[MassHistPres] MassHistPres Digest, Vol 39, Issue 20
Joanna_Doherty at nps.gov
Joanna_Doherty at nps.gov
Tue May 26 12:28:04 EDT 2009
Jane:
Mendon passed the Community Preservation Act, which provides a source of
funding for historic preservation projects like the restoration of the
cobbler's shop. I'd get in touch with your local Community Preservation
Committee to find out how to request funds for this project. You could
request funds to hire a consultant or contractor with experience working on
historic buildings to assess the condition of the building, make
restoration recommendations and develop cost estimates prior to undertaking
any physical work. Then, once you have a better sense of the scale of the
project and how much it will cost, you could request funds to actually do
the restoration.
Joanna
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Joanna M. Doherty, Community Planner
John H. Chafee Blackstone River Valley
National Heritage Corridor
One Depot Square
Woonsocket, RI 02895
(401) 762-0250 x14
(401) 762-0530 fax
joanna_doherty at nps.gov
masshistpres-requ
est at cs.umb.edu
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Subject
05/26/2009 11:51 MassHistPres Digest, Vol 39, Issue
AM 20
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Today's Topics:
1. cobbler's shop (Jane Lowell)
2. Re: cobbler's shop (Jack Authelet)
3. workshops (Marcia Starkey)
4. Tour of the Somerville Milk Row Cemetery tonight, 6:30PM
(BMangum411 at aol.com)
5. Boston Early Modern (Ttorwig at aol.com)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 22:36:25 -0400
From: "Jane Lowell" <jel42 at comcast.net>
Subject: [MassHistPres] cobbler's shop
To: <masshistpres at cs.umb.edu>
Message-ID: <FC605A8F16B34DF9A0D29919FD2AC3B9 at IBMT41SO11897>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
The Town of Mendon was deeded a Cobbler's Shop by a 40 B developer. It was
built c. 1850 and the Mendon Historical Commission would like to restore
it. The roof needs shingling, although no daylight can be seen, there are
panes missing from the windows and there is a slight amount of rot on the
floor boards, a couple of rafters, and one sill. It is a two story
structure consisting of the main shop and two rooms with dirt floors below.
The floor joists seem ok. All of us on the Historical Commission are new
at this. Of course funding is almost nonexistant. Does anyone have
suggestions on how to proceed? We really don't want to make any grave
errors. Regards, Jane Lowell, Mendon Historical Commissioner
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Message: 2
Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 23:20:00 -0400
From: "Jack Authelet" <jauthelet at comcast.net>
Subject: Re: [MassHistPres] cobbler's shop
To: "'Jane Lowell'" <jel42 at comcast.net>, <masshistpres at cs.umb.edu>
Message-ID: <003601c9ddb0$dabdbc60$90393520$@net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Jane,
You have already made one major decision that is very much in your favor,
and that is to ask for help and suggestions when in unfamiliar territory.
My humble suggestion, which has worked many times over, would be to:
1. Do you research. When was it built, by whom, anything you can find
to build a case for saving the structure.
2. Bring the public on board. Use your local media, web page,
whatever
means you have to share the story, publish photographs, build the case for
preservation.
3. Establish ownership (municipal or a non-profit group) for tax
purposes.
4. If the structure is eligible for National Register listing, it
might quality for matching funds.
5. Invite local contractors - those with expertise - to join you in
your project, giving them recognition for donated time and labor.
6. Set up a special fund to which the public can donate, make
memorial
gifts, whatever.
7. Establish an end use for the structure when the restoration is
complete.
I believe your chances for success improve each time you are able to
broaden
the base of people willing to 'buy' into the project with their time,
talent, donations, whatever.
You can make this work.
Jack Authelet
Foxborough Town Historian
From: masshistpres-bounces at cs.umb.edu
[mailto:masshistpres-bounces at cs.umb.edu] On Behalf Of Jane Lowell
Sent: Monday, May 25, 2009 10:36 PM
To: masshistpres at cs.umb.edu
Subject: [MassHistPres] cobbler's shop
The Town of Mendon was deeded a Cobbler's Shop by a 40 B developer. It was
built c. 1850 and the Mendon Historical Commission would like to restore
it.
