PHW – Page 46 – Preservation of Historic Winchester

Friday Roundup: Lecture, Book Signings, Grant Opportunity, Preservation Awards, and Photos!

Happy Friday! It has been a busy week for preservation news.

1. The French and Indian War Foundation invites you to an afternoon of Colonial history on Sunday, March 19 between 2-5 PM in the Reception Room at the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley, 901 Amherst Street, Winchester, Virginia. This is a free event with wine and hors d’oevres. Book signings of “On The Town Celebrating James Wood & The Founding of Winchester in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia” by Wilbur S. Johnston and Braddock’s Road Historical Atlas by Norman Baker will take place all afternoon.

Dr. Carl Ekberg will present a lecture and slide presentation on “Thomas Jefferson in Paris” at 3 PM. Dr. Ekberg is a retired history professor from Illinois State University who now resides in Winchester. He has traced the footsteps of Jefferson in Paris for the last 25 years. In 2014, he received La Médaille d’Or award from the French Ambassador for his numerous outstanding publications on the French Colonial period.

For questions on this event, please call 703-307-6696.

2. The National Fund for Sacred Places is a program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation in collaboration with Partners for Sacred Places that provides training, planning grants, and capital grants from $50,000 to $250,000 to congregations of all faiths for rehabilitation work on their historic facilities.

Congregations are urged to submit their letter of intent by May 1 for the Fund for Sacred Places for projects such as:

Urgent repair needs that are integral to life safety.
Projects that improve the usability or ADA accessibility of the property.
Renovation projects for important community outreach.

Visit www.FundforSacredPlaces.org for more details, including eligibility requirements, guidelines, and online application.

3. The National Trust for Historic Preservation is also taking applications for their National Preservation Awards until 11:59 p.m. ET on Wednesday, March 1. Nominate a deserving project, individual, or organization for a 2017 National Preservation Award – see the full list of categories, eligibility requirements, and online submission forms at the National Trust’s website.

4. Late breaking news from the National Trust – two grant deadlines have been extended until March 15! Learn more about the Johanna Favrot (matching grant for planning activities and education efforts focused on preservation primarily for public or nonprofit entities) and Cynthia Woods Mitchell (matching grant for Organizational Level Forum members or Main Street America members of the National Trust for preservation, restoration, and interpretation of historic interiors) funds. Grant funding ranges from $2,500–$10,000.

5. Friday Photos continues to add to our digital Holiday House Tour collections with 35 images this week, focusing on 320 South Cameron Street (the Parish-McIlwee House, decorated in a Victorian manner) and 312 South Cameron Street (former parsonage of the Methodist Episcopal Church, renovated into offices in 1984), and 501 South Loudoun Street (the Sitler House, an early log home built by Mathias Sitler between 1780-1797).

Catch the new images at the top of the photostream, or at the end of the Holiday House Tours album. Happy viewing!

Bonus Information: More updates on the historic tax credits in Virginia and for the federal program have come in from Preservation Virginia. Catch their updates on the two year sunset successfully added to to HB 2460 and SB 1034 and the introduction of the Historic Tax Credit Improvement Act to Congress in their archives.

PHW Membership Dues Reminder

It is time for the bulk of PHW members to renew your dues! Snail mail letters have been going out this week and will continue into next week to about 2/3rds of our members. If you have questions about your membership status, please feel free to contact the PHW office at 540-667-3577 or phwinc.org@gmail.com.

If you are one of our free readers on Facebook or by email and you enjoy hearing from us every week, why not take the next step and support us with membership dues or a donation? We have several options on how to join:

Automatic Yearly Payments via PayPal Subscription

The PayPal subscription button sets up an automatic yearly payment on the date you first join. If this option does not display correctly in your email, please visit our website for the form. Please refer to the instructions in PayPal’s FAQ on how to update or cancel your automatic subscription. Instructions vary based on whether you have a business or personal account.

One Time Credit Card Payment

Use the PayPal Donation option and input the amount you wish to donate. You do not need to have a PayPal account to use this option – select “Use a card” to use a debit or credit card. Remember to share your mailing address with us so you can receive our snail mail invitations to events and the printed newsletter, too!

One time credit card payments can also be made in person at the PHW office, 530 Amherst Street, Winchester, Virginia.

Mail in a Check

Download and fill out the membership form and return it with your check to PHW, 530 Amherst Street, Winchester, VA 22601.

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Friday Photos: Bough & Dough Shop 1996

Happy Friday! As unbelievable as it may seem, we are already starting work on Holiday House Tour and Bough & Dough Shop 2017. Mark your calendars now for the weekend of December 2 and 3!

