introduced the topic by stressing that rebuilding the area will take a long time. This reality runs against the American public's short attention span; the question will be how to keep the public supportive over the years required by the enormous task.
Bill Barry explained how buildings were damaged by Hurricane Katrina - Gulf Coast buildings were typically damaged by wind and storm surges, which uprooted and displaced buildings, and rammed buildings with floating masses - while in New Orleans, the majority of damage to low-rise structures was caused by rising flood waters. New Orleans has 19 historic districts, and approximately 30,000 buildings on the National Register of Historic Places - more than any other city in America. The city has "red tagged" areas for clearance that contain salvageable historic buildings; owners of these buildings need to argue to preserve them, one by one. While the Lower Ninth Ward, a low-income neighborhood, was particularly devastated, a map of the flooded areas in New Orleans showed that the flooding crossed all economic boundaries.
Conditions on the Gulf Coast were described by Bill Barlow, architect with the National Park Service, and Ed Moll, Beth Nathan, and John Wathne, engineers with Structures North Consulting Engineers. Bill, Beth, and John went to the Mississippi coast, hosted by the Mississippi Dept. of Archives and History, in coordination with the Assoc. for Preservation Technology (APT) and the National Trust. Ed worked in New Orleans, hosted by the Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans (PRC) and the National Trust.
Bill Barlow's slides from Biloxi and Gulfport illustrated how wind and surging water devastated the Mississippi shoreline in three tiers of damage, correlating with distance from the shore. Most of the first tier of buildings, those nearest the shore, are gone. They were either washed away - lifted by the water and wind off their foundations and carried away - or were pummeled into piles of debris. These were the largest, grandest historic buildings. The second tier buildings, inland a few blocks from the shore, were damaged but some are still standing and seemed reparable. Many had been rammed by floating objects in the water, or been lifted off their piers, and severely racked when they dropped to the ground nearby. Typically the second and third tier historic houses are far more modest than those of the first tier. Third tier houses, still farther back from the shore, were relatively intact, but may have slid off their brick piers.
Left - Destroyed first tier house. Only the masonry foundation remains. Center- Porches and wings ripped from houses by wave surge, first floors entirely washed-out by the surge. Right - Third tier house pushed off its foundation, but essentially intact.
At first, Bill tried to formulate a general approach to assessing whether buildings could be salvaged, but shifted to assessing individual houses at the request of homeowners and giving advice. Many homeowners seeking insurance claims battled adjusters over how much damage was caused by the hurricane - a hazard for which they usually had coverage - and how much by flooding - for which few had insurance. In many cases the proceeds from insurance will determine the amount of work owners can afford on their houses. Bill feared that many historic houses would be hastily demolished with no surviving documentation, thus he sketched plans and took photos of irreparably damaged historic buildings.
Beth Nathan and John Wathne described their experiences in the Gulfport and Pass Christian areas at the end of January. Beth estimated that approximately 1/3 of the houses were gone, 1/3 were too close to call at first glance, and 1/3 survived and were relatively sound. Beth and John focused on assessing houses in the nebulous middle category, giving technical advice to those homeowners, often on immediate structural shoring needs. In these cases, Beth said the question for many owners was not just whether it was technically feasible to save the house, but whether it made economic sense. Beth summed up the challenges to preservation as 1. how to get owners of historic buildings to want to repair them, 2. how to make repairs that will allow historic buildings to withstand future hurricanes, but will be sympathetic with their historic character. Various policies discouraged preservation, such as FEMA's offer to clear houses at no cost to the owner, but only for a limited time. This gave owners an incentive to demolish. Also, the flood zones on the new FEMA maps will be more extensive; houses now in the zones will need to comply with stricter provisions, which will raise the cost of repair. John noted that many of the historic houses were relatively crudely constructed, lacking sub-floors, wall sheathing, sufficient pier foundations, and so on. John showed images of houses that had been "washed-through" by the storm surge, where the first floor finishes and furniture were destroyed, but the wall structure and upper floors survived. In some cases brick chimneys had been washed out of a house, with only the chimney portion above the roof line remaining! In other cases, the columns of porches were washed away by the surge, leaving porch roofs precariously cantilevering over entrances. In some historic neighborhoods, so many houses were destroyed that isolated surviving historic houses had completely lost their context. At one point, John suggested that isolated historic structures could be moved and regrouped with other surviving historic houses in their neighborhood to re-establish a contiguous historic context and streetscape. John was assailed and ridiculed by the other preservation professional in his volunteer group for the better part of a week for even making such a suggestion. "Moving houses is not considered good preservation practice!" he was reminded in no uncertain terms.
