 Hey everyone, welcome to CCTV Channel 17, live at 525, The Preservation Burlington TV Show. Preservation Burlington is a nonprofit 501C3 organization and our mission is to preserve and protect the historic architecture and livability of Burlington through education and advocacy. You'll notice there's an empty chair to my left tonight. Ron is stuck in traffic and he will be here very soon. So if we clip away to some pictures and then suddenly we come back and Ron's here, it is not a figment of your imagination. He will be sliding in hopefully very soon. So we've got a couple of things to update you on. Preservation Burlington has recently been working with a Champlain College student, Leo Lane, to completely redesign our website and you're getting a sneak peek. So we're gonna just show you what that is. It's got an opportunity to sign up for our mailing list to donate, big red button, right front and center. But also our newsletter is on there. We've got an advocacy area and we're gonna continue building it out. As we go forward, our calendar of events is going to be on there or is on there and we've got some really great events coming up. And for the first time ever in Preservation Burlington's history, we've actually got a color version of the newsletter coming now. Just for online, we still are mailing a black and white version but we're really excited because it looks really great in color. So we've got all kinds of information about our advocacy efforts, our programs, updates on our court case, all kinds of stuff are going to be found on that website now. So we're really excited that that is there. So what is coming up on our calendar? Well, we've got a webinar on architectural styles of Burlington that is going to be given by Karen Norwood. Former board member took a little bit of a hiatus but she's coming back in a couple of different capacities but also to share her webinar with us. So that's gonna be on Zoom in March. I don't remember exactly what the date is going to be. We've tossed it around. I think it might be March 27th but check the website for that. So that's really exciting. We are going to have talks about the history of brewing beer in Burlington. There are gonna be some great cemetery tours. Our walking tours are coming back in the spring. So we've got a really full slate. We've got tours of Little Jerusalem and the Lost Shoal Mural. Those are coming up and those are gonna be really exciting. So check out the website, take a look through and we hope to see you at all of our events. So one new segment that we decided to bring to this show to really help with that education piece of preservation of Burlington's mission is to give you ideas of what to put on your preservation bookshelf. And last week, Ron and I both brought some books that were surprisingly similar. And I'm curious what he's gonna show up with this week or this month. But I brought one of my choices for what should be on everybody's preservation bookshelf. It's the Illustrated Dictionary of Historic Architecture. And it's a phenomenal book and it really is illustrated as the title says and you can see on the inside and I think I have some close up pictures for you to see of how it's organized and what kinds of stuff is inside. So it's really phenomenal resource for walking around communities. You can see like it's got lots of details and elements and architectural stuff to show. But if you're walking around and you don't know what you're seeing on a building you can take a look into this in the book, flip through the pages because obviously you're not gonna know what you're looking for. But you'll spot it, you'll see it and you'll be able to name it. And it's really a great resource for those of us who write about historic buildings, have to prepare national register nominations, house histories, being able to describe what we're seeing on a building in a way that is standard and cohesive. And here's Ron, he's gonna slide, write it. It's just the same way in a different picture. Well, you know, they already know you're coming. You did bring a book, it's so good to see you. I always listen when you tell, you brought two books. No, no, no, no, I only brought one book. This is a figment of your imagination. You told me one book. It is one book, this is for a different thing. So what did you bring? Sorry for the delay. You're stuck in my traffic. Did you do the intro? I did, I did and I didn't trip over it too, too much. Not nearly as bad as I usually do, right? I was just talking about the book I brought. I don't know if this is on your bookshelf. Do you have this book? I have a different one, because you were making me do all kinds of research this afternoon, so I have like five of them open. I sent you that picture, right? Yes, yes. I see you didn't bring a dictionary, but this is a really great book for when you're trying to describe a building or do a write-up and identifying historic