Author Archive

This Treasure Matters: Taking a Walk With “Little Women”

Posted on: March 10th, 2010 by Jason Clement

 

Summer at Orchard House.

You’d be hard pressed to find a young girl who does not know Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy.

Don’t worry; we’re not talking about some new pop phenomenon or even Dancing with the Stars; we’re talking about four sisters – four little women – that seem to have a permanent place in the lives of American adolescents.

It’s true – whether on screen or on paper, Little Women lives on today. And, thanks to Save America’s Treasures, so does Orchard House – the historic home in Concord, MA where Louisa May Alcott, the author of the beloved series, lived and wrote this story that transcends generations.

In 2000, Alcott’s Orchard House received a $400,000 federal Save America’s Treasures challenge grant, which was met with an additional $150,000 in private contributions. This much-needed funding addressed a variety of structural damages and abnormalities that had come to plague the iconic home where Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy came to life. And the restoration didn’t just save a place that our country simply couldn’t stand to lose – it created 31 local and regional jobs for individuals within 14 different trades and professions.

Today, the proof is in the eyes of the thousands of visitors who come to walk through the home where Little Women came to be – this treasure matters, and this program works.

Save America's Treasures, Preserve America, and the other programs cut or underfunded by the proposed federal budget do more than preserve our country's rich heritage – they put Americans to work. Learn more about the National Trust's campaign to restore this critical funding.

Jason Clement

Jason Clement

Jason Lloyd Clement is the associate director for strategic campaigns at the National Trust, which is really just a fancy way of saying he’s a professional place lover. For him, any day that involves a bike, a camera, and a gritty historic neighborhood is basically the best day ever.

A Christmas Miracle for an 11 Most Save

Posted on: December 28th, 2009 by Jason Clement

 

The newly-restored exterior of Mission San Miguel Arcangel.

The newly-restored exterior of Mission San Miguel Arcangel.

Six years ago, a 6.5-magnitude earthquake rocked central California just days before Christmas. While hundreds of buildings were rattled and ravaged, the extensive damaged done to one historic site was especially heartbreaking.

The 16th of California’s 21 famed missions, Mission San Miguel Arcangel housed the state’s only surviving example of original Spanish Colonial artwork. The elaborate murals were painted in 1821 by local Salinan Indians under the direction of Esteban Munras, a Spanish amateur painter who ran a trading business in nearby Monterey. The quake not only put their integrity in jeopardy, but caused millions of dollars in structural damage to the five-foot-thick adobe walls that they covered.

As the dust settled, the future looked bleak to parishioners struggling to protect their church from permanent closure. The landmark was placed on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s 2006 listing of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places, and in October of this year, good news finally came; after a $10 million seismic retrofit, Mission San Miguel reopened – threatened Munras murals preserved.

And with the holidays, this story gets even sweeter. Amidst all the seasonal news clutter chronicling hectic air travel and no-holds-barred mall parking lots, a heartwarming story appeared in the Los Angeles Times on Christmas Day reporting that, for the first time in six years, Mission San Miguel parishioners would celebrate the holidays in their historic church.

Here’s just one highlight from the piece:

'It's like a rebirth,' said Reimi Campomenosi, a parish member who was alone in the church watering the Christmas trees when the quake hit that Dec. 22. 'The roof was lifted up and debris came raining down. Afterward, I turned off the gas and electricity, and went around blowing out the candles.' Last week, choir director Campomenosi played the church organ at a Sunday Mass – the first time she'd sat down at the instrument, which had been damaged, in six years. Services in the church resumed only a couple of months ago. Until then, a dwindling band of parishioners would worship in the local senior center, in a cramped museum room or outdoors, on blankets and under umbrellas.

You can catch the full text of the article online to learn more about Mission San Miguel and its successful preservation. Also, be sure to visit PreservationNation.org to learn more about America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places – a program that has identified more than 200 threatened historic treasures since 1988, and that is currently accepting nominations for 2010.

Jason Clement

Jason Clement

Jason Lloyd Clement is the associate director for strategic campaigns at the National Trust, which is really just a fancy way of saying he’s a professional place lover. For him, any day that involves a bike, a camera, and a gritty historic neighborhood is basically the best day ever.

Welcome to Window Wednesdays

Posted on: September 16th, 2009 by Jason Clement 2 Comments

 

Window Wednesday

Photo by Carla Zambelli (Original Image)

As far as days of the week go, Wednesdays have a pretty good rep.

They've never been labeled as "manic" in a pop song, and they aren't the muse of a certain restaurant chain that's decked with license plates, mounted moose heads, and other pieces of faux flair. Nope, Wednesdays are down to Earth and delightfully neutral, falling strategically between "Oh no!" and "Oh yes!" Something more like, "Oh, sure, why not?" Easy come, easy go – what's not to love?

Well, starting today, we're giving you one more reason to look forward to this cozy little place in the middle of the road. Welcome to Window Wednesdays!

As preservationists, we all know that original windows matter. From dramatic Gothic masterpieces to the colorful details of stained glass, these gems are instrumental in telling the special stories of our older and historic homes and buildings. For this reason (and so many more), we've launched a Weatherization Guide to show homeowners how they can hang on to their unique windows and still meet their goals for going green and achieving greater energy efficiency. Each Wednesday, we'll take that a step further and inject a little TLC into the blogosphere by spotlighting a user-submitted photo of an older or historic window for the world to see.

