Historic Preservation

December 7, 2016

This morning we went to Tucker House to begin our individual architectural investigations, making note of key character defining features and finishes, construction methods, circulation patterns, and forms. For us, it was interesting to see and identify architectural features we would not normally see in Charleston including the limestone slate roof. In the afternoon, we learned about the type of listing program Bermuda uses for their historic sites.   It is divided into four categories: HM (Her Majesty), Grade 1, Grade 2, and Grade 3. We also discussed the guidelines utilized in the Town of St. George’s Historic Protection Area and compared them to the guidelines and Board of Architectural Review process in Charleston. The guidelines outline requirements on placement, height, scale, proportion, roof forms, exterior materials, windows and doors, color, etc. After discussions at Block House, we went out and surveyed the historic urban fabric and looked for violations in the guidelines within the town of St. George’s. We began to compile the data and photographs when we returned.

-Jen Leeds, MSHP Class of 2017

December 6, 2016

Documentation began on the Tucker House with the students breaking into two groups. One group worked in the cellar while the other group conquered the living quarters. Despite the rain, students had a successful day interpreting the house in plan. While documenting, new discoveries were made including finding original openings that were filled in.

-Meghan Olson, MSHP Class of 2017

December 5, 2016

Monday morning began with student investigation of the President Henry Tucker House. A brief break was allotted so that students could witness the installment of the new Royal Governor of Bermuda. Students then returned to the Tucker House to continue their investigation. The eighteenth century house sits along Water Street in St George’s and is now owned by the Bermuda National Trust. The house presents a series of interesting questions which students began to unravel with the aid of noted architectural historian, Ed Chappell. Led by Ed, Brent and the students closely studied the house in an initial attempt to better understand its evolution through time. With a short break for lunch, students spent the remainder of the day engulfed in the Tucker House’s mysteries.

-Morgan Granger, MSHP Class of 2017

December 3, 2106

We started our day off with a short walk to the grocery store in town to purchase enough food to cover our meals for the next several days.  Afterward, we had a little bit of time to further explore the town or prepare for the rest of the day.  In the late morning, professor Brent Fortenberry gave us a lecture on the history of Bermuda, and particularly that of St. George’s.

Following the lecture, we had a break for lunch prior to setting out on a guided tour of the historic center of the town.  Brent led us on the tour, covering the historic town center and surrounding areas.  We stopped briefly at St. Peter’s Church to explore the church and surrounding yard.  Reverend Raths, the pastor of the church, spent some time with us talking about the history of the church before we continued on our tour.

At the end of the tour, we returned to the Block House to make dinner which consisted of chicken, rice and broccoli that we purchased from the store that morning.  After dinner, we remained at the house for the remainder of the evening in order to do individual work and rest as we continued to adjust from traveling the day before.

– Benjamin Walker, MSHP Class of 2017

Preservation Field Studies is a second year Spring 2017 elective course taught by Dr. Brent Fortenberry that includes a sixteen day field school based in St. George’s, Bermuda. While in Bermuda the students will attend lectures on Bermuda’s vernacular architecture, preservation policy, and cultural heritage laws, engaging with local practitioners and stakeholders. Students will also undertake the investigation and documentation of two 18th-century structures in St. George’s preservation area. In the second half of the course, based in Charleston, students will complete the documentation of the project sites and create architectural history interpretive panels to be displayed in each of the project sites. This elective course will also consist of comparative discussions of preservation and cultural heritage issues and the wider UNESCO World Heritage Status between St. George ’s and Charleston.

Follow along here for updates from the students while in Bermuda December 2nd – 17th . . .

December 2, 2016

After getting up early and flying out of Charleston, we flew to Atlanta where Ed Chappell, director of archaeological and architectural research at Colonial Williamsburg, joined us on our flight to Bermuda. Once we landed we were met by friends from the Bermuda National Trust who drove us to St. George’s where we will be staying. St George is the oldest continually inhabited English town in the New World and was designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 2000. Once we were settled in, some walked around the town observing the local architecture. In the evening, we all went to the Christmas Walkabout which is organized by the Bermuda National Trust. As part of the event, we were able to go into 17th and 18th century houses to partake of their history and Bermudian refreshments. Afterwards it was back to the house to rest for the next day.
– Alena Franco, MSHP Class of 2017

Clemson University / College of Charleston Graduate Program in Historic Preservation welcomes all prospective students to an Open House!

Join us for building tours, conservation lab tours, student photo critique, sample project display, Q&A with current students, meet the faculty, and a light lunch.

What: Clemson University / College of Charleston Graduate Program in Historic Preservation OPEN HOUSE

When: Friday, October 28^th; 10:45 am – 2:00 pm

Where: Cigar Factory, 701 East Bay Street, Suite 202, Charleston, SC 29403

*Parking: Please use visitor parking and sign in at the front desk upon arrival

Please RSVP to Mary Margaret Schley: mschley@clemson.edu.

