 That was the National Trust's very own Historic Sites Department Coordinator of Operational and Technical Services, Brittany Mills, performing under the moniker CIS. And now, please welcome to the stage the very reverend Gary Hall, Dean of Washington National. Root for the Washington Nationals. I'm actually the Dean of Washington National Cathedral. I am Gary Hall. It's my privilege to be the Dean of this place. We are a national institution. And we attempt to breathe new life into an old space. And we attempt to do that through the arts, through our programming, through our worship, and through many kinds of ways in which we make this a center of not only public life in Washington DC, but cultural life in the nation's capital. So we're both a local institution, a national institution breathing new life into a historic space. The building is what gives us the warrant for everything else that we do here. So the building is really important. But equally important is what we do in this space. And we had quite a blow in 2011 when we suffered an earthquake in this geographical area. We have completed, thanks in large part to the National Trust's help, phase one of our earthquake restoration. You see that there are no longer any nets inside the building. We've been able to clean many of the windows and discover much of the stonework that we didn't know was here. And so the earthquake has enabled us to really attend to our building in ways that we might not have done otherwise. We still now have phase two, which is a little bit more. It's about $22 million, which will restore the outside of the cathedral. So we look forward to many kinds of partnerships in helping bring that off in the next several years. Now it is, there is no, I guess there's no free lunch. There's no plenary event without a little bit of a plug. So now we're gonna show you a video that will tell you just a little bit about what goes on in this wonderful sacred and historic space. Washington National Cathedral was founded in 1907 and it had two main missional foci. One of them was to be a great church for national purposes and the other was to be a cathedral for the city of Washington. As you know, in 2011, the National Cathedral suffered a rather substantial earthquake and the trust has been a wonderful partner to us in helping support our restoration projects to give visibility to it. And we are profoundly grateful for all you do. Over the course of our history, we've had great speakers and preachers here from Billy Graham to Martin Luther King to presidents, to former presidents. We have had educational and cultural events here. We are a kind of focal point for religious life in America. When we need to gather as a people, Washington National Cathedral is one of the places, an iconic place where we can see our nation unified in diversity and gathered asking the blessing of our creator. It hits people in different ways. Some people see it as a purely religious building and a spiritual experience. No matter whether you're religious or not, you walk in there and I feel inspired. There's so much in Washington, the various monuments, memorials, the museums that people are drawn to, but they want a place to come where they can experience those and then come and pray and think and reflect about how they integrate the experience of our national life with their own faith life. And people really have expressed a great desire that we be a place that brings spirituality and the arts together. A real deep and continuing interest in how the visual arts, the performing arts can be a way in for people into the life of faith, Christianity to be sure about other faith traditions as well. Among the stone masons of Washington DC, the cathedral has always been the ultimate place to be. Nothing can compare, in my opinion, to the level of detail that you see in the cathedral. Every piece of this building is embellished with carvings that you see in here and it was made by hand. This is a handmade building. It's a wonderful piece of architecture that has a whole encyclopedia of wonderful building craft in its carved stone, its needle points, its stained glass, its ironwork and all the other craftsmanship that went into the building. We're more than just a pretty face. We are a beautiful building with a really important mission, not only spiritually, but programmatically and civically as well. With the help we've gotten from the Partners in Preservation program at the National Trust, we've been able to finish phase one. But the scaffold up there on the central tower reminds us and the city that we've got $22 million in earthquake repairs left to go. This place matters and we've got to find a way to keep it going. As you can see from that video and from everything else you'll hear around here, our partnership with the National Trust has been really important to us in the past and we look forward to continued collaboration with the National Trust in the future. This place does matter, what you all do matters and it is a great honor and blessing to have you all here with us today and over the next several days. And now it is my distinct pleasure to introduce Marito Riverao, who is the Chair of the Board of Trustees of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. She is Senior Advisor and former Vice President and General Manager for Radio and Television at WGBH, a Boston based public broadcasting organization. She was a member of the National Trust Advisors Program before becoming a trustee. She is also on the Board of Directors of the Museum for African American History, National Public Radio, National Black Programming Consortium and the Station Resource Group. So please join me in welcoming Marito Riverao. Thank you, Dean Hall, for that kind introduction and for hosting us here in this always inspiring National Cathedral. And good evening, everyone. Thank you all for joining us here in Washington, D.C. for this year's Past Forward Conference. I love that name. We are excited about the conference every year and we have a hard act to follow after some very inspiring and thought-provoking conversations in Savannah last November, but we think this conference is shaping up to be something very special. As preservationists, this is the beginning of our year long golden anniversary celebration of the National Historic Preservation Act. It will be 50 years ago, next August, that the act, the cornerstone of our modern preservation movement was signed into law right here in this very city. Of course, the groundwork for passage of the act happened in the months and years before October 1966 in conferences and meetings just like this one. We hope and expect the next few days here in Washington will serve a similar role as we chart our course for the next 50 years, that here in D.C., we can put our hands together, our heads together, listen and learn from each other and help plan the future of our movement. But before we do that, let's take a minute to get reacquainted with each other. I would first like to ask this year's diversity scholars to stand. Let's see you. Our first time attendees to the past Forward Conference, would you stand? And what about our hearty veterans? Those of you who have been to more than 10 preservation conferences, stand up. And those of you making your first trip to our nation's capital, please stand. It's a delight to have you here in Washington. Thank you very much. As you all know, this is the home of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and has been since we were chartered by Congress in 1949. I hope everyone gets a chance to come visit our new home over at the famous Watergate complex. But please call ahead first. They do not take kindly to break-ins over there. And how about this amazing place where we are sitting now? The National Cathedral, also one of our national treasures. For those of you unfamiliar with the history of this beautiful place, this is a building that was decades, if not centuries, in the making. When Pierre L'Enfant was designing the nation's capital in 1791, he called for the construction of a great church for national purposes, and one that could be built here. 100 years later, this site was chosen atop Mount St. Albans, one of the highest hills in the D.C. area. In 1907, when Teddy Roosevelt was residing, the cathedral broke ground. And for 83 years, this majestic church was assembled stone by stone. It was finally completed in 1990, the sixth largest Gothic cathedral in the world. And by then, it had already become an integral part of our capital landscape. Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his last ever Sunday sermon here in 1968. State funerals were held here for Dwight Eisenhower, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan, as well as memorial services for other notable Americans, including Eleanor Roosevelt and Neil Armstrong. This is the final resting place of President Woodrow Wilson, Helen Keller, Admiral George Dewey, and many others. And the history of our nation is embedded in the marble and limestone all around us, the statues, carvings, and stained glass windows of this cathedral all capture and reflect key moments in our national story. Look around the grounds and you can see Abraham Lincoln wrapped in the distinctive shawl he liked to wear on winter days. Rosa Parks, who refused to give up her Montgomery bus seat and ignited a movement. Outside, one of our most infamous contemporary gargoyles, Darth Vader, looks down on Passersby. There are windows commemorating everything from the Lewis and Clark expedition to the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima to the Apollo 11 mission. That one actually includes a fragment of rock from the moon, that beautiful blue window back there. 25 years after its completion, this is already a hallowed place. But in 2011, a surprising 5.8 earthquake caused tens of millions of dollars in serious structural damage, shattering columns, weakening buttresses, twisting and breaking pinnacles. That is why in 2012, we at the National Trust named this cathedral one of our national treasures. Since then, we have been working with leadership of the cathedral and our local and national partners to identify funding sources to repair this special place so it can continue to tell our American story for centuries to come. That is what we do. That is why we are here, all of us today, to help protect the places that tell our stories and enrich our lives, to help understand ourselves and where we come from, to inform our present and guide us toward a better future, to save places that matter. And we have made so much progress together over the past 50 years. We have helped communities to manage change, to keep the connections to the past that inspire and move us. Later in the program, our president and CEO, Stephanie Meeks, will talk more about the journey we have taken, the past, present and future of preservation and tell you about the exciting trust live sessions we have scheduled. But for now, for now, I want to call to order our annual membership meeting. As many of you know, the opening plenary of past forward also serves as our annual meeting of members. With the sole order of business being the election of trustees. The National Trust Board is made up of a remarkably talented and dedicated group of individuals who serve not only the organization, but also the preservation movement. The slate of trustees presented by the Trusteeship and Governance Committee includes current trustees proposed for reelection after completing their first and second terms. For a second three-year term, Larry Curtis and Timothy Whalen. For a third three-year term, Victor Ashe, Joe Grills, Marilyn Wood Hill, F. Joseph Morveck, and me, Marita Rivera. And three individuals have been nominated to serve their first term. Lester Ruff-Fant, Lisa C., and Phoebe Tudor. Detailed biographical information on each of these individuals has been shared online at our new home, savingplaces.org. At this time, it gives me great pleasure to present the slate of nominees for election as trustees of the National Trust. I ask for approval of the slate by acclamation as indicated by your applause. Thank you all, thank you all. Each year the National Trust celebrates the best in preservation through our awards program. This evening, we are recognizing some of the most remarkable projects and people working in historic preservation today. And we are celebrating all they have contributed to the preservation movement. Here to kick off this year's awards ceremony is Kim Coventry. Kim is the executive director of the Richard H. Drifus Foundation, our key partner on this awards program. Please enjoy me now and welcoming to the stage Kim Coventry. Richard Dreehouse is so sorry not to be here tonight. He loves this evening. And he asked me to make a few remarks on his behalf. So in my best Richard Sonian imitation, here we go. Tonight I want to forefront the National Trust's National Treasures program. I recently looked at the list and tried to imagine what would happen to national identity if we lost or failed to be good stewards of the buildings such as the Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe, the African House at Melrose Plantation in Louisiana, the Melrose Schools of the South, the Cooper-Millera Adobe in Monterey, California, or the building that we're in tonight, the Washington National Cathedral, how deprived we would be without them. I'm thankful to the trust and to all of you who do the hard work to ensure that our built cultural heritage informs local identity for generations to come. Now in the fourth year, the Treehouse National Preservation Awards acknowledge excellence. Tonight we honor another class of awardees, all of whom have done extraordinary work. Their stories and their results are best of class models. We all know that preservation and advocacy are long-term propositions and for many important historic sites and buildings time is precious. In my lifetime, I've seen progress and setbacks. My sense, however, is that we are at a critical juncture. The 50th anniversary of the National Preservation Act next year will, I hope, be the catalyst to accelerate this movement. I'm glad to know that all of you will be on the forefront of this course of change. I've redoubled my support and I encourage you to redouble your efforts. Thank you. Houston is known for many things. Preservation hasn't always been one of them, but when Houston gets it right, it gets it right in a big way. The dramatic renovation of Houston's historic Samuel F. Carter building into the J. W. Marriott Houston Downtown Hotel shows how preservation can lead to profit. The S. F. Carter building, also known as the Second National Bank of Houston, was constructed in downtown Houston in 1910. At the time it was built, the 16-story property was both the first steel frame skyscraper in Houston and the tallest building, not just in Houston, but in Texas, too. When it was purchased in 2009, the building was a semi-occupied Class C office building which had been neglected for years. Instead of demolishing and replacing the property, Pearl Hospitality opted to join a growing cadre of property owners, developers, and city leaders that realized Houston's past had a lot to contribute to its future. Following an extensive restoration, the original building remained structurally intact with original hot riveted steel columns exposed and incorporated into the design throughout the hotel. The hotel's layout and guest room design also preserves the column structure, while the beautifully restored 1929 historic boardroom on the second floor offers a unique event space. The project has played a tremendous role in downtown revitalization by creating a desired destination for both out-of-town guests and Houstonians alike, generating tax revenue, and creating 200 permanent jobs. Even better, since the restoration, the value of the building has increased more than 12 times. The JW Marriott Houston Downtown, the JW Brand's first adaptive reuse project in Texas, is a great example of respecting a building's history while updating it for modern use, and it gives a whole new meaning to making bank. Built in 1860, the Iron Block building is Wisconsin's last standing building with a cast iron facade. Using cast iron from Daniel Badger's architectural ironworks of New York City, the building was designed in an Italian neo-Renaissance style, designated a Milwaukee landmark in 1973. The Iron Block building was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1974, but years of neglect made the once beautiful interior unusable, and it's then crumbling exterior unsafe for passing pedestrians. Enter Dental Associates, which wanted to move its corporate headquarters from Wauwatosa to downtown Milwaukee. Since its vision included a new clinic location, the company wanted a highly visible location, not to mention a historic