Year: 2015

We have officially kicked off finals week with the Historic Structures Report class presentation this morning. The class has spent the semester researching, studying, and analyzing the Wideman-Hanvey Homestead that dates back to the Revolutionary War. The family of the current owners purchased the property in 1888 and the house and accompanying land have remained in the family ever since. Fourteen members of the Hanvey family traveled to Charleston this morning to attend our students’ presentation and learn more about their family homestead. It was a special morning and great start to the week.

Honorable Mention Awardees:

First Place Awardees:

The Advanced Conservation Class led by Frances Ford submitted an abstract on their conservation work at Old Sheldon Church in Yemassee, South Carolina. This week the abstract was accepted and the class was invited to present their findings at the 2016 Historic Mortars Conference in Santorini, Greece next October.

Hybrid methodologies for mortar analysis, a digital view from the Carolina Lowcountry
Abstract: Emerging digital documentation technologies facilitate conservation assessments of historic sites and structures. What we term ‘hybrid methodologies’, these approaches merge traditional onsite inspection and conservation analyses with the new digital abilities to analyze and visualize historic structures. To explore these new approaches, Clemson conservators undertook concurrent digital documentation and conditions assessment at Old Sheldon Church Ruins in Yemassee, South Carolina.  The site was laser scanned using a FARO Focus 330 system which accurately and efficiently documented both the ruins’ form and existing conditions.  The system merged raw point cloud data with high resolution color photographs, resulting in a colorized 3D model that is accurate within two millimeters.  At the same time conservators identified and notated mortar campaigns through on-site visual inspection. In all, eight separate mortar campaigns were identified that were then mapped onto the 3D model.  Laboratory analysis of samples identified as the earliest lime mortar campaign found on site was conducted.  The laboratory process included standard acid wash, gravimetric and optical microscopy analysis. This hybrid process combines standard analysis and assessment procedures with cutting-edge digital technologies that pushes the field of historic mortar analysis forward.

During the spring 2015 semester, MSHP students in the First Year Preservation Studio assessed the condition of the ruins of the Progressive Club on John’s Island  in Charleston County.  Building on the results of this investigation, Professors Hudgins and Leifeste presented a paper entitled Race and Ruin: The Progressive Club and the Challenge of Preserving a Significant Place with a Tenuous Architecture at the annual meeting of the Southeast Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians on October 15.
 
Now a roofless ruin, the Progressive Club on John’s Island, South Carolina housed a vital community center from 1963 to 1972 that was fundamental to the advancement of the local African American community and important for the Civil Rights Movement nationally.  The “Citizenship School” developed here in response to local needs for literacy training, political empowerment, and employment networking became a model spread throughout the South.  The Progressive Club served basic community needs as a grocery store, childcare center and meeting space, and it and its members provided transportation and lodging opportunities for African Americans traveling during the era of segregated public accommodations.  The founder of the Club, Esau Jenkins, is a notable national figure in the pursuit of civil rights justice.  What Jenkins and his collaborators contributed to the social, cultural, and political transformation of the late twentieth-century South is wildly out of scale with this modest building.  The Progressive Club is, in short, one of those ordinary places where extraordinary people made history in a building now little appreciated for its historical significance and the connection it provides to that history.  How do preservationists and public historians deal with places whose significance resides in intangible contexts and in historic events that left few indelible architectural signatures?  How should preservationists proceed when historically significant places are neither particularly evocative, nor architecturally compelling, nor, in the case of the Progressive Club, especially stable?

The memorialization of ruins in the South Carolina Lowcountry is determined by who cares for them, the sources of the ruin’s significance, the scale, aesthetic qualities and specific conditions of deterioration of the ruin.  Long- tended ruins in the South Carolina Lowcountry include the Bennett Rice Mill Façade, Old Fort Dorchester, Peachtree Plantation, Pon Pon Chapel, and Sheldon Church Ruins.  Each represents a different manner of treatment and interpretation.  Each ruin serves a different role in connecting Lowcountry communities to shared pasts.  These antebellum ruins were raised with materials and by building methods more durable than those used in the construction of the Progressive Club, however.  These architectural differences reflect historical inequities and present contemporary technical challenges.  This aspect of the Progressive Club speaks to larger challenges of preserving late twentieth-century vernacular buildings.

Furthermore, the Progressive Club differs from many other ruins in that the community has declared its intention to preserve and interpret the legacy the ruin embodies.  Should preservation take the form of an emphasis on a living legacy with a reconstruction or replacement building to support the social and programmatic functions under the next generation of the Club or should preservation take the form of stabilization and conservation of the ruins?  The Progressive Club, at this current phase of preservation planning, raises more questions than answers.  In challenging a traditional assumption that architectural value determines preservation treatment, the Preservation Club is a provocative case study of how important historical narratives may live on through remaining architectural fabric whether monumental and mundane.

