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Present: Pam Bailey, Matthew Bronski, David Coe, Taya Dixon, Marilyn Fenollosa, John Hecker, Cathleen Hoelscher, David King, Doug Manley, Henry Moss, Ivan Myjer, Elizabeth Randall, Mark Rego, Brian Roche, Susan Schur, Regan Shields, Malcolm Smiley, Jonathan Smith, and Stephen Stowell 1. The Big Uneasy—Hurricane Katrina Relief: Bill Barry, with a bit encouragement from Ivan Myjer, David Hart, and Matthew Bronski, and a lot of technical help from Adam Maguire and the IT folks at Shepley Bulfinch Richardson & Abbott, developed an interactive website devoted to efforts to preserve historic sites damaged by Hurricane Katrina and the flooding in New Orleans. People who had trouble with the previous link should remove the “www:” http://project1.sbra.com/heritageatrisk. The site can also be accessed from the HRC website: http://committees.architects.org/hrc/neworleans.htm. Bill encourages us to try the site. Click the link to register as an “author,” which allows you to post information or thoughts. Bill noted that the canned format for this site is not necessarily intuitive and navigating it isn’t as easy as it could be. If that just compounds your frustration, call Bill at 617-423-1700 x281 or cell: 617-817-3480 for solace and navigational advice. Henry Moss reported that Bill had named preservation revolving funds in New Orleans and Mississippi that he thought would be the most effective recipients of cash donations. [It would be useful to have a good overview of damaged buildings based on recent inspections as well as an idea of how plans for relief efforts and reconstruction are being organized.] The National Trust was an early and articulate advocate for thoughtful response strategies, sending teams of architects and engineers to work with local building owners, building inspectors, and other city and state officials. Back in Washington the Trust has pressed for tax relief, grants, and other incentive programs to guide rehabilitation. 2. Lowell Mill Development: Steve Stowell generously vitiated his family’s typical weekday morning routines in order to talk to our committee about textile mill architecture, infrastructure, and related town planning in Lowell. Henry introduced Steve by noting how seamlessly Lowell regulatory bodies (Steve’s Lowell Historic Board, Lowell’s Planning and Housing Departments, and the Lowell National Historical Park/National Park Service) work together through zoning, historic district guidelines, housing policy, and design review to shape the development of the city. The coordination and like-mindedness among these municipal and federal agencies is extraordinary. Steve, along with Peter Aucella and Chuck Parrott of the NPS have helped to shape and manage these services in exemplary ways in the years since the creation of the Lowell National Historical Park. The good work in Lowell continues: In July of this year, the Lowell City Council created eight new districts for review of demolition and new construction as a result of grassroots community-based citizen petitions. Steve’s past includes teaching community education courses through UMass/Lowell about the city’s architecture and history, and its transformations as a mill technology evolved. This is the URL for the lesson plan Steve developed: http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/twhp/wwwlps/lessons/21boott/21boott.htm Lowell’s mills and overall system of textile production were unusual at the time in that all aspects of cloth production were mechanized. The approach in Rhode Island mills (which predate Lowell) involved the “putting out” system: spinning was mechanized; weaving, done on handlooms in peoples’ homes, was not. The mechanized and central portion of the 1793 Slater Mill was semi-rural in its setting and the buildings were extensions of residential and barn construction, with clapboarded exteriors and plastered ceilings. The Rhode Island predecessors were clapboard or stone, but very seldom brick. Power transmission was based upon clumsy gears and shafts, more like gristmills and sawmills. In Lowell, leather drive belts were introduced. Francis Cabot Lowell had toured British mills around 1810, in an early case of industrial espionage. With his pilfered knowledge of English industrial techniques, he and Paul Moody created a mill in Waltham where they tested and refined machinery and techniques. The first Waltham mill was built of brick in 1815 and included a power loom with dimensions that combined with window design and day-lighting considerations to establish a standard mill width of 40’ to 50’. The first Waltham mill was 40’ wide x 90’ long. The next was 150’ long. The limit of power transmission was between 150’ and 160’. This second Waltham mill began to incorporate planning and design features that were to evolve into slow-burning construction: 5” thick floors made up of several layers of planks, heavy timber beams that were left exposed to avoid unseen fire spreading through ceiling voids, and external stair towers. These elegant early mills had tall ‘monitor’ windows to illuminate their upper story; a continuous clerestory window band, with nearly a gambrel roof section. Most of these were altered after electric light was introduced, but two examples survive in Laconia, N.H. and another in Methuen. The mills in Waltham were sited to take advantage of a 10’ fall in the Charles River. After the ‘pilot program’ in Waltham proved successful, the search was on for a much larger site with greater power source (larger fall in a river). Lowell and his collaborators found their ideal site at the Pawtucket Falls in East Chelmsford, which falls 32’ over a one mile course around a convenient bend in the powerful Merrimack River, at what was then inexpensive farmland. One side of the river provided the site where Lowell and his associates planned a series of canal works and