features because there's a name for everything, right? Like different styles of windows or different styles of trim or if the trim goes this way versus that way, it's a completely different name, right? Sigma recti and sigma or something or other. Yes, yes. And I think I brought another picture as well of all the, well, not all of them, but some of the orders, you know. Basically, basically all of them, right? Well, then there's fancier ones. Composite can be different, but. Yeah, but you know, to identify an order, you need to look at the base, you need to look at the column. Is it fluted? Is it plain? Is it, you know, and then the capital and then the entablature at the top, like all these different pieces. And sometimes they mix and match, which I think is what you see with moldings today, like with contemporary moldings where they try and mimic the old moldings and then they're upside down and sideways and we won't go into moldings today. No, it's painful. We don't want to get into that world. So this is a phenomenal book. And you know, even if you're not writing historical descriptions or architectural descriptions, it's also a great bathroom book. Who's the editor on that? Editor, Cyril Harris. Okay, Harris. He'll screen-dictator of History and Architecture. It's one of the books that are a part of the curriculum for the Historic Preservation Program and it really has been one of the, I mean, it's dog-eared. I have gone to this book over and over and over again. Now I'm sorry, I didn't bring, you know, there's a couple. I don't have that one. So, you know, as soon as we walk out of here, I'm going to order Amazon it or see if it's local. But I do have the dictionary of Building Preservation, which is another good one. And it's less about, so I collect dictionaries. So I have a bunch on construction, pretty boring. It's kind of, well, it's not boring, but it's a good cross-reference. It's a little cookie cutter and modern, you know. But then I like to have one specifically on preservation and restoration kind of stuff, old buildings. And then, of course, architecture is a completely separate, different, you know, language, really, that. So I like to have all of them. And when you throw me a curve ball or a question, you question my vernacular. And then I'm like, I've got six of seven of them open. You're vernacular or you're vocabulary? Yeah, no, the vernacular language that I've learned coming up through the trades that isn't always the same as I have a good one. Architecture from originally 1700s, I forget exactly when. It's not an alphabetical order. Oh. It's so annoying. How are you supposed to find, how is it organized? But I mean, I was in the middle of trying to figure that out when I had to leave Shelburne Museum today, but I just kept going. I'm like, wait a minute, that's not where S belongs. You don't have to bring it another time. I should have shifted gears. I was all set for this, I should have shifted gears. So what is that, what did you bring? So what's your choice? I mean, it's not, I don't want to qualify it, right? It's like one of the first books that I ever stumbled across and bought called Renovating Old Houses. And I had been working on old houses for a long time. I had a pretty growing interest in their construction techniques. And George Nash, he's done one or two other. I think there was one follow-up book. But he's just a guy who loves old buildings. And he's, so a lot of the stuff in here is sort of, it's not remodeling or remodeling, but it's like, it's a practical book on. So it's for somebody who wants to be a good steward of their historic house and not. Find an old house and try to bring it back and save it. And you know, if the slate's already gone, he goes into asphalt, the history of asphalt shingles and ways to do it properly. There's a lot of stuff on construction techniques and repairing timber frames. Not putting in a new timber frame part, but how you do that and how you support it and how to do floating tenons and things like that, was really good. And obviously to help people know what they're looking at when they find it. Right. So you can see what you're looking at. And then this one's a little, so every chapter, the house frame, and you know, he starts with little quotes. Oh nice. And the dust returns to earth as it was. Could be one of us. That was a little depressing, I know, I know. But there's some really good, every chapter has like one of these little like. Little quips. Yeah, pump you up kind of. Except for that one. Except for that one. So it shows like different framing, like roof framing things. Whoops. Well, there's lots of this, which was really helpful when I was starting out too. Every chapter has a lot of really close up graphic depictions of the types of drawings and stuff. I know Shelburne Museum has some of these I found in the basement, and they're all in the carpentry shop now. I dug them up and