Quick and to the point – just like Wednesdays.

And, well, because "Window Tuesdays" didn't quite have the same ring to it.

Bookmark our Weatherization Guide as a resource for making your older or historic home more eco-friendly without compromising its character. Want to give your favorite window a moment in the limelight? Grab your digital camera and join our Love Your Historic Windows photo group on Flickr for a chance to be next week's spotlight.

Jason Clement

Jason Clement

Jason Lloyd Clement is the associate director for strategic campaigns at the National Trust, which is really just a fancy way of saying he’s a professional place lover. For him, any day that involves a bike, a camera, and a gritty historic neighborhood is basically the best day ever.

Billy Ray Cyrus, Weiner Dog Races, Bean Bag Tournaments, Steel Pan Bands…& Fireworks

Posted on: July 6th, 2009 by Jason Clement

 

main_street

Another Fourth of July has come and gone, and as I do my best to keep it together during the always-grueling Monday that follows a three-day weekend, I am left with three questions:

1. How is it that mosquitoes consistently find the one area of my ankles that somehow missed the bug spray?

2. Exactly how many treadmill miles do I need to log this afternoon to burn off two hot dogs, chips, a chicken leg, potato salad, baked beans, pasta salad, an ice cream sandwich, and "a few" cold ones?

3. What would the Fourth of July be like without Main Street?

With hometown parades and years of history draped in red, white, and blue, Main Street adds something – a feeling – to the Fourth of July that you just can't get at home with PBS. It is, as my colleague eloquently blogged just before the big day, the perfect backdrop to "reflect on our heritage and to enjoy Americana."

Last week, we put out a call for stories and pictures that capture these amazing Main Street moments. Come to find out, some of you celebrated America's birthday by getting tangled up in a town-wide Twister competition, while others cheered dogs and ducks around the racetrack. And, well, some of you are probably still trying to get "Achy Breaky Heart" out of your heads. Good luck with that.

Regardless of what you did, if it happened on Main Street, we want to hear about it! Visit our Red, White and Blue Main Streets web page, and join others who have shared stories about how they celebrated Independence Day in their neck of the woods. And if you took photos this weekend, consider adding them to our special photo collection. You'll find easy, step-by-step instructions on the same page.

Jason Clement

Jason Clement

Jason Lloyd Clement is the associate director for strategic campaigns at the National Trust, which is really just a fancy way of saying he’s a professional place lover. For him, any day that involves a bike, a camera, and a gritty historic neighborhood is basically the best day ever.

My Montrose: Confessions of a 'This Place Matters' Late Adopter

Posted on: June 18th, 2009 by Jason Clement 6 Comments

 

Montrose Matters

I’ve been on the clock as a full-timer at the National Trust for Historic Preservation for seven months and a little bit of change.

In my mind, that’s hardly a blip on the radar. After all, I recently had to ask a co-worker how to photocopy something (there are strange codes involved), and I still have no clue how snail mail reaches my desk (it magically appears in my chair during Diet Coke runs), much less how to send it myself.

My own hang-ups as a perpetual late adopter aside, if you were to ask Dolores McDonagh, our vice president for membership and one of the loudest cheerleaders on the squad for our This Place Matters campaign, she would say without blinking that seven months is more than enough time to have taken at least one picture in front of a near-and-dear space or place.

She’s absolutely right, and truth be told, I’ve had a plan all along. For me, my first stab at documenting the places that tell my story simply had to happen at the place that matters the most – 1,412 miles away from my home today at the corner of Westheimer and Yoakum in the Houston gayborhood of Montrose.

A week ago today, while on a tour of my old stomping ground in the Lone Star State, I finally made it happen. Now, you’re probably thinking, “It took seven months and a flight across the country for you to take a photo in front of a wall?” Point taken, but I assure you: that wall is the backdrop to a place that means the world to me.

You see, I attended high school in one of the countless master planned communities that are inorganically grown on Houston’s fringe. Dubbed First Colony, this massive development straddles land that was among the first to be granted to Stephen F. Austin in his quest to colonize Texas. Now, with a fascinating lineage like that, it’s easy to imagine there being a historical marker every fifteen feet or so. Instead, the suits who engineered First Colony took a big bite out of the sprawl playbook and mechanically spit out a non-place where the pioneering efforts of the Father of Texas are commemorated by miles of impervious nothingness, trees that grow in straight lines, and “neighborhoods” that are marketed on billboards by income level.

One Sunday afternoon, a sixteen-year-old version of myself received a jaw-dropping AOL instant message from a handsome guy by the name of Leo, a fellow junior at my non-place high school who had recently come out. It was a point-blank invitation to an afternoon in Montrose. I knew immediately that his friendly e-vite was predicated on two weeks of rumors that had started and then swirled after my screen name was spotted in a gay chat room. However, in that moment, denial was suddenly not my gut reaction. With the cursor and my heart pulsing at near-equal intervals, I remember looking down at the little yellow AOL man who was running – sprinting – in an endless loop at the bottom of our instant message window. He just kept going and going and going…

... Read More →

Jason Clement

Jason Clement

Jason Lloyd Clement is the associate director for strategic campaigns at the National Trust, which is really just a fancy way of saying he’s a professional place lover. For him, any day that involves a bike, a camera, and a gritty historic neighborhood is basically the best day ever.