We also heard your feedback about increasing the variety of vendors at the Shop in 2017. We are asking that new artisans interested in participating in the Shop for 2017 fill out a short form so that the Shop committee can jury new participants. Take your time with your submissions – we will accept applications through June 30, 2017.

To get your creative juices flowing, for Friday Photos this week we are revisiting the 1996 Bough & Dough Shop, which was held at the Winchester Rehabilitation Center at 333 W. Cork Street. This is one of the few years the Shop submitted a detailed report on what worked and what didn’t. This year was the first time we used a computerized cash register and vendor numbers during checkout. Despite a number of last minute no shows, the 1996 Shop had 25 vendors, plus the separate greenery and donated baked goods. The event was pulled together by Robin Sutton, Jenny Powers, Kim Dodd, Courtney Bragg, Julian Bragg, Rick Bragg, Aimee Kennedy, and Peggy Sweeney. Enjoy this stroll down a Christmas memory lane in 34 photos at Flickr!

Announcements and Friday Photos

Happy Friday! We have a few quick announcements to make before we get to the photos:

1. We had a flood of spam hit the website and email list at the end of January, and a small portion (less than 1%) of the email list was cleaned of suspicious signups. If you or a friend are not getting weekly emails from us when you know you have signed up, after you double check that the emails didn’t land in your spam of junk folders, please sign up again on any PHW website page with the email form in the footer or sidebar, or follow this link.

2. Don’t forget about Winchester’s 4th Annual Chocolate Escape, happening downtown this Saturday, February 11 between 2-5 PM. You can find more details and all the participating stores and restaurants at Old Town Winchester.

On the the fun part of the week! We have added 37 photos to Flickr, once again focusing on past Holiday House Tours. Get a glimpse inside 112-114 East Cecil Street, better known as the “chicken coop house” which was an adaptive reuse project turning a barn into apartments, plus 215 South Loudoun Street and the Red Lion Tavern Inn at 208 South Loudoun Street (then the offices of Winchester Radiologists). Find the photos at the end of the Holiday House Tours album, or the top of the photostream. Happy viewing!

Call for Help: Bridge Survey

From Preservation Virginia this week is a request for help in an informal bridge survey taking place across Virginia. The Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) is re-evaluating of their Historic Bridge Inventory. Preservation Virginia is reaching out for help identifying bridges that could be considered eligible for individual listing in the National Register of Historic Places and Virginia Landmarks Register.

PHW is extending this call to our readership for help in identifying any local bridges that may qualify. The Historic Bridge Inventory lists only one bridge in Frederick County, a concrete closed spandrel arch bridge on Rt. 672 crossing the Opequon Creek, built in 1917. There are no listings for Winchester City, Clarke County, or Warren County.

The basic requirements for consideration are that a bridge should be administered by VDOT, 50 years old or older, and meet at least one of the criterion for consideration as a historic structure (bridges usually qualify under feats of engineering, but may also be associated with a significant person or event, or for outstanding design elements).

If you know of a bridge that may qualify, you will need: location, route number, stream crossing, VDOT structure number (if known), or name, as well as an explanation of why the bridge should be included. You may wish to refer to A Management Plan for Historic Bridges in Virginia Appendix A for a listing of the National Register Eligible historic bridges identified to date (starts on page 34 of the PDF).

The bridge survey is time sensitive. Please submit your responses before Friday March 31, 2017. Information may be emailed to PHW at phwinc.org@gmail.com, or hard copy information dropped off in person or by snail mail to 530 Amherst Street, Winchester, VA 22601. If you have questions about the bridge survey or would like to submit your bridge directly to Preservation Virginia, please contact Lisa Bergstrom by email at lbergstrom@preservationvirginia.org.

Friday Photos, Tax Credit News, and Mailing Lists to Follow

Happy Friday! This week we have added 38 photos from Holiday House Tours of years gone by to the Flickr account, including some interior images of the Simon Lauck House when it was on the tour in 1997. Catch all the new additions at the end of the Holiday House Tour album, or at the top of the photostream.

Good news has been coming out of Richmond in relation to the future of the state historic preservation tax credit. Check out the article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch “Va. Senate panel kills Sen. Glen Sturtevant’s bill to cap and phase out historic rehab tax credits” to get a few more details.

Presumably if you are an avid reader of PHW’s blogs, you have some interest in keeping abreast of preservation stories like the one above. Here are a few more email lists that the PHW office is subscribed to:
Preservation Virginia
Valley Conservation Council (signup form is at the bottom of the page)
National Trust for Historic Preservation (scroll down about midway on the page to find the signup form)
Winchester CitE-News

Let us know if you have found any other historic preservation mailing lists worth following!

