PHW – Page 32 – Preservation of Historic Winchester

Friday Roundup: Magazines, Editing, Grants, and House Tour and Shop

First, are you looking for some new reading material? Through January 31, 2019, AmazonSmile will donate 15% the purchase price of new print magazine subscriptions to the charity of your choice. Visit https://smile.amazon.com/b?node=18541223011 for details. Check it out and select PHW as your charity to give us a little boost at no extra cost to you!

Second, we are zipping along on the Limestone book faster than anticipated. We will probably have the first chapter ready for the proofing team the week of January 21. Let us know if you would like to join the editing team at phwinc.org@gmail.com or 540-667-3577. Copies of the previous Limestone book can be provided to volunteer editors for text and image comparisons.

Third, are you looking to expand your grant writing skills in 2019? The Foundant for GrantSeekers is sponsoring a free webinar “Planning Your Own Pathway to Grant Guru” on Thursday, January 31, 12pm Eastern. Learn more and register here. Related, you may also want to check out the recent Q&A post at the National Trust for their various grant programs. You can also find a link to the recording of the recent webinar that served as the catalyst for this round of questions.

Fourth, we are working behind the scenes for Holiday House Tour 2019 (tentative dates Dec. 7 & 8, 2019). This year’s event will coincide with the 275th anniversary of Winchester, and we are hoping to find houses to open from each century to showcase Winchester’s variety of architectural expression and history. We have two possibilities for homes from the 1790s and 1890s in the West Cork and Clifford neighborhood. If you have a home or building that is near this area, especially if you are in a home from the early 1900s through the current day, please let us know at 540-667-3577 or phwinc.org@gmail.com. Our preference is for buildings within relatively easy walking distance, so a neighborhood we have never visited like Lee, Stonewall, Joist Hite, Shirley, etc. could be a possibility. We have readers and members in this area, so if you or someone you know might be interested in opening your building for tours, speak up!

Of course, we are also working on Bough and Dough 2019. We had overwhelmingly positive feedback for the changes in 2018. We are in the process now of dotting i’s and crossing t’s for an expanded format with a tentative date range of Nov. 15 to Dec. 15, to be held again at the Hexagon House. We hope to have our application and information forms together in early February, and we will be sure to post here and on our website when those are live. If you are an artist hoping to jump in this year, our feedback indicated shoppers would like more pottery, ornaments, jewelry, and food items like fruit cake and mulled cider spices. We have discussed food trucks and artist demonstrations/workshops but logistics for these may be tricky (especially indoor setup). We will most likely have a few open house days again this spring and summer for prospective artists to stop in and see the space and planned setup to determine if we’d be a good fit. Keep an eye out!

Friday Roundup: Links, Updates, and More

A few times a year, we receive a question about insuring a historic building. This discussion recently came up on the National Trust’s online forum as well, and many community members shared strategies for talking to an insurance agent or some lesser known insurance agencies that are equipped to handle these special cases. Visit the Forum Connect discussion on insuring historic properties to see if this can help point you in the right direction for getting the appropriate insurance for your property.

We have been scanning away at the office, but this time it’s not for Friday Photos – instead we are working on the Limestone book reprint. However, you might want to pop over to our Flickr and check out the new Unidentified and Miscellaneous album. These are the odds and ends that were hanging around – let us know if you recognize any of the unidentified pictures!

Speaking of the Limestone book, we are still open to anyone who wants to be on the proofreading team. Drop us a line at 540-667-3577 or phwinc.org@gmail.com. We will be starting proofreading, fact checking, and potentially some image replacements chapter by chapter in late January the end of March. We can send files to you digitally, so you do not need to attend in-person meetings or work on a strict time schedule. Familiarity with the original book is not needed but may be helpful.

In other behind the scenes news at PHW, we are finally getting a filing system in place for our Frederick County architecture files. While most of our research files are based in the Winchester Historic District and easily filed by street and house number, we do have some files for interesting and important places in Frederick County. Most of those files, however, are only known by the closest intersection, community, a family name, or a building name – a much trickier task than street names when designing usability for future researchers and file expansion. As a starting point, we have set up our Frederick County files by magisterial districts and precincts. While the collection is small at the moment (about one banker box) we are looking forward to seeing this collection grow.

Friday Roundup: Curated Reading

We didn’t get to do too much exploration of our news feed over November and December, so it was a pleasant relief to find many of our favorite sites compiled “best of 2018” stories to browse. Here’s a small sampling of things we enjoyed reading over the past week.

What’s Up with All Those Empty Commercial Storefronts in New Mixed-Use Developments?
Rachel Quednau applies what is happening in Milwaukee with mixed-use development and takes a quick look at some other locations facing the same issues. Be sure to read to the end for examples from locations that are thinking outside the cookie-cutter box to provide storefronts that are reasonable for small businesses to rent and thrive.

Fifteen Opportunity Zone Resources Available Right Now
The National Trust for Historic Preservation rounds up what we know so far about Opportunity Zones and how they impact historic preservation. They will be hosting a webinar on January 17, so be sure to click through to the article and find out how to sign up.