hung them up. That's awesome. Yeah, just so that what a bent is and a notched joy, isn't it? Yeah, and it goes back to that whole vocabulary. There's so much to it. Awesome, that's great. This one's too big. Yeah, that's a very long one. But anyway. No, wait, no, come on, just give me a minute. Keep talking, I'm gonna look for my favorite one. You should have had this prepared. Oh my God, another really long one. Anyway, get this book, put it, so remind us of the title, Renovating Old Houses by George Nash. By George Nash, it's a really fun book. Oh, that's a good one. No. Do you see poo? Do you see poo? Do you see piglet? Brain's first, then hard work. Look at it, that's the way to build a house, said Eeyore proudly. That's quite appropriate. That is a good one. I love it. There's another funny one in there about not wanting a house. Wanting a house that's settled into all its problems already, not some new house that hasn't, that's really sage advice, right? Because houses settle, houses, you know, I've, and that's part of their character when their walls are a little slanted, the floors slope, and nothing is square anymore, and things squeak. You know what you're getting when you're buying an old house. A new house starts settling and doing things that you don't want it to do. Yeah, yeah. Making weird noises and stuff is starting to fail. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's awesome. Mm-hmm. So, great, those are two great books people should put on their bookshelf. So Illustrated Dictionary of Historic Architecture, I can't speak anymore, Architecture and Renovating Old Houses, which brings us to our second new segment, which is Burlington Buildings to Know, right? So, I don't know if you brought a building to talk about, but I brought one. I thought it was we bring books and we talk about one building. So I saw the pictures you shared. Yes. So the building that we have today is the Montgomery Ward and Company Building that is on Church Street, the top of Church Street. It was built in 1929. And it's one of these buildings that I feel that there's a lot of beautiful old buildings on Church Street that nobody notices because people don't tend to look up, right? The awning is too big. On this particular one, I was looking at the picture, right? Mm-hmm. Very Art Deco. Yeah, so it was built in 1929, and the other book I brought really isn't a book, but since it's the Montgomery Ward building, I brought the Montgomery Ward catalog from 1895. That's not a cheat. You didn't bring two books. I didn't bring two. This is just... Reference to the next segment. Reference material, right. And the original Montgomery Ward catalog was, I believe, like a one-page sheet that was sent out. And by 1895, it's this monster book. It was the largest mail order business in the U.S. And they had everything in here, from pruning shears, to hog scrapers, to sausage makers. It's where shears got his idea. Yeah, yeah. Well, they were our tribals as well. So I don't know if we can pop the image of the Montgomery Ward building on the screen for folks to see, but this is a really significant building on a national and state level because it really marked the transition from people buying online in those days, the mail order catalogs, right? Mail order catalogs, yeah. And then the automobile came around and people started driving to the city to, they had more capability to be mobile and wanted to start buying or doing their shopping in the urban area. So companies started to build brick and mortars and get away from the catalog business. But so it's just really fascinating how they built these buildings. And it's an example of corporate architecture, right? They really wanted to have a sense of continuity in all the communities that they built in. So this one was one of four in the state. There's still one in Brattleboro and Rutland, I believe, but Burlington's is the one in the best shape. Are they in the same era? They were all built around the same era. Are they in that language, that architectural language? Yes, they are. And I was gonna say something. Oh yeah, the Burlington building was store number 515 in 1929 when it was built. In 1927, they had 36 stores. In 1929, they had 515, 200 more than Sears Roblox. So it was like a real arch-rivalry. When I was a young man, there was still in downstate New York and Warwick, New York, there was still a functioning Moncum Rewards, you know? Yeah, so I think Sears outlasted them by a little bit, but not by much. Not by much, not by much at all. And if we can pop up the picture of the building again, it'd be great, because we can talk about some of the elements. Dwell on that for a minute. You don't have a picture, I don't think. We do have a picture, I said a picture, but I guess maybe it didn't come through. It didn't come through. You're on Church Street and you look up. So, you know, it was remodeled over the years, but if you