Friday Smorgasbord: Podcasts, Mycology and More

Happy Friday! We have a mix of links and history to share with you this week that we found interesting, without a particular theme.

Next City put together a list of 7 Podcasts Urbanists Should Be Listening to Now. For historic preservation focused topics, try the recommendations from Preservation in Pink, HiFi History, Strong Towns podcasts, Historic Preservation by the National Park Service, and National Center for Preservation Technology and Training podcasts. Let us know if you have come across any other good podcasts on history and preservation related topics.

For something off the beaten track, this article at Atlas Obscura on an almost forgotten mycologist Mary Banning had a surprise Winchester connection. Banning worked in near isolation cataloging and illustrating fungus around her native Maryland for twenty years. Her life’s work was sent to a leading scientist in the field, but was lost and forgotten for 100 years. While the tale alone is worth a read, it was most surprising to see that in her final years, Mary Banning lived in a boarding house in Winchester.

A quick look in the 1900 census records confirms she was living at 127 North Cameron (then Market) Street. The house was originally the home of William “Bake” Miller before its conversion to a boarding house by sisters Martha (Mattie) and Virginia Wall (1, 2). By the 1900 census only Martha was still alive to run the boarding house. Martha’s brother and bookstore proprietor Thomas Wall and his wife were in residence, along with Mary Banning and four more boarders. An obituary for Thomas Wall which ran in the Alexandria Gazette on January 15, 1917 mentions his book and stationery business, but mostly recounts his close call with General Sheridan and his service delivering mail through the Shenandoah Valley during the Civil War.

Finding these small connections not only brings to light the amazing stories of the former occupants of a relatively obscure historic Winchester building, but also grounds those tales to a physical location which still exists and can be seen and visited today.

Mark Your Calendars: Rouss Day 2017

Celebrate the birthday of one of Winchester’s most generous benefactors on Friday, February 10, 2017 between noon-2 PM at Rouss City Hall, 15 N. Cameron St. Tim Youmans will begin the event with historical tours of the building beginning at 12:15 PM. This will likely be the last public tour of Rouss City Hall in its current configuration prior to renovations set to start later this year. Mayor Smith will officially greet attendees coming to City Hall between 1 and 2 PM. Chuck Swartz, AIA from Reader & Swartz Architects will be available to answer questions about the proposed major interior renovations to Rouss City Hall, including exhibits showing the proposed floor layouts available for viewing in the Mayor Elizabeth A. Minor Council Chambers. As usual, birthday cupcakes will be available for attendees.

Also, don’t miss the Charley Rouss items on display in the showcase at the entrance to the Handley Archives in the lower level of the Handley Library, 100 W. Piccadilly St., on display through the month of February.

Friday Photos: More Kurtz Building Interiors

Happy Friday! This week, we added 59 photos to the Kurtz Building album, primarily documenting the asbestos inspection and the mechanical systems inspections. Many of the photos from this batch were taken in very poor lighting conditions. While these are not stellar photos by any means, they are fantastic to show the contrast of the before and after appearance of the Kurtz Building. You can catch the new additions at the end of the Kurtz Building album or on the top of the Flickr photostream. Happy viewing!

Around the Internet: Contemplating the Future of Historic Preservation

Like the world as a whole, historic preservation itself is a changing field with expanding goals and priorities. The book review How to Reinvent Historic Preservation by Amanda Kolson Hurley is more than just a dry look at two recent publications about historic preservation, but also a bit of a retrospective on this change in priorities. This is one of the primary angles to The Past and Future City. Hurley explains, “The new preservation movement cares about neighborhoods as much as individual buildings. . . It looks beyond architecture for reasons why a place resonates, often finding them in social history.” Although lengthy, the full article is worth a read to gain perspective on the evolution in historic preservation which has been taking place since the late 1990s and early 2000s.

You can see how some of the ideas discussed in Hurley’s book review were put into practical application at our closest National Trust site, Belle Grove Plantation, with A Different Kind of History Lesson at Belle Grove Plantation by Kelly Schindler. She recounts her experience spending the night in the historic site in some of the same conditions experienced by Judah, an enslaved cook at the plantation in the early 19th century.

We hope you were able to join in the webinar on Thursday discussing the future of the historic tax credit on the federal level (the event was recorded and should be available for review at the National Trust’s website soon if you missed it live). In the meantime, the Trust put out the article Three Buildings Saved by the Historic Tax Credit. You may also want to check out the Historic Tax Credit Coalition website, especially the Rutgers Annual Report on the Economic Impact of the Historic Tax Credit for 2015 and the Historic Tax Credit Impact Maps, to get some facts in hand to support the historic tax credit.