The Clemson University/College of Charleston Graduate Program in Historic Preservation is excited to announce the first Pecha Kucha event for Charleston students of the built environment. Students from the following programs will deliver fun and fast-paced presentations on their academic work:

Clemson University/College of Charleston Graduate Program in Historic Preservation

Clemson Architecture Center in Charleston (CAC.C)

Interiors Department at the Art Institute Charleston

Historic Preservation & Community Planning Undergraduate Program at the College of Charleston

American College of the Building Arts

The event will take place at the Clemson Design Center in Charleston located at the Cigar Factory, 701 East Bay Street, Suite 202. Mark your calendars for Thursday, October 27th at 5:30 pm!

Questions? Ask assistant professor Amalia Leifeste at aleifes@clemson.edu.

We are thrilled to announce we won FIRST PLACE in this year’s Peterson Prize competition for our measured drawings of Pompion Hill Chapel! Since 2007 the drawings produced by our students have placed every year in the annual competition. We are proud to add this first place award to our legacy!

https://www.nps.gov/hdp/competitions/Peterson_winners.htm

The Architectural Fragments Collection which was displayed in the MSHP program’s old home on Meeting Street has moved to the Cigar Factory.  Rising Second Year Rachel Freels spent the second portion of her summer internship designing interpretative panels for the collection and laying out locations for it to hang in the MSHP studios.  Moby Marks rode to our rescue, as he often does, to help anchor doors, door frames, windows, mantels and the rest of the collection in our new location so that it can continue to support our classes for many years to come.

We boxed up the contents of our old home at 292 Meeting Street and moved labs, studios, offices to our new home in the historic Cigar Factory on East Bay Street.  Built in 1882 as a textile mill, the large five story brick building at 701 East Bay operated as a cigar factory employing 1,400 through most of the 20th century.  Abandoned and empty for a decade, the Cigar Factory is today a successful rehabilitation that houses retail and commercial offices on the ground floor and offices above.  The MSHP program occupies the second floor of the building with Clemson’s other Charleston-based design programs.  Come see us!

The MSHP Class of 2017 has the first year of graduate school behind them and they are off to various internships across the country. From preservation architecture firms to non-profits to national parks, see where our students are working this summer:

Jennifer Baehr – Weese Langley Weese Architects LTD, Chicago, IL

Jessica Cantrell –Historic Vehicles Association, Allentown, PA ; The Oaklands Mansion in Murfreesboro, TN

Cassie Cline – Historic Charleston Foundation, Charleston, SC

Caroline Darnell – NCPE Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park Internship

Alena Franco – Warren Lasch Conservation Center, Charleston, SC

Rachael Freels – Clemson University/College of Charleston Graduate Program in HP, Charleston, SC

Kirsten Freeman – Lyndhurst, National Trust Site, Tarrytown, NY

Morgan Granger – Richard Marks Restoration, Charleston, SC

Clayton Johnson – Edgewood Builders, Inc., Charleston, SC

Jen Leeds – National Park Service, Historic Preservation Training Center, Frederick, MD

Kymberly Mattern – United Building Envelope Restoration, Manassas Park, VA

Meg Olson – Richard Marks Restoration, Charleston, SC

Ben Walker – Bennett Preservation Engineering, Inc., Charleston, SC

We are thrilled to announce that second-year Jane Ashburn will be presenting at the American Institute Conference in Montreal this May. She will be presenting her research on the digital documentation of Pompion Hill Chapel in Huger, South Carolina.

ABSTRACT: From hurricanes to floods to earthquakes, the Lowcountry of South Carolina’s historic built environment is under constant threat from natural disasters. Situated on the banks of the Cooper River, Pompion Hill Chapel, constructed in 1763, has withstood centuries of assaults from the natural world, aided in part by a sequence of conservation interventions and reconstruction periods. This study highlights the most recent disaster preparedness effort undertaken by the Warren Lasch Conservation Center (WLCC) at the Clemson University Restoration Institute in North Charleston, South Carolina, through a digital documentation and conditions assessment process intended to develop a system of routine documentation to monitor the effects of the environmental and geological actions.   When erosion began taking parcels of the Chapel land into the river, rip-rap was installed as a mitigation. The system slowed attrition, but shifted the surrounded soil’s moisture equilibrium. The installed rip-rap allowed moisture to escape from the clay heavy soil at a faster rate. As the clay hardened, the differential settlement of the soil caused the structure to crack. An intervention in the late 20th century addressed the settlement and cracking issues by creating a mechanized system to keep the clay heavy soil saturated at limits that would lessen the effects of soil movement. At the same time, a new roofing system was installed to support the original timber beams that had begun to sag under the weight of the slate shingles. While traditional hand-measured drawings exist for the site, these documents are limited and do not fully document the changes and alterations of Pompion Hill Chapel.   In order to help mitigate and monitor future and past interventions, conservators and architectural historians from WLCC worked to create a comprehensive conditions record of the structure, cemetery, and surrounding landscape. It was determined that a campaign that combined laser scanning and comprehensive field and archival research would provide the owners (who privately own the structure) with a working document that balanced high accuracy, reasonable cost, and would create a set of workable documents. As this project enters its subsequent phases, the 3D documentation (including the associated metadata) will be used to create a long-term monitoring program using future campaigns of 3D imaging. Conservators will return at specific intervals to highlight areas of concern to determine deflection, settlement, and the impact of the changing environment on the structure. This documentation not only provides an accurate as-is model necessary in the creation of a successful disaster management plan but also allows for subsequent assessment to track the impact environmental action has on the structure and allows for intervention before further (and more costly) damage occurs.