The roof needs shingling, although no daylight can be seen, there are panes
missing from the windows and there is a slight amount of rot on the floor
boards, a couple of rafters, and one sill. It is a two story structure
consisting of the main shop and two rooms with dirt floors below. The
floor
joists seem ok. All of us on the Historical Commission are new at this.
Of
course funding is almost nonexistant. Does anyone have suggestions on how
to proceed? We really don't want to make any grave errors. Regards, Jane
Lowell, Mendon Historical Commissioner
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Message: 3
Date: Sun, 24 May 2009 14:02:23 -0500
From: "Marcia Starkey" <mdstarkey at crocker.com>
Subject: [MassHistPres] workshops
To: "MassHistPres" <masshistpres at cs.umb.edu>
Message-ID: <7F570D064FB541DD9DA73EB9501E5AA0 at Marcia>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"
Hello,
As you know, workshops on a variety of topics are being held across the
Commonwealth for local historical commissioners. My experience has been
that these are very helpful both with assessing how specific preservation
tools fit with needs and community priorities in Greenfield, and as an
opportunity to ask (sometimes wierd) questions.
I also wonder if these workshops should include a system of recognition or
"accreditation" for this municipal training which can result in enhanced
local government status, leading to more weight.
Conservation Commissions, Planning and Zoning Boards, Building and Health
Departments as well as Assessors have standards and training. Why not HCs
and LHDCs?
Marcia Starkey, Greenfield HC
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Message: 4
Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 11:24:34 EDT
From: BMangum411 at aol.com
Subject: [MassHistPres] Tour of the Somerville Milk Row Cemetery
tonight, 6:30PM
To: somartscouncil at yahoogroups.com, masshistpres at cs.umb.edu
Message-ID: <d54.50546437.374d63b2 at aol.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
The City of Somerville and Historic Somerville, Inc. will continue to
celebrate May as Preservation Month with a tour of historic Milk Row
Cemetery,
1804- about 1900. This cemetery was founded by Samuel Tufts on his farm
in
what was then Charlestown. It is quite small, but contains an
extraordinary
memorial to those who died from Somerville in the Civil War. The memorial
was dedicated in 1863, prior to the war's end.
Milk Row Cemetery is located in Somerville, at 439 Somerville Avenue, next
to Demoulas' Market Basket. The tour will last about an hour. We will
meet at the front gate.
Hope to see you there!
Barbara Mangum
President
Historic Somerville, Inc.
**************
A Good Credit Score is 700 or
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Message: 5
Date: Sun, 24 May 2009 08:18:10 EDT
From: Ttorwig at aol.com
Subject: [MassHistPres] Boston Early Modern
To: Ttorwig at aol.com
Message-ID: <bd1.54ee7819.374a9502 at aol.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
_http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/05/24/a_look_a
t_the_hub_of_early_moderns/?page=full_
(
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/05/24/a_look_at_the_hub_of_early_moderns/?page=full
)
The Observer
A look at the hub of early moderns
Bauhaus design found a following in Greater Boston
By _Sam Allis_
(
http://search.boston.com/local/Search.do?s.sm.query=Sam+Allis&camp=localsearch:on:byline:art
)
Globe Columnist / May 24, 2009
Boston has been accused of many things, but being a hotbed of
distinguished modern architecture is not one of them.
Chicago, L.A., and Houston, yes, but not the Hub of the Solar System. For
the longest time, the city's low skyline was defined by the charming,
tiresome, red brick of our Colonial past. This was our conceit. We were
proud
of it and visitors swooned.
In the 1980s, we saw a spasm begin of forgettable modern buildings in
Boston. I'm thinking of ones like One Devonshire Place, the generic
downtown
structure of glass and steel. Most of our modern office buildings are
mediocre. The notable exception is the John Hancock Tower, which everyone
excoriated when it went up as a blot on our fragile sense of scale.