then created the industrial town, named in honor of Lowell after his early death (in 1820). In the 1790’s, the Pawtucket Canal was constructed as a transportation canal that connected the inland to Newburyport. The town of Lowell was conceived as neatly organized industrial buildings set in verdant parkland – the Machine in the Garden. With the economic success and bewilderingly rapid expansion of Lowell, this spatial model was quickly lost, as Lowell was transformed into a dense, industrial city. See Thomas Bender’s Toward an Urban Vision for an evocative discussion of the broader implications of Lowell’s spatial transformation. By 1836, the old Pawtucket Canal was transformed into a conduit for water power and widened to feed subsequent canals. The Merrimack Mill (demolished) was the first to take advantage of the full 32’ fall at Pawtucket. A dam in the river fed canals with drops that directly powered water wheels (a ‘fall and direct drive’ system). By the 1850’s, these canals conveyed water to highly engineered turbines. The canals were finicky to deal with as a power source: flood, drought, and ice all brought complications and difficulties to the mill operators. Keen to protect their significant investment, the same company of investors bought and controlled the Merrimack all the way up to its head source at Lake Winnipesaukee! Each mill was owned by a separate corporation, but the corporate shareholders overlapped from one mill to another and realized their mutual interests. Early on, investors bought all sites that could work well with waterpower. The mills of Lawrence and Manchester were owned by many of the same people. Later, the same companies began to create new textile mills in the southern states. The widespread current notion that the textile industry moved South simply to avoid well-organized unions and gain cheaper labor is, at best, a gross oversimplification. Other primary reasons for the shift included cost efficiency of moving closer to the source of raw material (cotton fields), and more up-to-date technology. Steve showed an excellent series of historic photographs and drawings that depict the evolution of Lowell mills as Paul Moody’s belt drive system was installed in separate buildings, held apart for natural fire breaks, as at the Boott Cotton Mills, where four separate structures were built in a row. Some of the first fire sprinkler systems in the U.S. (not automatic) were installed in Lowell mills in the 1850’s. As sprinklers and other fire suppression and containment systems became practical, the spaces between these free-standing mills were filled with more production space. “Picker Houses,” where impurities such as twigs were removed from bales of ginned cotton, continued to be separate structures, since they constituted an egregious fire hazard (the violent process of metal blades violently ripping apart and separating bales created lots of sparks in a room filled with cotton!). While early Lowell systems for powering machinery were ‘fall and direct drive’ waterwheels, power systems later became water turbines supplemented with steam, and eventually became all steam in the 20th century. Early monitor windows in steeply pitched roofs were replaced by upper story additions and flat roofs. Additions were built using contemporary architectural styles. Italianate segmental arches with elaborate brick window hoods were built above stacks of Federal 12/12 windows with flat granite lintels. Buildings were connected and courtyards were densely filled with fire hose sheds, freight railway tracks, bridges and counting houses. Devastating floods were often followed by rapid reconstruction and transformation. With steam power came tall chimneys and more infill of the spaces between buildings, producing densely built-up mill yard complexes. Steve showed pictures that illustrate changes at the Boott Mills from 1830 to 1990 and described the state of mill rehabilitation in Lowell today. Eighty percent of Lowell’s mills are now rehabbed or about to be. Four chimneys have been restored. Two major interpretive centers, run by the National Park Service, now exist to support education and tourism. The museum at the Boott Mill has a floor of working power looms making a deafening clatter in ghostly isolation—no mill girls, no Irish children, no French-Canadians, no Vietnamese or Cambodian laborers. It’s a rare National Park site where all visitors are issued earplugs before entering. Steve is master of his material and presented with a forceful clarity born of long practice and commitment to preserving the best of Lowell’s past as an agent for urban growth, change, and revitalization. 3. APT Halifax: Elizabeth Randall, Ivan Myjer, Susan Schur were the bon vivants who could report on after-hours shenanigans in this melancholic port city. Elizabeth portrayed Bill Barry as an accomplished dancer (patterned after John Travolta’s Aristocat moves in Pulp Fiction) and gave a guide to bars where the whole place sang sea shanties. Ivan and Henry mentioned some of the technical sessions including Ivan’s own new thoughts on old gravestones and Henry’s account of a special workshop on Sustainability and Historic Buildings where Jean Carroon was one of the organizers. 4. State Tax Credit: Albert Rex, Jim Igoe, and other voices have been directed at legislators who might vote for raising the cap on the State Historic Tax Credit from $10 Million to $50 Million. [The cap was raised to $30 Million and Secretary of State Galvin is trying to increase it with an amendment that will be voted in early November.]
H.H. Richardson’s Brookline House: Its History, Current Status & Future Prospects By Allan Galper 8: 00 a.m., Thursday, November 10, 2005 The Architects' Building 52 Broad Street, 5th floor, Boston, Massachusetts
Henry Moss, Matthew Bronski, and Sara Wermiel co-leaders and scribes
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