structure that represented stability and longevity. After purchasing the Iron Block building in early 2012, Dental Associates undertook a complete, meticulous, historically accurate renovation of the site due to the advanced state of disrepair. The team had to resurrect 19th century construction techniques and combine them with modern technology to save the rare facades, plus all the workmanship, supplies, and labor came from the Milwaukee area, adding to the pride and investment in this majestic place. The exterior renovation was unveiled in June 2013, with the doors opening for good the following year. For the people who saved it, the Iron Block is more than a building. It's a symbol of a grand idea from an important time in our nation's history and one well worth protecting. Baltimore Design School is the first purpose-built public school in Baltimore City in decades, transforming an abandoned industrial building into a hub of creativity and education for Baltimore students. When the building was first constructed as the Crown Cork and Seal Factory in 1914, it was one of the first reinforced concrete structures in Baltimore. It's natural light, tall spaces, and unique ventilation system all created an improved and more productive environment for factory workers. However, after the building was shuttered in 1985, the vacant property was a blight in the city's art district for more than a quarter century until the need for a large new school spurred Baltimore City public schools to think outside the box. School officials, along with the design team, collaborated with a nonprofit board and a private developer to reinvent the factory as a facility that met school system standards, supported the school's mission, and aided community redevelopment. The ultimate design, open, light-filled, and full of historic and modern contrasts reflects the school's design-thinking curriculum and stimulates the students' curiosity. A unique public-private funding plan using community tax credits and loans made the new $26.85 million facility possible and also helped transform a challenged neighborhood. From abandoned eyesore to state-of-the-art facility, the Baltimore Design School demonstrates the very best in sustainable practices and creative thinking. There's nothing like the proposed demolition of a beloved property to motivate a community. For the town of Easton, Massachusetts, that property was the Ames Shovel Works, a granite-walled relic of New England's industrial age. As one of the first assembly-line facilities in the country, this complex once employed more than 500 workers and made more than 1 million shovels per year for projects around the globe. The site also forms the heart of a national register-listed historic district, so when drastic redevelopment threatened in 2007, the town rallied to save it. Local leaders and community groups searched for a more sympathetic owner, while the National Trust listed the complex among America's 11 most endangered historic places for 2009. Boston developer Beacon Communities drew support from Easton's residents, and in 2010, they voted to form a public-private partnership to help fund the project. The agreement included a commitment to preserving the building's integrity in order to obtain federal and state tax credits. Beacon and the architectural firm Prelowitz-Chelinski Associates worked closely with the National Park Service to convert the shovelworks into a residential complex while respecting its existing architecture. The team also stabilized the structures and created 113 residential units, 34 of which qualify as affordable housing within the shovelworks' 10 buildings. What's more, the rehab physically reconnects Ames Shovelworks to Easton by restoring long-lost sightlines to the surrounding streets. As a result, the site has once again become an economic driver for historic Northeaston Village. It has restored an architecturally astounding historic site, returned beautiful stone buildings to the community, provided homes for people from all walks of life, and helped knit the neighborhood back together. To present tonight's awards, I am joined by Stephanie Meeks, President and CEO of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The JW Marriott's dramatic facade restoration and sensitive interior reuse of its former bank building are a shiny example of the preservation work taking place in the home of next year's past-forward conference. Here to accept the Dreehouse Preservation Award for the JW Marriott Houston Downtown is Manette Basil, Mayor's Assistant for Cultural Affairs, City of Houston. In Milwaukee, local craftsmen and a local business came together to save the state's last remaining cast iron facade building, creating possibly the world's most beautiful dental office. Here to accept the Dreehouse Preservation Award for the Dental Associates from Block Building are Mark Demsky, AIA Architect, Dental Associates, Cynthia Manos, Co-Owner, Dental Associates Family and Specialty Care, and Jim Pienka, President, Iconica. The former Crown, Cork, and Seal Factory was imaginatively adapted into an open, light-filled public school that feeds its students' creativity. Here to accept the Dreehouse Preservation Award for the Baltimore Design School are Steve Zigger, AIA Partner, Zigger Snead LLP Architects, Dr. Melissa Peltralo, Principal, Baltimore Design School, John Constable, Project Manager, Seawall Development, Tim Kober, Project Management, Southway Builders, and Colin Ingram Administrator Historic Tax Credit Program, Maryland Historical Trust. When a portion of the AIMS Shovel Works site was threatened with demolition, local citizens rallied together and created a public-private partnership resulting in a save for this former most endangered place. Here to accept the Dreehouse Preservation Award for their work on the AIMS Shovel Works are Josh Cohen, Development Director, Beacon Communities LLC, David Chalinsky, AIA, Co-Founder and President, Prelowitz-Chalinsky Associates, David Colton, Administrator, Town of Easton, Colleen Corona, former chair of the Board of Selectmen, Prelowitz-Chalinsky Associates, Greg Gaylor, Executive Director, Boston Preservation Alliance, and Leslie Donovan, Preservation Consultant, Tremont Preservation Services. Congratulations to all this year's Dreehouse Preservation Award recipients. These projects are truly inspirational, and I know your successes will be an inspiration to everyone here with us tonight. The next- The next project we will honor tonight serves as an exemplar of what we hope to accomplish through one of our most important initiatives. For the past several years, the National Trust has been working to encourage the U.S. Postal Service to protect our nation's historic post office buildings through one of our national treasure campaigns. One way to do this is by modeling sensitive, adaptive, and appropriate reuse of decommissioned post offices. This year's inaugural National Trust Presidents Award for Leadership in Historic Preservation is being awarded to a project that demonstrates the potential of these former civic buildings. Throughout the country, the U.S. Postal Service is decommissioning and selling historic buildings in downtown locations to recover from its financial crisis. Unable to retain their original function, some buildings are being saved through innovative reuse. The Greenwich Post Office Project in Greenwich, Connecticut is an inspirational example of this solution. Constructed from 1915 to 1917, the Greenwich Post Office was one of the last individually designed offices before U.S. Post Office architecture was standardized for use in many communities. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places individually and as part of the Greenwich Avenue Historic District. Inspired by the building's neoclassical structure, concave arch historic facade, and monumental limestone columns, Greenwich Retail LLC purchased the building from the U.S. Postal Service in 2011 and joined forces with restoration hardware, now RH, to transform the statuesque building at the heart of Greenwich into a home furnishings gallery. A preservation covenant placed on the property as a condition of the sale required exterior rehabilitation according to the secretary's standards. The Greenwich Post Office Project focused on restoring the exterior envelope while creating new interior spaces that harmonized with the building's original style. Some of the building's new features include interior sight lines that line up with the original windows and a grand staircase that leads to a sunken roof deck minimally visible behind existing parapets. A fully restored north facade, including exterior limestone, buff brick, and historic iron lanterns remains as the building's prominent historic feature. Now serving as a stunning retail space, RH Greenwich provides a model solution to the problem of disappearing historic post offices throughout the country. Here to accept the President's Award for National Leadership in Historic Preservation for the Greenwich Post Office Building are Kate Lemos-McHale, senior associate, Bayer Blinderbell Architects and Planners, LLP, Jim Gillum, co-founder, Beckham Gillum and Kroger Architects, Rich Granoff, founder and managing principal, Granoff Architects, Frank Pryle, Jr., AIA Associate Partner, Bayer Blinderbell, Architects and Planners, LLP, and with us in spirit, Peter Malkin, three-time honor award winner, trustee emeritus of the National Trust and chairman emeritus of Malkin Holdings, the owner of the building. I now have the privilege of presenting the National Trust's highest honor, the Louise Dupont Crown and Shield Award for superlative achievement in the field of historic preservation. In the preservation community, 1966 is known as the year which Congress enacted the National Historic Preservation Act. 1966 was also the year that Robert Silman founded his structural engineering firm, Silman Associates. Over the past 50 years, Bob has brought his engineering expertise to more than 450 landmark sites, including 10 Frank Lloyd Wright buildings, four state capitals, several well-known museums, world-famous concert halls, and a number of our own National Trust sites. Bob is generous with his time having volunteered his services and done pro bono work for a host of organizations at both local and national levels. And on top of all of this, he's made a point of nurturing the next generation of preservation-focused engineers. This time, this year, for the first time, we honor an engineer with the Louise Dupont Crown and Shield Award. And I can think of no one more deserving of this honor than Bob Silman. Please join me in welcoming him to the stage. Conservation engineering have given new life to hundreds of significant buildings. But even more than his work, his humanistic approach has helped the public better appreciate the importance of technology in preserving our heritage. Mr. Silman's career, starting with the founding of his structural engineering firm in 1966, mirrors the rise of the historic preservation movement in the United States. At that time, there was little to no formal academic training in the art and science of preservation. Until only a few years ago, in fact, engineers still had to follow the route taken by Mr. Silman. Learn preservation engineering on the job. Mr. Silman has worked on more than 450 registered individual landmarks and scores of others in landmark districts or on eligibility lists. Among these is Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water, where Mr. Silman employed an ingenious modern technology, post-tensioning, to reverse dangerously high stresses in the concrete cantilevers. Mr. Silman has also worked on historic museums, historic state capital buildings, nationally significant homes and sites, public buildings, performing art spaces, and historic religious buildings. No place is too small or humble for him to rehabilitate and reuse. The U.S. Secretary of the Interior appointed Mr. Silman to the advisory board for the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training, for which he has passed chairman, representing the fields of engineering and preservation education. In the meantime, many local, national, and international organizations have recognized Mr. Silman's achievements. Of note, in 2013, Mr. Silman received the Association for Preservation Technology International's Harley J. McKee Award for his outstanding contributions to the field. Helping to fill the educational gap he once faced, Mr. Silman is taught as an adjunct professor or lecturer in schools of architecture at Yale, Columbia, the City College of New York, Cornell, and Harvard. The National Trust for Historic Preservation's relationship with Mr. Silman is a deep and productive one. Under his leadership, his firm has worked on numerous national trust properties, including a current project to mitigate damage at the Farnsworth House. Moreover, Mr. Silman has participated and partnered with the trust on a number of initiatives to further the study and practice of historic preservation and engineering. In particular, Robert Silman Associates has partnered with the National Trust since 1997 to sponsor a fellowship that gives a recent engineering graduate the opportunity to work on restoration, rehabilitation, and preservation projects at the National Trust's 27 sites nationwide. Fellows are then offered a full-time position at the firm where they can put their valuable lessons to full use. Mr. Silman is the first technologist to receive the Crown and Shield Award, a milestone that recognizes the vital role of engineering in preserving the built environment. He represents more than just numbers, however, his passion is infectious as well. Mr. Silman's expertise, influence, and devotion to the cause exemplify the tenets of the Crown and Shield Award, and we are thrilled to honor him today. Thank you very much, and Stephanie, thank you for this wonderful moment. As you said before, and as this presentation showed, this is the first time that the Crown and Shield Award has been given to a technologist. I am really very proud that our engineering efforts are being recognized tonight. You know that in being recognized as an individual, it may seem trite of me to say that this really is not the award for one person, but really is a recognition of the efforts of many different people. But that's not a cliche, it really is the truth, and I really must thank many people who have helped in my career and have been responsible for this award in reality. First and foremost, my family, my wife Roberta sitting in the front row here, my three children, who have over the past 50 years born with me, as it were. All those missed volleyball games and piano recitals, being late for dinner, being missing in action sometimes. But on the other hand, I've in return from them gotten this enormous, enormous support. It was a terrific family support system. I thank you for that. Also, our firm, Silman, Structural Engineers, has of course been responsible for much of the work that I have been credited with, but really is an effort of a whole group of people. The three leading senior principals in the firm, Joe Tortorella, Nat Oppenheimer, and Kirk Metham. Kirk is here tonight. Certainly deserve recognition, along with our Director of Preservation and Principal Ed Mead. In addition, the entire staff, both the technical staff and the support staff is just unbelievable. We could never have accomplished what we have without their tremendously devoted support. Both people who are working in the field of historic preservation and those who are working outside of that in the area of new buildings, all of those I think are to be commended. Our clients certainly need to be recognized. We, I think, have helped their dreams come to fruition, become reality. I would say that the fears that they have had about their buildings, we've helped assuage and give them confidence. And then I think finally, very often we run into the feelings of insufficiency on our clients' parts that they haven't done enough or that they are stuck with this older building. And I hope that we help in a transformation that leaves them with a lot of pride. I would also like to recognize the preservation organizations, both the advocacy ones, both private and governmental, that have allowed us to help them in their taking of positions and advocacy, as well as in actual construction with bricks and mortar. And of course, which is the number one of those organizations, our National Trust here. It has been a joy for me to work with the Trust for so many years. So if it is the first time that the Crown and Shield Award goes to a technologist and to an engineer, I have to say that we as engineers in this world of high tech, I think have a lot to offer. Let me just point out a few of these things. Number one, of course, is the advent of the computer. We