But Greater Boston turns out to have been, along with greater Los Angeles,
the center of early modernism in this country. Who knew? The Observer sure
didn't until Keith Morgan, who teaches the history of architecture at
Boston University, took me on a tour last week to prove it.
Early modernism was the revolution in design that ran from the early 1930s
through the mid-1950s, influenced heavily by the Bauhaus school in Germany
founded by Walter Gropius in 1919. He also founded the influential The
Architects Collaborative in Cambridge in 1945.
The Bauhaus design is known for its simple white facades, cubic,
flat-roofed buildings with great use of ribbon windows. But early
modernism here
also drew from Frank Lloyd Wright and modern movements in Europe - thus
appropriating the broader term "International Style." Whatever you called
it,
H.H. Richardson it was not.
One of the finest examples of Bauhaus in the area is the Gibbs House at 6
Chilton Street in Brookline, amid rows of Tudor revivalist brick homes.
Dr
Frederick and Erna Gibbs vacationed in Germany in the 1930s and were
smitten by the Bauhaus design. They returned with a mission to replicate
here
what they saw there. Architect Samuel Glazer designed a beauty - a
substantial home with white concrete facade, flat-roofed, full of square
glass blocks
that must have stunned everyone else on Chilton.
I say "Greater Boston" about early modernism because most of the prime
examples are located in the suburbs north and west of the city - places
like
Lexington, Belmont, and Lincoln. Lexington has more examples of early
modernism than any other community, says Morgan. "One project spawned
another,"
he says.
Morgan showed me the Lexington enclaves of Six Moon Hill Road, built in
the late 1940s, and the larger Peacock Farm development, begun in the
early
1950s. Also the smaller Belmont community on Snake Hill Road, where the
noted architect Carl Koch designed nine homes, including one for himself,
in
the early 1940s. These are small wooden, flat-roofed houses in earth tones
and a lot of glass to merge with landscape.
All of these suburban enclaves were designed to accommodate young
professionals and their families entering postwar society. We're talking
artists,
academics, fellow architects, engineers - people on tight budgets - who
wanted to live in nature. These houses look small today, inside and out.
The
Gropius house in Lincoln, a National Historic Landmark, is all of 2,400
square feet. I found it claustrophobic. But then small houses are in vogue
now,
as we move to what architect and early modernism preservationist Gary
Wolff
calls "the not so big house" with a small carbon footprint.
At least these early moderns improved on the traditional Cape house, a
small, depressing structure notorious for dark, cramped rooms, low
ceilings,
and tiny windows. The modern house had more open space, better light. What
space it had was flexible, and linked with the environment. "They were
very
Yankee," says Morgan. "They were cheap, small 20th-century equivalents of
the houses of the first settlers."
I wouldn't have looked twice at the aging wooden houses on Snake Hill Road
had Morgan not explained their significance. By now, they appear
nondescript and insubstantial. Many of the early moderns look a bit
rundown, and,
says Morgan, maintenance can be a problem with them. Beyond that, the
early
moderns became victims of their own success and increasingly produced
yawns.
The early modern movement didn't stop in the mid-1950s so much as lose its
early purity. It got modified, endlessly, over time. For example, deck
houses, whose bloodlines run straight back to the early modern movement,
became as common as the Golden Arches of McDonald's
Or worse. In 1964, Peabody Terrace, the ghastly modern housing for married
Harvard students along Memorial Drive appeared, the progeny of the early
moderns. Morgan tells me it actually won awards. I speak for many in
declaring it one of the major eyesores in the Western Hemisphere.
And then came the challenge to the early moderns in the 1970s by the
preservationist juggernaut that arose to protect much older buildings of
historical significance. It remains much easier to gather support to
preserve an
early 18th-century home than an early modern one appreciated by a relative
few.
Still, Boston wasn't the flop I assumed when it comes to modern
architecture. It was an incubator of early modernism. But like so much
else in the
city and its surroundings, someone has to tell you it's there in the first
place.
Sam Allis can be reached at _allis at globe.com_ (mailto:allis at globe.com) .
? Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.
**************An Excellent Credit Score is 750. See Yours in Just 2 Easy
Steps!
(
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