 Save that thought, save that thought. Oh, welcome to CCTV Channel 17, live at 525, Preservation Burlington Show. Preservation Burlington's a non-profit, 501C3 organization whose mission is to preserve and protect the historic architecture and livability of Burlington through education and advocacy. Thanks everybody for tuning in. This is our first episode of the year, January. We're lining up guests, but as you know, Lisa and I don't need guests, so. We're entertaining all by ourselves. So for this episode, we're just gonna talk largely about what we're doing and what's upcoming for Preservation Burlington this year. I know Education Committee member Bob Deveno has been working like a crazy person, getting the newsletter out, scheduling cemetery tours already and walking tours. He's got some great stuff coming up. Yeah, we've got walking tours of Church Street, the waterfront, and I can't remember them, which is why I'm looking at my phone. We have to look at our minutes, right? The old North End. Ramble is gonna have a walking tour, Pine Street and Art Hop, and we're gonna have at least two cemetery tours this year, right? Like Green Mount and Lakeview. And then some specialty tours. Right, all the regulars, plus we did, I know we've done an Italianate tour last year and I think the year before. That's sort of random whenever it fits in and we team up with the Italian group or club or members in Burlington. I just gave myself an electric shock. Don't do that. Yeah, so I think it's gonna be a busy, busy season. Yeah, I was digging through some of my files today and I found an old little booklet that we did on the John Roberts houses, so a little walking tour. It'd be fun to bring something like that back as well because that's a really cool little one. Yeah, with Karen and Britta coming back on is kind of filling in toward givers because they're both really naturals at it. That's Bode's well. I know Bob is in talks with Bill Mars, who's a brewer, he's a beekeeper master in Burlington and he's gonna be doing a talk for us, probably a con toys auditorium either late April or early June. That's gonna be fun. Brewing and the history of that in Burlington and Vermont. So that's gonna be a good talk. That's gonna be very good talk. What else have we got planned? We'll have our homes tour. Homes tour. Tour again. Yep, the committee's kicking in soon. It's gonna be really tough to beat last year's tour, which was probably one of the best we've ever had. I think it was the best we ever had as far as the tendency. And maybe there's a fair amount of pent up demands and missing it through COVID. But I know that Matt Viennes, our board member who steers that entire committee, he's already got, we like five or six homes. I think he has two or three that are committed that are really pretty interesting. I don't wanna do too much foreshadowing until, we don't like to get excited because then if one or the other falls by the wayside. But that's also Bode's really well and speaks to the success of last year's program because we have traditionally found ourselves scrambling sometimes, right? To get it pulled together. So it's great that it's starting off so strong, so early in the year. Yeah, Bode's well. It bodes very well. We have good guests coming up. I think we're gonna get Bob McCullough back on. Because now that he's got the HP program at UVM on pretty solid footing, he's gonna wanna tell us what his plans and thoughts are and what that whole thing looks like moving forward. So I'm looking forward to that, because he and I have met a couple of times behind the scenes talking about what he wanted to do and you know, parts of that are me having the opportunity to lecture, guest lecture. I was gonna ask her, like I should have asked beforehand, like is it public knowledge yet? Can we say something about it? You're gonna be teaching at UVM this semester, right? Yeah, I guess, yes, it's very exciting. So it hasn't been public knowledge because I didn't really wanna talk about it because I didn't wanna jinx it and I still feel imposter syndrome. But then thanks to you helping me fill out like things I've done in the past that are teaching basically. And then looking back, it's 36 years I've been doing this. Working with plaster and decorative finishes and every little something with old houses from New York City all the way to Burlington, Vermont, you know, and all over Vermont. So what are you gonna be teaching? So I get to team teach Architectural Conservation One and that'll be with Elliot Lothrop, friend of mine and co-preservation contractor and Alex Tolstoy, who's also now a preservation contractor, fairly recent grad from the program, six or seven years ago. But he's doing consulting and his focus is energy efficiency in older homes and how to, all that that encompasses. So I think the thing I like about this team teaching idea, you know, Elliot's got that whole framing, the timber framing and the traditional building all wrapped up, that's all he's done for 20 plus years now. I've got all the other bits and pieces but I've purposely ignored things like the energy efficiency aspect. I don't have, you know, we each bring something different and interesting to the table for the students this year to hopefully, well hopefully get a deeper dive into the nuts and bolts. The thing that I'm finding and that the three of us have talked about is, it's difficult, there's so much we wanna talk about and share, it's hard to