now are able to perform computational operations that we never could before, things that I never dreamed of when I started 50 years ago. Now we can predict accurately on very complex structures, the levels of stress in materials. We can even predict how much a building will move under certain loads. This was unthinkable years ago. We did everything using approximate methods, numerical methods as it was euphemistically called, which really depended on the experience of the practitioner. There was nothing scientific about it. Good engineers sometimes made good guesses, but not all the time. The computer has really helped us enormously. We can now perform a structural intervention and I think with a pretty good degree of certainty be able to predict its outcome. That's a lot to say. I think I also would point out that there is a much larger demand on us, maybe because of things like the computer, but both our clients and building code officials have asked us to be able to make the buildings perform to a much higher level than they probably were originally intended for, and certainly than they had been performing. Things like extreme weather, which is attributable in many cases to climate change. Things like terrorism and vandalism. And I would say things like seismic events that we used to take as an active nature that couldn't be resisted. All of these things were being asked to harden our buildings against, and we have to respond. And I think in many ways we've done a wonderful job of it. In addition to this use of the computer and computational technology, we have new materials. Our firm has been a leader, I think, in applying some of these new materials to historic buildings. You saw the slide of Falling Water. There we used a technique called external post-tensioning. We're exploring that for use on other projects right now. We have been a pioneer in the use of carbon fiber with an epoxy matrix on historic buildings. I know many of you shudder when you hear that because it may not be reversible, but not everything that we do structurally can be reversible. Carbon fiber was used as a repair technology on two other Frank Lloyd Wright buildings, Wing Spread in Racine, and the Guggenheim Museum in New York. And it has been an enormously successful antidote to the problems there. We've done pioneering in foundation systems, things that you don't see. But believe me, are they important? Jet grouting, deep underpinning, slurry walls, and now the investigation of the first use of base isolation in the eastern part of the country. Projects like the Virginia State Capitol, New York City Hall, and maybe the Smithsonian Castle are all candidates for new foundation designs. We have been also leading in the design of custom connections and hardware and fittings. Many of you saw the scaffolding around the National Gallery East Building over the past couple of years. It's down now, the building is glorious. But all of the stone on that building, 17,000 individual pieces, was re-hung on hardware that was really elegantly designed by members of our firm. And something that we hope will give it a really lasting support system. Our firm doesn't only do historic preservation work. We have a real balance. About half the work we do is new construction and half is preservation and adaptive reuse and work on older buildings. I bring this up here because it's very interesting how one side informs the other. When we design a new building, we hope that we don't repeat the mistakes of the past. And having worked on many old buildings, we know plenty of those mistakes. We don't always avoid them, but we hope we will. Also when working on older buildings, we're able to apply techniques and materials that we've used on the newer buildings. This computer technology, much of it is developed for new buildings. We can adapt it to historic. And the materials, all these things that I've mentioned before, are usually first employed in new building construction. We can shift them over and make them work in historic buildings. Preservation technology, I think, has finally arrived. It's well accepted now. It is a recognized piece of structural engineering technology. There, in fact, are several organizations that I'd like to mention in this country dedicated solely to preservation technology. One is the National Park Service's fantastic board, the fantastic agency, I should say, the National Center for Preservation, Technology and Training in Nakarish, Louisiana, that does an enormous job on a miniscule budget. And they are devoted solely to preservation technology, mostly to the fostering of research and the dissemination of the products of that research. Then there's the Association for Preservation Technology International, another private organization, but one that is completely dedicated also to preservation technology. I should say, by the way, that they are meeting at the exact same moment that we are meeting. Somebody needs to have a preservation calendar so that we don't have these conflicts. So finally, on behalf of all in preservation technology and on behalf of my entire firm who was behind me on this, I wanna say thank you for this wonderful award. It's been a real honor to accept it and it's great to be involved so much with the National Trust. Thank you all. Throughout the week, the National Trust for Historic Preservation will be honoring the extraordinary efforts of individuals and organizations for their important efforts in the preservation movement. Here is a brief glimpse of the people and projects that will be recognized more fully at other venues. Is a strong voice for saving legacy cities, including her hometown of Detroit. Emily led an unprecedented smartphone survey of properties targeted for blight mitigation and launched Brick and Beam Detroit, a project that brings together people working to reinvest in the city. Her current work with Place Economics, rightsizing cities initiative and the preservation rightsizing networks leadership team cements her role as an emerging leader in the field. The historic Newsboys home in Midtown St. Louis has been serving the homeless community for more than 100 years. The Salvation Army's recent renovation of the building provides 58 affordable one bedroom apartments and is part of a larger project that will develop four new buildings that will house supportive services for residents. Through its education, advocacy, and hands-on preservation work, Adirondack Architectural Heritage has heightened public awareness and appreciation for the New York Adirondack region's architecture, small communities, and historic preservation. The organization with a staff of four and volunteers numbering in the hundreds is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. Elizabeth Pierce, CEO of the Cincinnati Museum Center, was a strong leader and advocate in support of Cincinnati's Issue 8, a 2014 ballot measure that asked voters to pass a levy in support of Union Terminals restoration. The measure, which passed with 61% of the vote, will provide $170 million of the $208 million needed to restore this Art Deco masterpiece. The Caradco building, once the centerpiece of the historic Millwork District in Dubuque, Iowa, sat vacant for 40 years before being restored by John and Mary Gronan of Gronan Properties. Today, the Caradco building, with its 20,000 square feet of dedicated space, serves as a model for neighborhood revitalization and is just one example of the Gronan's bold vision and full portfolio over the years. Congressman Turner and Congressman Blumenauer exemplified bipartisan leadership qualities that protect our nation's heritage. Together, they have worked to spearhead support for retaining and improving the Federal Rehabilitation Tax Credit, advocate for annual funding and sponsoring legislation reauthorizing the Historic Preservation Fund and preserve underrepresented historic sites associated with the Civil Rights Movement. Fort Mason Center, originally established as a U.S. Army base in 1910, recently underwent its biggest preservation project yet to rehabilitate its peer-to-substructure and warehouse with seismic upgrades, core building system updates, roof and concrete spalling repairs and energy efficiency improvements. Now it's able to continue its work to provide a space for arts and culture programs, events and organizations in a historic waterfront campus. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome back to the stage Stephanie Meeks. Thank you all for being here. This is a very special evening. I've never had the chance to speak at the National Cathedral before. And it's also a special evening for me because my husband Rob and my sons Bennett and John are here tonight. It's their first opportunity to hear their mother give a speech that isn't about homework. So I'm really glad you guys are here. At the conference this week and all over the next 12 months we'll be focused on the future of preservation. So in the spirit of past forward, I wanted to take a few minutes tonight to reflect on the past 50 years of our work and then the road ahead. A look to the past, if you will, before we go forward. Over that time we've seen and experienced profound transformations in the ways families live, work and play. Transformations that once would have seemed like science fiction. In my lifetime we've gone from maybe having one color television on every block to every person here effectively carrying one in their pocket. And a lot of this change has been a good thing. I mean, which of these would you rather have? In a time of enormous upheaval we've worked to preserve the connections and the history that make us who we are. We've helped protect what's good in our communities and even the idea of community itself. And when you take a step back and look at what we've accomplished it truly is remarkable. We don't often get the luxury of reflection in preservation. From day to day we're either deep in the trenches or onto the next battle. We all know how fighting to save historic places can be all consuming. And sometimes we can lose our sense of the big picture. Because we've all known the agony of defeat. We've all felt the sting of loss. Those places that we could not save. But as I said earlier, when you stop and think about it it is really amazing how far we have come. Together we've made an incredible difference over the past five decades. Consider the time before the National Preservation Act was passed. We may be enjoy reflecting on the era of mad men today but in the 1960s the past was not in vogue. America looked to the future. Let's go back to those years. Civil rights in Vietnam were in the news. The Astrodome had just opened. The Beach Boys were feeling good vibrations. Bob Dylan was plugged in. Twiggy was the face of 1966. Everywhere from southern towns to college campuses to JFK's Camelot there was a sense of accelerating change. A feeling that America was finally experiencing a welcome liberation from the strictures of the past. The space race was in full swing. The launch of Sputnik had galvanized the United States to focus on the future. And so Mercury and Gemini were in the news with Apollo soon to come. Shows like the Jetsons and Star Trek which premiered the same year as the National Historic Preservation Act captured the national imagination. And this embrace of Tomorrowland extended well past Disney. Interstate construction and suburbanization were in full flower and historic buildings and neighborhoods were under constant threat of demolition to make way for capital P progress in the form of more wider and faster expressways and burgeoning sprawl. In cities, grassroots activists like Jane Jacobs fought comprehensive urban renewal that replaced vibrant city blocks with monolithic single use development. The raising of New York's Penn Station in 1964 to make way for Madison Square Garden became a potent symbol of loss that galvanized preservationists all across America to fight for the historic places that matter in their communities. That same year, a small group of preservationists met over the summer to plan a concerted push for a new federal preservation law. They were building on high level discussions that had taken place a year earlier at a conference at Colonial Williamsburg. A conference very much like this one co-sponsored by the National Trust. Eventually, this group formed the nucleus of a special committee on historic preservation. They toured Europe to learn best practices. They identified potential shepherds of a new preservation law in Congress. And ultimately, they contributed to the remarkable volume with heritage so rich. As I'm sure many of you know, this evocative and eclectic 1966 book plays a critical role in our preservation story. The essays, poetry, photography, and policy recommendations included within this book jump-started our movement in its present incarnation. It laid the foundation for the signing of the National Historic Preservation Act on October 15th, 1966, which officially enshrined into federal law the values, tools, and benefits of saving historic places. That very same day also saw the signing of the Department of Transportation Act, which included another one of our fundamental tools, Section 4F. What ensued thereafter, as Arthur Stuart Brandt put it in his book, How Buildings Learned, was a quiet, populist, conservative, victorious revolution. Preservation, one Yale scholar wrote, became the only mass popular movement to effect critically the course of architecture in our century. Writing in 1990, James Marston Fish declared that preservation is now seen as being in the forefront of urban regeneration, accomplishing what the urban renewal programs of 20 and 30 years ago dismally failed to do. Today, that's more true than ever. Across the country, 15 million Americans and counting are now taking action in their communities to save the places they love. Preservation now has a seat at the table in discussions of urban planning, zoning policy, and municipal growth. We've shown and can empirically verify that instead of being an obstacle to vibrant and sustainable future, putting our historic fabric to work for communities is the key to attaining it. And we've managed to save a lot of special places along the way. Since our journey began in the 1960s, let me borrow a page from another early 60s icon, Rod Serling. Let's enter another dimension, a dimension of sound and sight and mind, the Twilight Zone. Let's imagine for a moment that we had not come together 50 years ago and the National Historic Preservation Act in section 4F had not passed into law. How would America be different today? We can start with a neighborhood that was under threat at the time of the act, the Vieux Carre, the French Quarter of New Orleans. Today, the quarter is an iconic American landmark, the biggest tourist destination in the state, attracting more than 10 million visitors a year. But at the time, there were plans to build an elevated riverfront expressway right in front of the waterfront. This proposed high-ray would have separated the quarter from the Mississippi River and utterly and irreversibly destroyed the Narlan's charm and historic character that brings so many people to that city. But preservationists spoke out. They organized as the Louisiana Council for the Vieux Carre and they pushed back. In one of the very first tests of the Act, section 106 review, the newly created Advisory Council on Historic Preservation examined the project and recommended against it. As a result, the Secretary of Transportation ended the proposed highway project in 1969. But what if there had been no preservation act? Instead of Laissez-les-bon temps rouler in the French Quarter, I think there'd be nothing rolling at all, just endless traffic jams and no tourists. Or consider Baltimore's Fort McHenry, which inspired Francis Scott Key to write the Star Spangled Banner during the War of 1812. This national monument and historic shrine was once threatened by an elevated highway project that would have hidden the Fort from public view. If there'd been no section 4F, instead of taking in the place that gave us our national anthem, Americans looking out over the sweep of Baltimore Harbor would see a bypass. The answer to, oh, say can you see, would be no, not really. There are literally thousands of other examples in communities all across America. Local preservation groups and state historic preservation officers, the vanguard of our work, have employed these laws to make our lives and homes richer. The iconic U.S. Customs House in Philadelphia. The TWA terminal at JFK International Airport. Chicano Park in San Diego. Cemetery's of enslaved people in Georgia. Wagon trails in Wyoming. Coast Guard light hoses along the Atlantic. These 1966 laws help protect and preserve iconic bridges all across America, from Chattanooga to Chattamass to Great Falls, Montana. All over the country, from