11,000 Digitized Books From 1923 Are Now Available Online at the Internet Archive
Researchers rejoice! Open Culture reports on the watershed of art, literature, photography, and more entering public domain for the first time in twenty years. If you’d like a little more background on the topic, also check out For the First Time in More Than 20 Years, Copyrighted Works Will Enter the Public Domain at Smithsonian.com.

Baumgartner Restoration YouTube channel
Not quite in the normal historic preservation wheelhouse but certainly an adjacent field is art conservation. If you would like to watch and listen to art conservation, there are a number of channels dedicated to this fine art. We especially enjoyed the narrated conservation of an especially challenging painting, “The Assassination of Archimedes.”

We know people are also probably very curious about Holiday House Tour. We estimate about 300 people enjoyed the event despite the rainy Saturday. The new format for the Bough and Dough Shop was also a success, finally surpassing the all time high sales numbers reached in 2000. This was the year the Shop was set up at the former location of the A&P grocery store, 525 Amherst St., and boasted over 35 vendors. That year was by far the largest space and the most vendors the Shop ever had in its 40+ year history, so topping that figure is truly a benchmark moment for us. We would like to extend our thanks to all our guests, homeowners, volunteers, artisan vendors, and sponsors who helped us make our holiday fundraising a success. We literally could not do it without all of you. We will be going through our internal debriefing on January 14, so if you have not turned in feedback yet, there’s still time! You can find the Shop survey and the Tour survey on SurveyMonkey.

Friday Photos: Bough & Dough Shop 2018

Happy Friday! For our last post of 2018, we are happy to share 180 photos taken during the Bough and Dough Shop at the Hexagon House. You may have seen a number of these on Facebook throughout the event as we posted updates and new arrivals, but about half were taken for our internal documentation on the setup to keep in mind for next year. You can now find them all in one place at the Bough and Dough Shop 2018 album on Flickr. (Fair warning, the sweet treats from Homestead Farm are at the top of the album…viewing on an empty stomach might make you hungry!)

This update is an extra special treat for us, as it put us over the 10,000 public images mark. It is amazing to think we have this many images in our collection alone, and we are extremely grateful to Flickr for helping us continue to share our digitized images as we have for the past five years. You can drop by our Flickr photostream to view all our online collections to date. Happy viewing!

Merry Christmas from PHW!

Since this is our last Friday blog before Christmas, we want to wish you a happy holiday. It has been a year of ups and downs, but we are happy to report we ended the year on a positive note with the early feedback from the Holiday House Tour and Bough and Dough Shop. If you are looking for a last minute gift or two from our 2018 lineup of Bough and Dough Shop artists, we still have those with a website or Etsy store listed on our Featured Artisans page. The artists would be delighted to hear from you – let them know you found them through the Bough and Dough Shop, too! The page will likely stay up as-is until the summer or fall of 2019 as we begin to nail down the next artist lineup.

We also still have the two feedback surveys open, the Shop and Artisan specific survey and the Holiday House Tour and Shop survey. Remember to be specific in your written comments, particularly in asking for types of items you would like to see at the Shop in 2019 (i.e., instead of saying “jewelry,” let us know what type of jewelry – metalworking, polymer clay, beaded, etc.). We will be reviewing the feedback in January of 2019.

As always, the invitation for you to join the Holiday House Tour 2019 team stands so you can make the event more of what you want to see. The drastic improvement to the Shop in 2018 was due entirely to rethinking event from the ground up by one person from January to August after watching the process for two to three years. The same can absolutely be done for the Tour itself from anyone familiar with its goals and ambitions. We strongly encourage anyone who feels that the House Tour is not meeting their expectations to take your written feedback a step further and give back to this community tradition through action. Make this your New Year’s Resolution, become involved as one of the volunteer leaders, and make the Holiday House Tour your dream event. Doing so will probably even give you more personal benefits than just producing a better event.

You may leave your information as a volunteer by stating specifically you want to take on improving some specific part (some feedback included allusions to writing and submitting press releases, running an Instagram, being a house decorator to make sure it meets your level of “festive,” etc. – all are very welcome tasks for volunteer leaders) for the Holiday House Tour at phwinc.org@gmail.com, by phone at 540-667-3577, or by snail mail addressed to PHW, 530 Amherst St., Winchester, VA 22601. You do not need to be a member of PHW or join the board of directors to be a volunteer leader, but attending meetings to make reports, take suggestions, and give directions to PHW staff is critical, particularly in the final preparation stages of September-November.

And just for fun, you might relive your childhood a bit with a short YouTube video of Andy Davis at the Johnson County Museum exploring aluminum Christmas trees in the era of America’s space race and futuristic fascination. We hope you were able to experience one in person if you went to the Patsy Cline Historic House during the Holiday House Tour weekend. While they may be a kitschy throwback, they remain highly evocative of the late 1950s to 1960s holidays. While they don’t work for all homes, if you have a “newly historic” home from the 1960s, you might want to think about trying an aluminum tree for some properly retro vibes!

