PreservationNation

If there’s such a thing as a preservation superhero, I think we just found one.

Becky Anderson bought and restored her first old house in Burlington, Iowa, in 1994. Then, in 1998, she bought and restored the house next door. In 2000, she tried to buy another house, but lost it in a bidding war. In 2001, she saw a for-sale sign at a ramshackle hilltop Italianate, crawled through a broken bay window to check it out, and proceeded to buy, completely renovate and restore it, and move in.

City Councilmember and developer Becky Anderson in her element (left); and looking over the city of Burlington from her restored Italianate home (right). (Photos: Steve Frevert and Becky Anderson)

Recognize her story? I know I do. Preservation can be an addicting hobby. Fix up one place and pretty soon you want to fix up another. For Becky Anderson, the hobby didn’t stop with houses. In 2008, her daughter, a local real estate agent, told her about the Hedge Building, a Victorian Gothic main street commercial building built in the 1880s that was on the market. Anderson remembers, “The amount of original woodwork and detail in the building was amazing. I was thinking, ‘could I take this on?’”

With the help of Federal and State Historic Preservation Tax Credits, and a tenant (her own financial services company) ready and willing to take office space on the first floor, pieces started to fall in place. “We moved into our new offices in February 2009, with the front of the building still not completed. The building had been a men’s clothing store and the storefront had been drastically altered in the 1940s. It took another eight months to recreate a limestone storefront similar to the original.”

Installing the recreated limestone storefront at the Hedge Building. (Photos: Steve Frevert)

Remember: preservation superhero. Always moving, always saving. Since 2005, Becky Anderson has also been president of the Capitol Theater Foundation, a group formed to save and rehab the 1937 Art Deco jewel in downtown Burlington. In 2010 the group was awarded at $1 million grant from I-JOBS, an Iowa state initiative to fund local infrastructure projects. But Anderson is quick to take a back seat: “I have just been one of many who have worked on this project.” The Capitol Theater is expected to open in May.

Meanwhile, she was elected to the Burlington City Council last fall and is currently working on another historic building restoration downtown. After hearing about the projects she’s worked on, I knew I needed to raise the bat signal and talk to her in person. (more…)