Atlanta to Lincoln, to right here in Washington, D.C., they helped safeguard historic neighborhoods and prevented them from being converted into giant highway cloverleaves. These laws have protected traditional cultural sites along the Missouri and Colorado rivers, the slopes of Mount Shasta, and across the islands of Guam, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico. They helped defend the sacred places where Americans perished in the line of duty, from the fields of Manassas to the waters of Pearl Harbor. They've helped save everything from nine-mile canyon in Utah, home to prehistoric drawings that are thousands of years old, to the space shuttles. They've even transformed the city that we're in today. And let's not forget the National Register, also part of the 1966 Act. More than 90,000 beloved historic places all across America have been embraced and recognized as elements of our national story in every single county of the country. Places like the old Slater Mill in Pawtucket, the first successful cotton spinning factory in the United States. Seneca Falls Historic District, where 19th century suffragists came together and first called for the right to vote. And the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, one of the crucibles of the civil rights movement, now a national symbol of our struggle to be a more just, tolerant, and compassionate nation. All of this and so much more remains part of our great American story today because of our preservation journey these past 50 years. We don't live in a twilight zone of mega highways and strip malls. We live in communities that have retained much more of their historic character, human dimension, and natural beauty because of our work. And that journey continues. We're on the ground all over the country, right now working to save more special places. Some of you may have arrived at the conference by way of Union Station. A magnificent Beaux-Arts masterpiece, just two blocks from the US Capitol, which first opened its doors in 1907. Union Station sees nearly 100,000 people pass through it every day on their way to trains, buses, taxis, and bicycles. It remains a key commuter hub and a really integral part of the DC landscape because preservation is fought to save it over the years. And with the help and input from groups like the National Trust, the DC Preservation League, the Capitol Hill Restoration Society, and the Committee of 100 on the Federal City, the steward of this historic place, the Union Station Redevelopment Corporation has completed the first ever preservation plan for the station. It's being renovated so that it can accommodate the transportation needs of today's DC while maintaining its historic character. And there's more good work being done all over the place. In California, local and state activists are working to save historic post offices in places like Berkeley and Napa. In San Juan, groups like Para Naturalesa that are restoring the historic aqueduct of the Piedras River. Not far from here, a coalition that includes Preservation Virginia, Scenic Virginia, the Chesapeake Conservancy, the National Parks Conservation Association, and the James River Association, among others, are still hard at work to protect the viewshed of the James River from a proposed power line. This coalition has been making their case with a strong community engagement campaign called Down to the Wire. Let's take a look. Dominion power, don't ruin our river with your ugly power lines. Don't ruin our beautiful river with your ugly power lines. Don't ruin our rivers with your ugly power lines. Dominion power. Dominion power. Dominion power. Don't ruin our beautiful river with your ugly power lines. Please don't ruin our river. Do not ruin our river. Don't ruin our beautiful river with your ugly power lines. It is happening today because preservationists came together with a plan for action. Now as we begin the 50th anniversary year of the National Historic Preservation Act, it's our turn. We have a responsibility to all of those who came before us and all of those who will come after to lay the groundwork for the next 50 years. Historic preservation is now correctly seen as a powerful tool for managing change, for spurring jobs, promoting health and well-being, and contributing to the betterment of our communities. But at the same time, we have new opportunities and new challenges that demand innovative responses. Instead of being hollowed out by suburban blight and lack of disinvestment, American cities are experiencing a renaissance with the diverse and large millennial generation leading the way. This provides us with an excellent opportunity to put the power of potential and potential of older and historic buildings back to work for communities all over America. At our Preservation Urban Trust Live this week, sponsored by the 1772 Foundation, Mary Rowe of the Municipal Arts Society, one of New York's most distinguished preservation organizations, will lead us in a discussion about how we can make this happen. As part of the Preservation Voices Trust Live, sponsored by our colleagues at the National Park Service, we'll hear from Brian Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative, which works to fight poverty and challenge racial discrimination and disparities in our society. As the historian David McCullough put it, history is no longer a spotlight. We're turning up the stage lights to show the entire cast. One of our sites doing amazing work in this regard is the Lower East Side Tenement Museum in New York City. I'd like to share with you a video clip that they recently put together. I am very passionate about the museum, in part because of the way the story is told. The museum really is able to bring history alive and involves all the visitors into telling the story. There's a larger story here, and it's the story of how the United States once again embraced an inclusive sense of who we are as a people. Our future lies in our ability to imagine ourselves as a nation that draws the world's ambitious, that allows them to build lives and communities, and indeed to build a nation in this country. I wish Morris Vogel would run for president. He's so right. Our work is that much more powerful when we connect it to the issues of today. With that in mind, I hope many of you got to hear the fascinating and illuminating conversations at our Diversity Summit just this morning. To keep moving forward, we must also keep innovating. Last year we talked about some of the technological and financial tools reshaping our field. This week, we're proud to have Deputy Assistant Secretary Marion Mulligan McFadden of Housing and Urban Development keynote our Preservation Innovation Trust Live. Our federal agencies play a fundamental role in the stewardship of our nation's heritage and are often on the front lines of innovation in our work. We're making historic buildings more energy efficient to preparing for the impacts of climate change, an issue whose ramifications on all of our work will increase in the years ahead. We're in the year 2015 now. NASA has found water on Mars, Twitter and Instagram and Snapchat are how we communicate. Instead of good vibrations, Taylor Swift has bad blood. The face of fashion is Lupita Nyong'o and our march for civil rights continues. And we're coming into our own and flowering as a preservation movement. We're adopting new tools and we're gaining new allies. We're already seeing strong dividends from leveraging the power of social media networks like Twitter and Facebook and Instagram to engage more people. I hope everyone's had the chance to visit our brand new website at savingplaces.org that launched last month. It's been streamlined and revamped and updated with hundreds of photographs from our collections to facilitate more online engagement. And you may also have seen our This Place Matters van. It's been part of the relaunch of this exciting and growing social media campaign. Over the past summer, we convened a number of what you might call non-traditionalists, non-traditional preservationists together at Kaikit in Tarrytown and the University of Massachusetts. We gathered developers, business owners, environmentalists, social justice activists, artists, academics, people whose work often involves historic places but who don't necessarily think of themselves as one of us. We asked them where they thought preservation needs to go moving forward and we found