Holiday House Tour and Bough and Dough Shop Feedback

We are almost back to normal at PHW after the Holiday House Tour and Bough and Dough Shop. Along with the end of the event come feedback surveys. If you only visited the Shop, please take the survey specific to the Shop and artisan vendors. If you partook in the Holiday House Tour and Shop this year, please take the slightly longer Holiday House Tour feedback survey.

We will review your feedback from both surveys in our wrap up meeting and initial planning for the House Tour in January 2019. Thank you for your honest feedback!

Last Weekend for the Bough & Dough Shop

Happy Friday! It has been a busy week for us at PHW wrapping up the Holiday House Tour, working behind the scenes on the website (this will be our first new blog post since updating to the latest version of WordPress, which has been a learning experience all its own), and winding down the Bough and Dough Shop.

If you haven’t made it to the Hexagon House yet to see the shop, you are missing out! Be sure to drop in Friday or Saturday between 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., or Sunday between noon to 5 p.m. After that, the over twenty fabulous artists and their goods will be gone until next year!

If you already made it to the Shop, we would love your feedback on the different format and hours this year. If you didn’t get a paper survey at checkout, you can find the online version at Survey Monkey. It is a quick four questions specific to the Shop (not the Holiday House Tour). Feedback from this survey will be used for our internal planning for the Shop as well as in finding, selecting, and directing artisans for the types of items they should bring in 2019.

Thank you all, and we hope to see you one more time this weekend at the Hexagon House for the Bough and Dough Shop. Keep this survey in mind when you visit!

Holiday House Tour Final Notes

We are coming down to the last day before Holiday House Tour. We have just a couple items to share:

Single site admission to 411 N. Loudoun, the Fort, will be $10 as it is a larger site than usual. Other sites will be $5 as usual for a single admission. Full tickets will be $25 each at the door on Saturday and Sunday. Be sure to bring cash or checks if you want to pay at the door; we will not be able to take credit or debit cards at the sites. We recommend stopping at Kimberly’s, 135 N. Braddock St., if you need to use a credit card at the last minute for tickets.

Remember you can visit Patsy Cline’s House at 608 S. Kent as a bonus Holiday House Tour location for free. This is a special event taking place Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Find more at their Facebook page.

Representatives plan to be on site both Saturday and Sunday at the well at 419 N. Loudoun instead of Saturday only as earlier reported. This is an exterior visit only and may be impacted by weather.

Walking tour groups plan to leave on the hour. The last guides will set out at 4 p.m. You do not need to join a walking tour group to take the house tours. If the weather is rainy Saturday, guides will not be leading walking tours. Update at noon: Saturday walking tours are cancelled for the expected inclement weather.

Parking will be available at 203 N. Washington St., Centre Meeting House. Look for directional signage.

The weather looks to be rainy on Saturday, but sunny and warm on Sunday. Be sure to dress for the weather and keep an eye on the forecast.

Look for carolers from Winchester Little Theatre on Sunday afternoon walking the neighborhood and spreading good cheer.

Tickets are still available at the advance sale locations and on the website. If you order online, be sure to bring your receipt from Paypal as your ticket.

Enjoy your Holiday House Tour weekend! Don’t forget to stop in the Bough and Dough Shop at the Hexagon House, 530 Amherst St. The greenery has arrived, and a limited amount of wreaths are currently available.

Bough and Dough Shop Artist: Shenandoah Acrylic Resin Art

Dana Thomas of Shenandoah Acrylic Resin Art is a new artist at the Bough and Dough Shop for 2018. His work features bold and shimmery acrylic paint combined with resin to form abstract wall canvases, votive holders, wall clocks made on old LP records, and coasters and trivets both in clear resin and on tile. The photographs do not do his work justice; it is best seen in person in good light to reveal all the subtle touches. You can visit the artist’s website danaethomas.com.

The Bough and Dough Shop is located at the Hexagon House, 530 Amherst St. in Winchester. The Shop is open Tuesday-Saturday, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. and Sunday noon – 5 p.m.

Holiday House Tour in the Newspaper

If you have access to the Winchester Star online, you can read two articles on the House Tour. The first is PHW’s Holiday House Tour is this weekend.

For this article, please note representatives are planning to be on hand both Saturday and Sunday at the site of the well of Fort Loudoun, 419 N. Loudoun St. This stop is outdoors so may be weather dependent.

The walking tours may also have a guide in the area of the former Conoco gas station at 501 N. Loudoun St. if you would prefer to walk downhill to the Loudoun sites. The Fairmont sidewalks are expected to be walkable by the weekend, but if not we may need to do last minute rearranging.

Carolers from Winchester Little Theatre will be walking the streets in period attire on Sunday. This activity is also weather dependent, but Sunday’s weather forecast looks like this should not be an issue. Look for them starting around 2 p.m.

You can also get a sneak peek at The Fort in the second article, Historic apartment building included on Holiday House Tour before you get to see it yourself this weekend.

And one last minute update from the Shop, Donna Sheets dropped off some candy cane sleighs full of chocolate. You can pick one up from the Hexagon House this week during Shop hours 10-5 Tuesday to Saturday and noon-5 on Sunday.