get a deep dive when you have, what is it, 16 or 17 classes or something like that. We definitely want four field trips, field visits. And those are important, yeah. And then, you know, a lecture can be boring but there's so much to talk about. So, and we're gonna try to meet, there may be more. We do assigned readings, lots and lots and lots of reading and that's actually really good sort of segue to something that we're gonna talk about in a little bit but before we go there, you know, Elia is a graduate of the program as well. Yes, I do know that, yeah. So that sounds really exciting. I'm really happy for you and the students are gonna get a ton of value out of the three of you, so. It's funny, so the last thing I'll say about it though is the other thing that I started thinking about and that Bob was making me think about, you know, I've been in Vermont 25 years working on old homes and for probably 15 of those years, every summer I've had one or two historic preservation grad students work for me. So I've been doing this for one or two of them a year forever. You know, like currently right now I have one at the student at the Shelburne Museum and one in our shop working for us who just recently graduated. Nice. So that's exciting. It is, it is. They always have really interesting student research projects and we've had them on the show before and I'm hoping that we can convince a couple of them to come down and talk about their projects and findings this year as well, because that's always, it's so good to see, well, you know, not that they're all young because some of them were old like me, but it's just so exciting to see people still interested in preservation and learning more about it and then sharing their findings and their stories of what they found is really great. Yeah, that was, that is always fun and I remember I went to see Will Gansel's working for us now and just recently I went to see his presentation for that he was doing with the other students, you know, and it, I was kidding with you know, he's so mature and well-spoken, you know, because we're shoulder to shoulder in the shop. Yeah, right, we're just goofing around trying to get things done and his presentation was really his, in both the presentation he did and his presentation of the presentation were just really mature and really spot on and thorough and it's cool to see that. So yeah, we'll do many updates once a month just to let you guys know whether I'm crashing and burning or if it's working out. Well, if you don't show up for the show, there's my answer. Yeah, there you go, that's right. I've moved back to New York. No, don't you dare. So one of the things that we talked about for this show too is something that has come out of conversations from our own board and onboarding new board members. We still have room for more board members and volunteers and we'd always love to have people interested come down. But it was sort of a, what buildings should I know in Burlington and what should be on my preservation bookshelf? So every show from now on, I just decided to this, you don't get a vote, but every show from now on, we're gonna showcase two books that should be on people's preservation bookshelves and two buildings in Burlington that they should know, right? You should have been clear about that because I brought 15 books. You get to choose one, but I think I might let it slide and go two today because you're just so excited. I've had people at the museum say that that's what they wanna see. They wanna know what we read and what sort of thing. So it's good, we'll get to it now, thanks to you. Oh, well, okay, thanks to you being so pushy. I am pushy and I own it. So where do you wanna start? Where do you wanna start with books or buildings? Let's start with buildings because you were shooting out a couple of pictures and I think it'll tie into the book you brought, but how do you wanna do that? You wanna just throw a picture up there? Or do you wanna practice it? Let's throw a picture out there. So let's have a complete surprise and show one picture of one building in Burlington. And I'm looking at that, there we go. Okay, so Cathedral Church of St. Paul. Yep, so the reason I think, I spit this one out there. I'm like, hey, let's get that picture because it's, I'm not even sure if brutalist architecture is historic yet, but it's historic in its importance in the movement. And it's one of those, so many people have an underappreciation for modernist architecture in general, I think. And we've seen that with the Cathedral Immaculate Conception and just all over the place, we had that super popular home store which was all modernist architecture in Burlington, which is really some of our local firms that are still practicing our hotbeds for modernist architecture. And then the least favorite of people's modernist architecture happens to be Brutalist. And I'm a big fan of Brutalist architecture. I love that sort of otherworldly functional utility of it, you know? Yeah, so, and this particular one is really a massive example, which is kind of interesting for Burlington. And it's got all these really cool angles and shapes. And it looks like a cold, stark building, but it really isn't. Inside is pretty beautiful and the worship space is really cool. And to your question of, is Brutalist architecture historic? Well, absolutely. And this one turns 51 this year. So this was built in 1973. Incidentally, it's the original church