State Preservation Conference - a Build Post of a Different Kind

I chose "build" as my word of the year for a few different reasons. There was "build" in the physical level of the houses — but also building myself and my career, and I have posted on less of that.

But this week I attended my first statewide preservation conference in Red Wing and it was great!

I was lucky enough to go because Colin and I presented a piece on the renovation of 2441 Arts that I tongue-in-cheek called "I Once Bought an Office Chair There" (no matter how much we talk about it being a Clarence Johnston furniture warehouse, etc., all people know it as is as the SOS Office Furniture building.) It was the first time we had presented on the project and its historic preservation + sustainability work. The session went really well and I guess I now have two presentations in my quiver (I had kind of forgotten about a piece I had done for a Goucher online forum a few years ago about greater diversity in preservation.)

Johnston also designed the Oakwood Cemetery gate, so I got to see that.

For the rest of the conference, though, I could just enjoy the sessions.

I went to a Main Street Session where we got to see a renovation that a private citizen had done in the downtown; she tempted Heimie's Haberdashery in to a closed retail space, and renovated four apartments above it, two of which are low-income. The cool part was that she did not own the rest of the upstairs units, so we got to see what how they have been for the last 100 years — there's not even running water!

There are a lot of interesting renovation and art features in the town.

Other sessions were equally interesting, including a keynote on archeology (normally not my thing, but this was fascinating) and another walking tour of downtown. 

One really interesting point at the end was discussing the former livery stable (which could, admittedly, use some restoration love). Our guide pointed out that in the early 1900s there was a lot of worry about the extreme amount of horse sh*t in urban areas, more than they could effectively remove and deal with, and that it was only with the advent of cars that that issue was solved. It was an important reminder that we have any number of issues we face in urban areas at any given time.

SHPO staff did an amazing job with the conference. It was good to drive there and back with my friend Chrissy, and to both see people I knew and meet new people in the preservation field. I am too often silo-d due to the way I work with multiple clients, and it was nice to have a sense of community. I was actually reminded of this earlier in the week, when I was asked to join a group of preservation professionals addressing a National Trust tour that visited Minnesota. So I guess it was a good week for thinking of that.

And it ended with a fun date night at a Saints game, so there's that too!