that much of the discussions revolved around the same concepts. You can see them here on the screen behind me. I've talked about all of these ideas today and we'll keep talking about them at our trust lives this week and in the months to come. And there's one more important idea that's not up here. But it ran through everything we talked about at these meetings and it runs through all of our preservation work each and every day. As a thought exercise, we took the transcripts of the UMass and Kaikit meetings as well as the forum journal articles that they produced and we ran them through Wordle. This is this application that makes word clouds based on how frequently a word was used and they're shown by size. The word cloud is here behind me and as you can see we spent as much time talking about people as we did about preservation. And that I believe is the key to our future. Of course the preservationists of 50 years ago also thought about people. They framed our work, their work, by explaining the impact of places have on our spiritual, economic, and social well-being. But as you all know our work often focuses on the built environment. As we move forward for the next 50 years, I believe we need to keep expanding our horizons. As we keep working to save historic buildings, let's also think beyond them to culture and community and people. We tend to think of our successes in terms of places saved and of course that's very important. But just as important and perhaps even more important are why these places matter and the many lies we touch because of our work. I wanted to share with you an example from one of our historic sites, President Lincoln's Cottage here in the northeast part of Washington D.C. Earlier this year a class from Cross Country Middle School in Baltimore had scheduled a field trip to President Lincoln's Cottage but it had to be rescheduled because of the civil unrest following the death of Freddie Gray. Our great staff at President Lincoln's Cottage worked with Cross Country Middle School to reschedule the trip and customize a program for their class. And here's what the teacher wrote afterwards. He said, the job you did of getting the students to see beyond the myth of Lincoln and start understanding the man and the stress he bore during the war was outstanding. Many of our students said they were enlightened by the discussion in which you helped them connect the turbulence surrounding Freddie Gray to similar disturbances and unrest during Lincoln's administration. They began to see history as a fluid continuum of which they are a part and in which they play a real role rather than a static thing already dead and gone and without relevance to them. Ultimately, stories like this are why we do what we do. The children who are inspired to study history and their public service, the couple who can still visit that place where they met 50 years ago and share it with their grandchildren, the aspiring artist, musician or chef who can pursue her passion in a thriving historic neighborhood full of new bars, restaurants and galleries. All of you here today are part of that story and it's now our time. Over the next week and in the months to come for us to write the next chapter. Preservation has come such a long way over the last 50 years and our neighborhoods and cities are so much more livable and lovable because of what we have achieved. Let's build on this tremendous foundation and craft a vibrant dynamic preservation movement for the 21st century. Let's improve and expand the preservation act and 4F. Let's digitize the national register and state surveys to make that information more accessible. Let's enhance the federal historic tax credit and see a state tax credit passed in every state in the land. Let's get the historic preservation fund reenacted and fully funded. Let's make the preservation, let's help make preservation the standard in all of our communities and demolition always the option of last resort. Let's lower the barriers of entry to join in our work and embrace positive change. And let's rekindle our grassroots energy and get more Americans engaged in our work than ever before because we are enriched with every single person with us. We are stronger, fuller, more dynamic and more representative of America. That is the way forward, bringing people together, listening to and telling their stories, daring to innovate, spreading our wings. That is how we will keep saving the places that matter and why I am so excited about the future that we are making together. Because the future of preservation starts now. Thank you. I'm Larry Curtis, Board of Trustees, National Trust for Historic Preservation. Thank you, Stephanie. That was great. Well, I'm fired up and I think we all are. Thank you again for coming to this year's conference. I now want to invite all of you to join us for our opening reception here at the Washington National Cathedral. Wynn Companies, my company, is proud to be the principal sponsor of the reception and to be joined by Alexander and company Stonehenge Capital, Commerce Bank, Alembic Community Development in this endeavor. We'll be kicking off this year's past forward in style and together we'll be celebrating one of the most powerful tools in our arsenal, the Historic Preservation Hacks Credit. As many of you know, the federal credit is the largest investment of our government, our government makes to preserve our nation's historic fabric. Over the past 34 years, it has created more than 2.4 million jobs. It has leveraged more than 100 billion, that's billion, in private investment. And it has transformed more than 40,000 unused buildings and underutilized buildings for new and productive uses, like we've seen earlier. It has transformed neighborhoods. It has transformed cities, including this city of Washington, D.C. 75% of the economic benefits of these tax credit projects stay on the ground in state and local communities, and the U.S. Treasury makes money from it. A $1.25 on every dollar invested comes back, not a bad deal. This is why 34 states have followed suit with their own state credit, including my home state of Massachusetts. And when it comes to the power of federal and state credits, I speak from experience. My company again, Wind Development, has utilized these programs for more residential adaptive reuse projects than perhaps any in the nation. One of my principal roles as chairman of the campaign to save the historic tax credit has been to engage my colleagues in the historic tax credit industry from all elements of the industry, architects, lawyers, bankers, contractors, to describe the need for ongoing advocacy on Capitol Hill. The historic credit's been around since 82, and it's threatened. I appreciate the strong engagement of our colleagues who have been with us before and who are with us tonight. Please stick with us. Our successes include securing resolution supporting the tax credit by the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. We are well on our way, including this week's advocacy on Capitol Hill, a thousand meetings planned, and more to come with legislative offices in this Capitol. We organized a letter of more than 500 businesses and preservation groups to the Senate Finance Committee to preserve the tax credit and keep it in any reform of the U.S. tax code. And we have published many reports documenting the impact of tax credits in communities across this country. And speaking of the tax credit, another of our important anniversaries, the National Trust Community Investment Corporation, a subsidiary of the National Trust, celebrates its 15th anniversary in the work that it does. From very small beginnings, NTCIC has become the leader in the historic tax credit industry. It has closed over 100 transactions, a billion dollars of work of tax credit, equity and debt, and the National Trust is proud of it. So thank you to everyone at NTCIC, as well as their initial, their first investor, Bank of America, for recognizing the good that the historic tax credit can do. Here's to 15 more years and 15 more beyond that and 15 more beyond that even by continuing supporting historic tax credits all over the country. We'll toast these anniversaries tonight and get the chance to catch up with friends, both old and new, at the reception, which will take place now. Now join me in welcoming Brittany back to the stage and in spirit of this beautiful space, let us proceed slowly to the bar. Thank you.