or original cathedral of St. Paul. It's an Episcopal cathedral was built in 1832, burned in 1971, which is similar to another church that we're close to. And so this was built to replace it in 1973. Again, the original one was markedly different design, right? Gothic, I'm imagining. Yeah, and this style didn't even exist back then. So it's really interesting to see this. And this has a prominent location in Burlington, right on the corner of Pearl and Battery Streets, right at the top, overlooking the lake. And it's just a really cool building, I agree. Yeah, and it's like, I think we're lucky for now to have two really good examples of that transition. You know, when these congregations would lose, it's horrific to lose an 1830-something Gothic cathedral church, you know, have it burned to the ground. Or your church in general, right? I mean, true. That's your community space, yeah. Not even, right, I'm just looking at it from like a nuts and bolts point of view, you know, but you're right, I mean, just the impact on the community. And then to have those congregations come together and be so forward-thinking, say, what are we gonna do now? We're looking to the future, you know? And that was brand new, it wasn't historic, it was brand new. Concepts and yeah. Concept and architecture, and they're like, yeah, let's try it, let's do this. And you know, 51 years later, it's still functioning for the community the way it was meant to. And being a shining example of that architecture for a tiny little city of 40,000 people, we're lucky to have such, you know, forward-thinking architecture in a place like this. Yeah, for sure. Anything else you wanna say about that one? No, so if people don't know that one, go visit it. I believe that obviously check with the management, the Episcopal church, you know, don't just like show up and wanna go in, but I'm sure they'd be happy to show their space. They're pretty proud of the space. I know I've been through there a few times when they've asked me to come and look at things and consult and you know, and it is, you get in there and you're like shocked at how cool and interesting it is and the woodwork. And how warm it is, right? Because on the inside there's so much woodwork. There's a lot of woodwork inside. Yeah. Okay, so then the second my pick for today is the Fletcher Free Library in Burlington, which I love. And what I brought is a historic postcard, I think, of this building. Of a Carnegie Library. Of the Carnegie Library, yes. One of four in Vermont. Carnegie or Carnegie? I say Carnegie, you say Carnegie, like tomato. Tomato, I think it's gonna be the same thing, but here it is in its original form. You can see College Street wasn't even paved yet. Right. And you know, there's nothing around it yet. Now it has a big addition on that left side. What year again, was it built? So this was built in 1904. Okay. And you know, the story behind it is really nice too. Andrew Carnegie, Carnegie, Carnegie, who came here as a Scottish immigrant penniless and apparently, you know, he became a wealthy industrialist, industrialist, I can't say things now. But he apparently had a really cool philosophy about life, that you should spend your first third of your life learning as much as you can, your second third of life earning as much as you can. And then your last third, giving back as much as you can, whether that was through philanthropy or civic service. So he built all these libraries around the country to really further learning. And this one was built in 1904. Like I said, there are four in Vermont, five if you can't, the academic library down at Norwich University. Okay. He funded that one as well? He funded that as well. And it's just a really cool building. The original one was in City Hall, in the original City Hall and was donated by the Fletcher family, Mary Martha Fletcher Hospital, family. But then it outgrew the space and they needed to build a bigger one. And so this is what happened in 1904 with funding from Andrew. Yeah. So I really like this one. What's really interesting about this one to me is something that's really relevant to Burlington history now. In 1974, it fell into disrepair and almost came under the wrecking ball. And the community rallied around it. It was slated for demolition. Really? Yeah. The community rallied around it, got it nominated to the National Register and got it expanded, restored, rehabilitated. And now it is, I can't imagine Burlington without its library. Can you? No, not at all. I mean, I love the Carnegie Libraries, the architecture of them and just that, it was aspirational, especially for the time, obviously, for what he was trying to provide for the communities. So, and ours in particular has that footprint. I didn't realize it was slated for the wrecking ball. That's frightening. Right? So it can be done. It gives us hope. It does. And the other part of it that I like about that library is that addition. And there's that constant debate about adding to historic buildings, how to do it right, full sense of history or not, or too modernist or a weird modernist work on a building. Yeah, right. So, and I think ours is hugely successful. You know, the original library is still the prominent architectural gem on that piece of property. And then it's got this gigantic sort of wing that comes off at an angle to the side that provides all this other program space, you know. Right, right. Yeah, I haven't studied it in terms of, you