Second-Year student Meredith Wilson, along with her classmate Michelle Thompson and alumna Amy Elizabeth Uebel, presented the results of the documentation of 59 Church Street, the Thomas Rose House, she coordinated during her summer internship at a gathering of Historic Charleston Foundation staff, historic preservationists, and realtors on September 22.

Following her presentation of how the documentation team assemble for the 59 Church street project carried out its work, Wilson presented full sets of documentation photographs, HABS-level drawings of the houses, and a history of the house to Cathy Forrester, owner of the house, Helen Geer, a member of Historic Charleston Foundation’s board of directors and agent-in-charge of William Means Company, and the Margaretta Childs Archive at Historic Charleston Foundation.  Meredith will be entering her drawings of 59 Church in the 2016 Holland Prize Competition.

The Thomas Rose House is one of Charleston’s oldest surviving eighteenth-century dwellings.  Restored in 1929, the house was later purchased by Connecticut architectural historian Henry Philip Staats and his wife Juliette, both active in the formation of Historic Charleston Foundation.  They and their descendants have owned the house for more than 80 years and maintained it with few changed over that period.  The house is thus a remarkable time capsule of of restoration practice and interior furnishings, an important aspect of this documentation effort.

Second Year student Brent Fortenberry will present a paper entitled “Stone, Timber, and Lime: Combining Archaeological, Architectural, and Conservation Science Research Strategies at the Gardener’s Cottage, Southampton Bermuda” at CHAT, Contemporary and Historical Archaeology in Theory at the University of Sheffield, UK in late October.

ABSTRACT: Scholars from different disciplines often collaborate on the ‘big questions’ of the past, the broad processes of a region, or time period. Still too while crossdisciplinary perspectives are championed by scholars from across the academy often these approaches fall short of productive interdisciplinarity. Far rarer are the moments when scholars from various fields work together on a single site. Such collaborations provide genuine opportunities to push forward our knowledge of the past. One such opportunity took place at the Gardener’s Cottage site in Southampton Bermuda. Here archaeologists, architectural historians, and conservation scientists worker together to better understand the experiences of enslaved African in the site’s rockcut cellar.In doing so they combined approaches to the past that consider material culture, the built environment, spatial patterning, as well as architectural framing and finish. The strength of such an approach is that it envelopes differing ways of knowing and analyzing the material culture in pursuit of a more nuanced understanding of the past. This paper will explore how differing data sets and theoretical perspectives have enriched our understanding of enslaved life at the site and more widely on the island of Bermuda, and in a comparative Atlantic world.

Amber Anderson and Sarah Sanders, both members of the MSHP class of 2015, garnered an Honorable Mention award for their entry in the 2015 Holland Prize, an annual competition open to both students and professionals that  recognizes the best single-sheet measured drawing of an historic site, structure, or landscape prepared to the standards and guidelines of the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), Historic American Engineering Record (HAER), or Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS). The prize is intended to increase awareness, knowledge, and appreciation of historic resources throughout the United States while adding to the permanent HABS, HAER, and HALS collection at the Library of Congress, and to encourage the submission of drawings among professionals and students.  By requiring only a single sheet, the competition challenges the delineator to capture the essence of the site through the presentation of key features that reflect its significance.

Anderson and Sanders submitted documentation drawings of the ruins of Pon Pon Chapel, an eighteenth-century chapel of ease located in Colleton County near Jacksonboro, South Carolina.  This chapel and its graveyard provide a link to early eighteenth-century Anglican activity and the proliferation of chapels of ease through the South Carolina Lowcountry that served the religions needs of the inhabitants of the region’s plantation hinterlands. This project grew out of a documentation assignment in Professor Amalia Leifeste’s Preservation Studio course.

http://www.nps.gov/hdp/competitions/holland_winners.htm

Documentation drawings that the MSHP class of 2015 started during their first semester have won recognition in the Peterson Prize competition.  A student competition of measured drawings, the Charles E. Peterson Prize is presented jointly by the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) of the National Park Service, the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, and the American Institute of Architects. The annual competition, currently in its 33rd year, honors Charles E. Peterson, FAIA (1906-2004), a founder of the HABS program, and is intended to heighten awareness about historic buildings in the United States and to augment the HABS collection of measured drawings at the Library of Congress.

The MSHP entry for 2015 was the Charles Augustus Magwood House at 61-63 Smith Street in Harleston Village, one of Charleston’s historic boroughs.  Recently purchased by a conservation-minded owner, the house is part of an important group constructed in this neighborhood in the first decades of the nineteenth century.  The documentation drawings from which this winning entry were compiled are helping guide the restoration of the house.