look at the second story, you can see that it's got a cast concrete. Now, right now, it's Homeport? It's Homeport, yes. It's Homeport, and there's a gigantic awning on the, like right at the first floor level. The thing I remember about the picture that you sent earlier that I saw was the brick building next door was garishly painted red, painted brick always, unless it's purposely painted brick like my house. Yeah, it makes me nuts, you know. But the top of this building, and you could see it was a commercial store front below, and then the top shows all the architecture. So whatever's happening in between in that awning, it's sort of obscured, and people on the street level can't really, unless you step way back, you don't really appreciate the building for what it is. Yeah, but it is Three Bay, and it has sort of, excuse me, now I'm choking. It is a steel frame building, but it's clad in cast concrete in terracotta, which is really interesting. It's one of very few in Burlington like that. And it has these neoclassical motifs up there, and you know, church tree isn't that wide. If you step to the middle on the back, you'll see it, but it has some elements up there that are really sweet. It has Chicago style windows, which are really distinctive. What are Chicago style windows? The Chicago style windows originated in the Chicago School of Architecture in the 1880s and 1890s, and they're basically a single fixed late glass window that's fairly large, and they're flanked by two operable sash. So you don't think big rectangle with two windows on the side for ventilation and fresh air. These ones are not true purist Chicago style windows because they have a three light transom above them, but they're really significant and character defining, and they were, when Montgomery Ward went out of business, or when they sold the store, I think they sold it in, or stopped closed this store in 1961 or so. It got remodeled and repurposed, and those actually got covered by shutters. So in the 90s, the 1990s, they came uncovered again, and they're up there in their original form again. Oh, cool, nice, yeah. No, the top of the building is beautiful. So we're giving everybody homework, right? Because we don't have a picture to show. So everybody has to go downtown and church street. And I mean, that's a good starting point for a church street walking tour or something. But if you were to step back and look at that building and note that the 1920s and what that architectural, I keep saying language, I wanna sound fancy, but everybody was sort of doing that, and they were competing with each other. And then you can just compare that to the Red Bridge building next door, and see that was probably, it's Italian eight, so I'm guessing it was probably late 1800s, mid to late 1800s commercial. So I think this part of church street was lost to fire or was impacted by fire. I'm not sure if like the entire upper block or just one side or the other, but this Montgomery Ward building was infill. They chose to infill in this style. And it's really interesting because you look at a lot of buildings now, like commercial buildings that are corporate buildings, they build them to look the same everywhere, right? Like you've got IKEA, you've got Target, and it makes you think like, are we going to be nominating those buildings to the National Register one day? Like, because it's just really an interesting concept, but also it's not a new concept, right? Post-war, I mean, you just poked the bear, right? So I'm gonna calm down here, but I mean, looking at the things we're doing, not to be one of those all in the old days, but post-war buildings, except for some institutional buildings, well, WW2, the only war when we say, and not post-World War I, so there's that phase. So in the 20s, we were still building buildings to last. There was a mentality that when you build it, and it's in here, one of the quotes, but when you build it, you're not building it for yourself, you're building it for the generations to follow. 1947 on, with all the advent of the materials we got for the war, all the quick, rapid building instruction, it started to introduce the idea of planned obsolescence. I just look at the 1966, 1960s buildings we're knocking down now, 60 years later. 