General

It announced this past week that a house in Holy Cross, which is receiving one of the Lieutenant Governor’s Historic Building Recovery Grants, will be renovated in the 2007-08 season of the PBS series “This Old House." The National Trust for Historic Preservation has been instrumental in lobbying with Lieutenant Governor Mitch Landrieu for these grant funds, which for Louisiana total over $20 million.

The ten New Orleans “This Old House” episodes will air in early 2008. Since the series will also include segments about the context of the house renovation, viewers can expect to see other work going on in Holy Cross, like that of the PRC’s Operation Comeback and Rebuilding Together and the Trust’s Home Again! New Orleans program.

Walter Gallas is director of the New Orleans Field Office.

• More Posts (104)

I visited the warehouse operated by our partner the Preservation Resource Center this week to see what kinds of materials are coming in from the selective salvage of buildings which the city had declared an imminent structural threat and slated for demolition. These were buildings which, according to FEMA’s historic preservation staff and the State Historic Preservation Office, still retained features making them contributing buildings in a National Register district.

Materials from a total of 53 houses have been salvaged through Friday, with the contractor telling the PRC warehouse manager that they will begin on another group next week. The materials include numerous mantels, complete windows with casings, decorative brackets, interior doors, front doors, wooden screen doors, French doors, shutters, and some interior and exterior light fixtures. This is already becoming a source for the PRC’s and the Trust’s Home Again projects. We fought long and hard to get FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers (which is in charge of demolition and debris removal through the end of this month) to come up with a plan to at least save some elements of these structures, which otherwise would have been completely lost.

Walter Gallas is director of the New Orleans Field Office.

• More Posts (104)

Two years after Hurricane Katrina, the need for volunteer help in New Orleans remains strong, and one of our local partners, Rebuilding Together, is seeking assistance to rebuild houses for low-income elderly and disabled residents.

Volunteers may be performing tasks such as painting, scraping, landscaping, dry-walling, taping, cleaning, installing appliances, and tiling. Instruction is given for unfamiliar tasks, and no volunteers are expected to do any job they are uncomfortable performing. All work is supervised by skilled Rebuilding Together staff members and water, refreshments and first aid kits are always onsite.

All volunteers must be 18 or older. Click here to see a schedule, which includes dates and participation costs. If you are able to help out, please contact Sean Vissar by email at svissar [at] prcno [dot] org or by phone at (504) 636-3076. Click here for information for low-cost volunteer accommodations.

Updated to add the schedule link.

• More Posts (104)

Last week, the Trust and American Express announced the 25 Chicagoland sites that will be competing to win a million dollars in preservation funding though the Partners in Preservation program. While the sites participating in the contest were determined by grant applications, the winner -- or winners -- will be determined by public voting. (If it works for pop singers, it can work for historic buildings, right?)

Not sure which site gets your vote? If you're in the Chicago area, there's a special Partners in Preservation open house this weekend (September 15-16), where staff and volunteers will be available to talk about the sites and their preservation needs. And if you're not, the information is, of course, on the web.

Voting is open until October 10, and anyone who has registered online can vote daily for their favorite site. Winners will be announced in November.

And many thanks to Chicagoist, for covering the competition!

Sarah Heffern is the social media strategist for the National Trust’s Public Affairs team. While she embraces all things online and pixel-centric, she’s also a hard-core building hugger, having fallen for preservation in a fifth grade “Built Environment” class.

• Twitter
|
• More Posts (169)