know, how it meets the secretary's standards for additions to historic buildings, but it's set back, it meets, it's really different. There's no way you would interpret that as being original to the building, right? No. Right. And it really functions for the community. And that whole block is now historic too, right? You've got the fire station just south, south of the library. Right, behind the south of it, yep. So, which is another historic building that I think we're gonna talk about soon here as well, and Ryan's got a fire lit about that building and the architect in general. So, that's really exciting, yeah. Yeah, there's a lot to watch in the, I mean, we have Memorial Auditorium, Kitty Corner too. Yep. And it's a very interesting block and I know there's lots of hopes and dreams about a major development of that block and it'll impact, it's almost like, maybe then next to or behind the library, if you will, or besides the fire department, isn't that little, the tattoo parlor in the Queen Anne Victorian? Sort of where the old modernist motel used to be. And now there's, you know, so you've got these little pockets of historic buildings smattered around this gigantic block and what's that gonna look like? It'll be interesting. Yeah, and then we've got some really significant buildings on College Street too and storied buildings, even just like ordinary residential buildings, you know, Theodora Peck, one of my favorite Burlington women. I've heard you use that name before. To talk about her today, but. Is she buried in Lake View, San Matin? She is. Okay, yep, yep. And so her father's insurance agency, T.S. Peck, was up on College Street, so it's really cool to know the stories of these people and she probably, because she was such a bookworm and such a prolific writer. She probably walked down from her house to the library. Well, no, yeah. I was gonna say maybe she lived in a different time. I'm having a brain fart, but yeah, she probably spent a lot of time at the library. All right, should we talk about our books? Well, so right, yeah, the segue from the Brutalist Architecture to the Modernist Edition that's subservient to the historic building and I'll go first. Okay, what did you bring? Because I know you said one book, but it's one author and Donald Friedman. I'm a huge fan of his writing, try to get it like that. This one, and Turn of the Century Architecture, Historic Architecture, this is his second book, I think. The first book I got was the investigation of buildings by him and especially as it pertains to architectural conservation, this is, he's an engineer. He's an engineer who loves historic construction and this first book, The Investigation of Buildings is all about deterioration, the things that destroy a historic building and what to look for, how you go about looking for those, documenting them and not that we're gonna get into a lot of that in the class because again, it's a deep dive, but this book talks about field work, documentation and all sorts of things, sort of the nuts and bolts of how you go about studying an old building and figuring out what's wrong and why it's wrong. So I've always, that was one of the earliest books I stumbled on and at the time, I mean, I'm not an engineer, so at the time a lot of it was like, man, this is really complicated stuff, but as you get more familiar with historic buildings and it becomes, you're like, oh right, that's what Donald Friedman was talking about. You get to see him speak. Yeah, I wonder if a few years ago, the engineering department at UVM actually started taking a track into historic buildings and maintenance and understanding them. So I wonder if they have any of these on their curriculum, but... What's really cool is, and this one's more turn of the century. This is steel and concrete and spans and roofing systems and all that sort of like the things that led up to the Empire State Building. And so it's a little less pertinent to Vermont, perhaps, but it's, like I said, it's another book by him that's just a really interesting view into how they started, how they went from late 1800s to the elevator to concrete to stacking buildings and getting bigger. Well, I mean, we just saw with the Cathedral Church of St. Paul, we've got pretty big modern buildings here. For sure, yeah, yeah, and this really lends itself to that. And then back to your other question, it was kind of fun and interesting. At the very last minute, we had five students that are in the HP program doing our course at the first of the two. And at the last minute, this young woman who's an engineering student, she didn't have the prerequisites for it. So we had to figure out how to do an override so she could take the class. Oh, awesome. She's really interested in, she's an engineering student, but she loves historic architecture. I mean, it makes so much sense, right? I mean, at some point in your life, unless you're doing just new construction, you're gonna run into an old building at some point. It's really funny that you brought those and we're talking about brutalist architecture and your concept basically did not coordinate at all. This is quite by coincidence. I brought one of my favorite books, which is 20th Century Building Materials. It was a collaboration done by the National Park Service and Thomas Jester editor. And it's really fascinating because it talks about things that you don't necessarily think of as historic, like a glass block or cast