60 years is the max for planned obsolescence. The high school is gone, the Memorial Auditorium will probably be gone soon. We built those institutional buildings to last, but everything else about them and the experimental architecture, we've talked about the steel frame and Memorial causing so many problems. So no, nothing we built from the 1970s on will be here in 40 to 60 years. We're gonna bulldoze it and then build it again. That's probably the case, but it's really interesting that this corporate architecture is staying a little bit down here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, everybody. But you make a really interesting point. I remember reading when I first started in historic preservation, probably in like the mid-90s, I heard a term saying that like with the McMansion buildings, right? That was those awful things, that their planned lifespan was about 18 years before they started falling apart and, you know, but that's because like you said, people put down roots and they meant to leave their buildings to future generations. It was for families, it was for everybody else. And now like everybody's moved every five years and we don't care what we're building. Four to five years is the, yeah, people's seat being in a home. So you hear people all the time, oh, I don't want my slate, I'm gonna replace it with something, I'm gonna replace it with a 20-year roof. That costs a quarter of what a 100-year roof costs. A 100-year roof is the same price. And then they say, well, I'm not gonna be here in 20 years, even. And it's like, oh. Oh, and you're starting to poke this bear now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've got a lot I can say to that. Did you touch, did you let people know what we have coming up on the show? I did not. Let's, before we run out of time, I just want to say because, you know, our, first of all, we have our, it's gonna be a little bit, I'm gonna throw my readers on here, but I know we're shifting a few things around and we were hoping Ryan would be able to join us, but he had some research that he wasn't finished with. Right, he's gonna be here next month. Next month, which is March, so Joan Shannon's not gonna be here with us next month. We haven't confirmed the date for her. Okay, so we're gonna try to plug her in sometime soon, or maybe who knows what the results, so anyway, February's just us, which is fine. March will be Ryan, our fellow board member. Yes. I forgot the building he's doing research on. He's gonna do the Buildings of Franklin in Austin, so the YMCA Building, Central Fire Station, and what's the third one? He sent it in an email. Memorial. Memorial. The auditorium, of course. How could we forget? Oh my God, but anyway, yeah, he gets a real B in his bonnet and he's great at his research, so that's March. April, we have Bill Maher's coming on because he's the B expert, but he's also part of Foam Brewery and he's a brewery expert and he's gonna talk about a new book he's writing, but also about the history of micro brewing in Vermont. May is, of course, our home store. The standard will plug in Matt Viennes and we'll talk about the upcoming home store. I don't wanna foreshadow. I think it's gonna be great. I think he's got some good news to share by then, so I'm excited about that. Chris Hadsell is gonna try to come in in June because both Bill and Chris are, they're married. To each other? Yep, to each other. They're both experts. Chris is gonna come in because they're both doing humanities grant talks for us where people can actually come and physically see them talk about their areas of expertise. Awesome. And Chris Hadsell, she saves the theater curtains all over Vermont, so she's gonna talk to us about that. We have someone potentially for the history of Overlake in July, Art Hop, guests in August, September, East End Group, the Jason from the East End Historic Group is coming in to talk about Greenmount Cemetery. Carolyn Bates has continued her murals book, a bunch of those out. She's great, so she's gonna come on. November, we have a holiday program and an annual meeting. We're also gonna have Christa come in, our, also a board member. She's just launched recently a home interior design business that's focusing on historic buildings, so she's gonna come and talk to us about that as well. Heritage House. Yes, it is. Heritage House, it's interesting. Not to plug our own folks and stuff, but she's also, like Ryan, has a real passion for old buildings. That's what brought her to the board. She's a fan, I mean, she's a realtor by trade, I think, right now, but she just loves old buildings and she just wants to dive in. I told her by books, by books, by books, and everywhere you go, look at details, look at details, look at details. Steel, good ideas. Absolutely, yes. That's all I've been doing since 1964. Yep, so we've got a lot of good stuff coming up and we talked a little bit, told folks about the new website we do and that all our calendar items are on there. Since you brought us in, do you want to wrap us up? No, because I would have to read it or I could go this way, so you can do it. Go for it. You can do it. Thank everybody for tuning in to CCTV. It's right there, you memorized it. Live at 525, Preservation Burlington, it's easy. For more information, it's easy. I haven't memorized it in like 15 years. For more information on Burlington history, our tours and events, or to get a marker for your historic house, go to preservationburlington.org. It's right there and we'll see you next month and you'll meet Ryan. Thanks everybody.