Laural Bartlett, MSHP class of 2013 now working as an architectural historian for the CRM firm SEARCH, Inc., presented a paper that summarizes the results of an independent research project at the annual meeting and conference of the Vernacular Architecture Forum in Chicago.

Florida Prison Road Camps: The Architecture of Necessity, Segregation, and Settlement
Laurel Bartlett, MSHP

ABSTRACT:At the turn of the twentieth century most of the Florida interior was still impassable swamp and marshland. The decline of rail transportation, the evolution of the automobile, and the desire for accessibility precipitated the creation of the Florida State Road Department in 1917. Convict labor was used to clear the path for the majority of the roads still in use today, but little is known of the institutional architecture associated with the road construction. This paper examines the Florida Road Camp system and the transition from impermanent to permanent architecture while exploring the understated, and often overlooked, role of imprisoned workers on the transportation infrastructure of Florida.
Known as Road Camps, these moveable penitentiaries were constructed not for rehabilitation but for the benefit of the State of Florida. Many of these camps were built adjacent to the road projects and a large number of these structures fell to demolition because of the impermanency of their construction. Historical records show that the Florida State Road Department used a combination of moveable camps and permanent camps, the architecture of which evolved over time with the changing need of the Road Department. Early camps were a combination of moveable metal cages and tents. As construction progressed the road camps transitioned to more permanent maintenance facilities consisting of frame and masonry vernacular structures. By 1954, there were approximately 30 road camps, including 11 permanent camps. The camps developed into fenced complexes that included guard towers, an infirmary, a mess hall, officer’s quarters, prisoner’s quarters, a sweatbox, and various storage buildings. By the 1950s and 1960s as projects became more complex, construction contracts were given to engineering firms and the convict labor force transitioned into a maintenance role.
Florida Prison Road Camps are a vernacular form of institutional architecture and represent not only the legacy of segregation, but also the role that impermanent institutional architecture played in developing Florida. Today, the remaining road camps are beginning to require more intensive documentation to ensure their long-term preservation. The purpose of this research was to examine historical records to pinpoint the locations of permanent camps, identify the remaining extant structures and their conditions, identify how and where each type of construction was used, and track the progression in the change of architecture. As these resources continue to deteriorate and face demolition, a more comprehensive understanding of the construction of the camps and their historical significance will help transportation engineers develop more appropriate preservation strategies.

Our most recent graduates were invited to present their work on the conservation of Battery Jasper at the 1st International Conference on Science and Engineering in Arts, Heritage and Archaeology (SEAHA) this July at the University College London.

The conservation of Battery Jasper represents the first collaborative effort between the Clemson University/College of Charleston Graduate Program in Historic Preservation, the Warren Lasch Conservation Center, an innovative research facility that specializes in the conservation of metal artifacts, and the United States National Parks Service. This project was the culmination of the materials conservation segment of a two-year Master’s program. The project consisted of devising and executing a stabilization plan for the cast iron and steel components of Battery Jasper in Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina. Battery Jasper, an example of an Endicott coastal defense system, dates from 1896 and is currently owned and operated by the U.S. National Parks Service. Endicott System batteries are an often-undervalued and underfunded component of cultural heritage in the United States, a concern that is compounded by the difficulties that surround their conservation. Conservation efforts focused on the unstable metal components of the battery’s shell hoist system, the most significant portion of the battery. Previous protective coatings failed due to continual exposure to the coastal environment. The chosen treatment method utilized the ThermaTech high-pressure steam system, a tool developed for use on masonry but used successfully by the Warren Lasch Conservation Center on metal objects in similar contexts. The ThermaTech system effectively removes existing coatings without damaging the corroded metal’s fragile surface. The bare metal was recoated with an epoxy base and polyurethane finish coat. The successful conservation of Battery Jasper is a step forward in the development of relationships between academic, scientific, and governmental heritage institutions.

With the spring semester successfully behind them, First Years have begun to depart for summer internships:

Jane Ashburn – Warren Lasch Conservation Center, Charleston, SC
Amanda Brown – Bennett Preservation Engineering, Charleston, SC
Naomi Doddington – Historic American Buildings Survey of the Heritage Documentation Programs, National Parks Service, Washington, D.C.
John Evangelist – Joseph Pell Lombardi Architecture, New York, NY
Brent Fortenberry – Warren Lasch Conservation Center, Charleston, SC
Jessica Fortney – Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, MN
Haley Schriber – Stratford Hall, VA
Anna Simpkins – Ebey’s Landing National Historic Reserve, Coupeville, WA
Jean Stoll – Page & Turnball: Historic Preservation Architecture, San Francisco, CA
Michelle Thompson – Historic Charleston Foundation, Charleston, SC
Rachel Walling – Maine Preservation, Portland, ME
Meghan White – Mount Vernon, VA
Meredith Wilson – Clemson University/College of Charleston Graduate Program in Historic Preservation, Charleston, SC