http://aics44thannualmeeting2016.sched.org/event/6dyz

Many of you may have already heard that our program will be moving from our current location at 292 Meeting Street to new quarters on the second floor of the Cigar Factory on East Bay Street. As we plan for relocation, we wanted to announce what we know about the building, our place in it, and when you can expect to hear about us packing and unpacking.

Built in the early 1880s as a textile mill, the Cigar Factory was damaged in the earthquake of 1886 and then repurposed as a factory for making cigars. At its busiest, the factory employed 1,400, many of the workers residing the neighborhood hugs the factory and spills toward Meeting Street (America Street is the principal north-south street in this neighborhood). A labor strike following WWII saw the protest song “We Shall Overcome” used for the first time there. Factory operations ceased in 1974 and a long period of vacancies alternating with failed schemes and partial use ended when an investment group took on rehabilitation of the building for office use, using rehabilitation tax credits as part of their funding mechanism. Long story made short: we will occupy a floor of an historic building that has an interesting back story.

Clemson will lease 24,000 square feet of usable space at the Cigar Factory. Our program, CAC.C (the school of architecture’s Charleston outpost, and a PhD program in Architecture&Health will move in this summer. There is also space for a proposed MS in urban design and for landscape architecture programs.

We’re now at work refining plans for the upfit of this space to meet our needs. MSHP space in the Cigar Factory will include two studios, faculty offices, seminar rooms, storage, AV/IT storage, and new shiny laboratories. Our small library will be melded with CAC.C’s and be housed in a small on-site library (which will be placed in the tower that once housed the factory’s elevator). A 100-seat classroom will give us a venue for lectures and other public programs. Display alcoves that face into our studios are being designed for our architectural fragments collection. We’ll post plans once they are approved.

Look for reports via Facebook as upfit proceeds!

In mid December a small delegation from the MSHP program and the Warren Lasch Conservation Center visited Cuba to explore possible collaborative projects there. The group spent five days in Havana and two in Trinidad, a World Heritage City founded in 1512 and located on Cuba’s south coast. Meetings with planners, historians, university faculty, administrators of craft training programs and some members of Cuba’s emerging entrepreneurial community punctuated field visits to historic buildings and sites. The group returned with the understanding that Cuba is poised at the brink of significant change, much of it energized by rapidly expanding tourism, that will have significant implications for the conservation of historic sites and building.

Read More:

http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20160324/PC16/160329683/1006/from-clemson-to-cuba-partnership-could-see-study-historic-preservation-of-buildings-culture

http://newsstand.clemson.edu/mediarelations/clemson-scientists-seek-to-partner-with-cubans-to-conserve-preserve-cultural-heritage/

We are thrilled to announce that second-year Meredith Wilson will be presenting at the Dynamic Cities Conference at Boston University in April. Her paper analyzes the current downtown revitalization efforts in Meridian, Mississippi as a case study for better understanding the use of preservation theories and practices in the revitalization of small-city downtowns.

ABSTRACT: Can the Center Hold?: Grappling with the decline of a small-city downtown, in Meridian, Mississippi
Meridian, Mississippi, is a poster child for the Post-War Era decline of America’s downtowns. The center city has been in steady decline since the rise of automobile culture and the opening of Meridian’s first suburban mall in the 1970s. The “white flight” endemic to many American cities has exacerbated the problem.
This study analyzes how a historic preservation ethic may better inform the economic development of a downtown with an emphasis on establishing best practices for other small American cities, where Meridian will serve as a case study. In focusing on a small, southern city, this paper fortifies a weak area in the study of preservation best practices related to downtown revitalization, which has focused on larger cities outside the Mid-South region. It examines the preservation policies within Meridian’s 2004 Downtown Redevelopment Plan, 2009 Comprehensive Plan, and other official city planning documents. It gauges the importance placed on preservation in city planning, as well as to what degree preservation policies are actually carried out.
Meridian’s revitalization efforts focus on large development projects devoted to entertainment and tourism: the restoration of the Grand Opera House, the upcoming redevelopment of an abandoned Art Deco office building into a hotel, and the construction of the Mississippi Arts and Entertainment Center (MAEC), slated to open in 2017. While these first two projects are preservation-minded, the MAEC project has resulted in the demolition of the historic Hotel Meridian (1907). Collectively these projects ignore the traditional business and residential functions that truly anchor a historic downtown. This study examines the current success of these projects, and others in similar cities, to encourage sustainable development of the downtown core. Specifically, the study will suggest how historic preservation, incremental development, and diverse services and functions can improve downtown revitalization efforts in Meridian and comparable cities.

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.