Preservation Magazine

The bulging wall of a 1721 house in New Paltz, N.Y., has been repaired with the help of preservation-minded volunteers.

Last month, volunteers from a French group and two U.S. nonprofits re-plastered the repaired wall of the Jean Hasbrouck House, which has been open as a public museum since 1899.

The wall repair project won a $250,000 matching grant from Save America's Treasures, a partnership between the National Park Service and the National Trust, in 2003. Two years later, workers began shoring up the wall as part of a complete restoration.

The Hasbrouck House is one of a collection of stone houses built by 12 French Huguenot families who founded New Paltz in 1678, now part of a National Historic Landmark district.

The seven volunteers found their way to the house through the Heritage Conservation Network, based in Boulder, Colo., New York-based Preservation Volunteers and the 100-year-old French organization REMPART.

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When the artists moved out of a 124-year-old warehouse in Omaha, a restaurant moved in. The Old Mattress Factory Bar and Grill, under restoration now, will open in the two-story building in November.

“Watching it transform into the bar and grill has been fascinating, and it will hopefully be a popular destination for Omaha residents and visitors as well,” Jenny Peters, spokesperson for the investors, said in an e-mail.

The 16,000-square-foot building began as a 3,500-square-foot grocery store in 1883, when Omaha was still a growing railroad town. Stabrie Grocery closed in 1894, and several bars and saloons inhabited the building until 1915, when the building became a wholesale grocer's warehouse. The Central Mattress Co. occupied the building from 1945 to 2001, when it housed an art studio.

Its new owners, local investors, hope to get the building listed on the National Register, which would help finance the $1.8 million project with tax credits. A hearing with the state historic preservation office is scheduled for Sept. 21.

"There is a surge of redevelopment in urban areas across the nation that have been neglected since the 1960s, especially in the Midwest," says architect Chris Jansen of Alley Poyner Macchietto Architecture, which is overseeing the project.

The restaurant will have a warehouse look. "The building will keep its heavy timber framing and masonry, and even the original signage will remain," Jansen says. - Leah Webster

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The Ohio building that was the headquarters for codebreakers during World War II is coming down.

The University of Dayton is moving forward with its plans to redevelop the 11-acre riverfront site. Workers began removing crown moulding, limestone art deco details, and bricks from Building 26 last week; the university will donate them to Dayton History for a future exhibit in a nearby park. Building 26 will be gone by early 2008, according to university spokeswoman Teri Rizvi.

"When it became clear that the building was coming down, our board wanted to make sure that the story wasn't lost," said Brady Kress, CEO and president of Dayton History, in a statement. "We want people to understand, remember, and get excited about the kind of world-changing events that happened in Dayton, Ohio."

In 1943, National Cash Register Company engineers led by Joseph Desch invented the machine that broke the Enigma code.

The state office of historic preservation ruled in May that a steel facade added to the sandstone building made it ineligible for the National Register of Historic Places, paving the way for the university to move forward with demolition.

Because the National Cash Register Company's 50-acre parcel is considered a brownfield, a Clean Ohio Revitalization fund grant is funding the $2.5 million project.

According to a university-commissioned study by Martin-Beachler Architects, it would cost $3 million to demolish the three additions to Building 26 and restore its original art deco facade.

"I respect the passion of those who wanted to save the building," Daniel Curran, University of Dayton president, said in a statement. "I also appreciate the support of others who recognized that this building lost its historical integrity decades ago and know that as a tuition-driven university, UD cannot justify spending millions of dollars to save it."

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A 200-year-old Pennsylvania farmhouse that was supposed to be incorporated into a new housing development is gone, despite a developer's promise to save the William Moore House.

Pulte Homes used a track hoe to remove part of the stone house last month, severely damaging it in the process.

Now the planning commission of East Brandywine may require Pulte to rebuild the damaged farmhouse.

Pulte's signed agreement with the township, a settlement to approve the 1,029-house development, stated that the farmhouse would have become part of a clubhouse for the Applecross golf course. In the agreement, the company said it would preserve the foundation and 35 percent of the first and second floors of the building, and the township approved the partial demolition plan.

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There is no denying that Buffalo has seen better days. In the past 50 years, the city has lost some of its key industries, and, consequently, nearly half of its population. The result: tens of thousands of abandoned buildings.

Last July, Barbara Reed, the mother of a firefighter who was seriously injured while putting out an arson fire, wrote a letter to the Buffalo News offering a "mother's cure" for the problem: Take Down a House. She challenged the citizens of Buffalo to donate their own money to tear down the houses that the city could not afford to demolish. "I'm angry as to why this had to happen," she writes. "The equation is simple. Old houses plus fire (arson) equals potential danger and tragedy."

Reed's letter gives a voice to some residents' overwhelming sense of frustration as the city has grappled to find a solution to the problem. Since 1995, the city has demolished nearly 5,000 abandoned structures in an effort to curb blight and arson, but it estimates that there are as many as 10,000 more that need to be demolished.

Last month, the city announced a "Five by Five" program it hopes will bring its vacancy rate closer to five percent within five years by demolishing 1,000 buildings a year, a rate close to three demolitions a day.

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