[Editorial Note: Too often we forget that The Secretary of the Interior's Standards clearly state on page one that they "cannot, in and of themselves, be used to make essential decisions…" and also state that the Guidelines "are not meant to give case-specific advice, or address exceptions or rare instances." If the philosophical goal of not moving buildings is to avoid removing them from their historic context, an interesting discussion of preservation philosophy could follow in the rare instance John described, where the historic context itself is suddenly and unavoidably removed from all around an historic building. Preservation as a profession and as an intellectual pursuit suffers when we revert to knee-jerk responses, and summarily dismiss any other idea as heretical, without adequately considering how the specific circumstances at hand might beg specific, even unconventional, solution. When closed-minded thinking stifles informed intellectual discussion, preservation hardly qualifies as either a profession or an intellectual pursuit. We'll gladly engage discussion on John's suggestion at our table. -MB]
In New Orleans, Ed Moll found three programs to encourage preservation: Operation Comeback, Project Home Again, and Rebuilding Together. Ed consulted individually with homeowners who contacted the Preservation Resource Center (PRC) for help. On-the-fly, Ed assessed damage and hand-sketched structural repair details on 8-1/2 x 11 pads to enable immediate stabilization and repair. Like John, he found that many houses had pre-existing structural defects, particularly termite damage. The strategy of the PRC is to invest in some key houses, then contact the owners of adjacent houses and try to get them to return to New Orleans and fix-up their houses. In this way, a neighborhood of historic houses could be rehabilitated, creating a critical mass and ensuring a historic streetscape, rather than having only individual, isolated historic houses that had been rehabilitated (sound vaguely familiar?). While the levees are being rebuilt to resist a Category 3 hurricane, lack of improved levee protection against future Category 4 or 5 hurricanes makes many owners reluctant to invest in rehabilitating their houses. Ed listed the challenges in New Orleans as being 1. repairing/improving the levees, 2. the cost of rehabilitating houses now in flood plain (on the revised FEMA maps), which will need to be brought up to a higher standard 3. lack of services, making it logistically difficult to live in New Orleans at present, 4. lack of leadership, 5. need for technical support.
Different cities on the Mississippi Gulf Coast have different attitudes toward new development: Biloxi welcomes it, Pass Christian seems more conservative. For the most part, money is having its way, and the result could be a drastically changed landscape. Real estate interests support rebuilding the coastal boulevard (state route 90), as a six lane highway, but small property owners aren't on the scene to protest this proposal. Casinos are the main employers and economic engines in the region, and will push to get the area re-zoned and redeveloped to serve their needs. Likewise, condo developers are buying up land and could rebuild the shore with high-rises. But even if citizens favor preservation, will they be able to fend off the redevelopers? Sadly, in some Mississippi towns the character of coastal streetscape is likely to change from predominantly two story historic wood houses with open porches dwarfed by sleepy oaks, to a streetscape of tall, boxy casinos and generic high-rise balconied condominiums on the water. Hello, South Florida.
All volunteers endured extremely long working hours (e.g., consistent 13-14 hour days) and difficult working conditions (e.g., 8 volunteers sleeping in very close quarters and sharing a single bathroom). Their remarkable volunteer efforts reflect well not only on themselves, but on the entire design and preservation community of Boston. We express our admiration and gratitude to Beth, Bill, Bill, Ed, John and the many others who have provided assistance. More volunteers are needed! The Association for Preservation Technology is assembling teams regularly, and the Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans also is placing volunteers. (See information below.)
2. Prospects Brighten for H. H. Richardson's House in Brookline: Allan Galper reported that one of the owners of the house has agreed to transfer his share to the other owner. If the deal goes through (in mid-May), Dr. Fred Hoppin will be the sole owner of the Richardson House. Dr. Hoppin plans to sell the house with preservation restrictions that would protect historic portions of the exterior and interior. Contact Fred Hoppin [(617) 734-8175 or fhoppin@rcn.com] or Allan Galper [ASGalper@sherin.com] for information.
3. New Orleans Volunteer Opportunity: R. Stephanie Bruno, Operation Comeback Director, PRC, writes: "The National Trust for Historic Preservation and Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans have worked for the past 6 months to bring teams to New Orleans to survey damaged buildings, provide technical assistance to homeowners, and perform other work that helps ensure the best possible outcome for the city and its historic architecture. We invite you to join in this effort. If you can come to New Orleans for a 4-day trip (Tuesday night Saturday evening) any week between March 21 and the week of June 27, please let me know (rsbruno@prcno.org). You should arrive on a Tuesday night and work from Wednesday through Saturday afternoon. We are looking for people with experience in preservation architecture, contracting, and engineering, as well as generalists, who will be able to assess property conditions and advise homeowners about preservation-friendly approaches to repair. We provide free lodging, but you will need to pay for transportation to and from the city, as well as for your meals while here."
Featuring Marilyn Fenollosa,
"Disposition of Unused Churches in the Boston Archdiocese"
8: 00 a.m., Thursday, April 13, 2006
The Architects' Building
52 Broad Street, 5th floor, Boston, Massachusetts
Henry Moss, Matthew Bronski, and Sara Wermiel co-leaders and scribes