stone, cast concrete, stamped concrete, perma stone, all these things that were just new and innovative at the time and that are now deteriorating. Some because they weren't meant to ever last forever, right? And some that just people ended up loving more and wanting to keep. And what's really great about this book is that it's directed at, yes, preservation professionals, but also normal people, right? So it's not overly complicated, it's not a lot of jargon in it, it's really beautifully laid out and it talks about the history of each building material, what contributes to its deterioration, like what makes it stop working and then how to conserve it if there is a conservation method that has been found. Some things just, you gotta let go or replace. A lot of these things can be repaired, restored, reused. Replicated, yeah. If you know how it was originally done, right? I know, my buddy Nancy at the museum told me about this book because she had a copy of it and I immediately bought a copy because I love to joke around that Formica is historic. Yeah. It was invented somewhere in Texas, I think. And yeah, it's like 75 years old or something crazy, you know. Yeah, I learned something today. We have so. Happy birthday Formica. Yeah, right, exactly. I know, I was at a conference in Florida actually and Evergreen Arts, the conservation studio. I'm a big fan of their work here out in New York City but they work all over the world and he was there talking about cast stone because a lot of these fountains that were built in Florida in the early 1900s, 1920s, 1920s were built out of cast stone with no real intention of it lasting forever. And they've had to do a company, he gave a big long talk about a bunch of these that they were hired to restore and it ran the gamut sadly of replicating because they had been let go too long and in addition to the rebar basically, the steel infrastructure inside being too close or allowing water in and then it spalls and it cracks and it destroys. So it was just a really interesting talk about things you don't think about when you're working with redstone and lime mortar. Things that have been around forever and ever. And it also depends on the environment too, right? Like so if it's an assault air environment versus here. So one of my favorite restoration or preservation projects was actually out at Shelburne Farms and the formal garden that beautiful balustrade in the garden that oversees the lake, that's cast stone. And that had gone in various or in different degrees of disrepair based on when and with what materials, which aggregate, which compositions of stone or materials that was put together, right? So I spent many a week out there when we had, when we got some of the new stone, we had to make it look like the old stone. So there's a lot of in painting and some of the stuff had to be sent back because it was just not the right aggregate size or ratio. So it's really fascinating to see all the little elements that go into it. It's not just like concrete is concrete is concrete. It's not at all. Not at all. I mean, especially with the older stuff, we've been doing a lot of projects at the museum and my friend of mine, Dave Ocaleta, was with List Restoration for years and he's hawking trial now and he's working for himself. But yeah, I see him, he's almost like a fancy artist. He does stuff, they do mock-ups and he stands back and he looks at it like his hand on his hip, trying to, is that good enough or, you know? And the longest part of the process, plus with mortars and cements like that, you have to wait for them to cure, you can't tell. I know I've recreated some concrete elements for buildings that do not, you could see now because time has gone by, they got soot and dirty so it's better, but they just stood out like a sore thumb. The shape was the same but that was it, you know? Yeah, yeah. It was really difficult. And you bring up a good point too about mortars, right? Like you could have the stone could match, it could be beautiful, it could be perfect and if you screw up the mortar composition, you can actually cause new damage, right? It's too hard, it's too soft. So there's just so much that goes into it. Yeah. So again, a great- We could be here forever. So this is the Bible of modern materials and, you know, from a conservation point of view, if you wanna- Fiber boards in there, like who thought fiber board would be historic? Fiber board, I know, homo soap, right? Yes, yes. What is homo soap? Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's pretty fun to have these things get some, it's nice to know that there's people out there that are nerdier than us that actually work and put this together so that nerdy people like us can really enjoy it. Like, that's good by the way, too. Yeah, bedtime reading, yep, I love it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, those, we're right, we could talk for a half an hour, easy. But I think we're out of time. No problem, right. I'm hoping there's the author, oh no, I forgot his name already. Mark? Mike? Mark? Mark Bushnell? Mark Bushnell writes for Vermont Digger and he does a bunch of articles on the hidden history of Vermont. And he has a book out and we just got his book and I'm hoping we can line him up for next month. So I'm looking forward to talking to him because he does these snippets of different people in Vermont and groundbreaking. Amazing stuff that happened in our little state, you know, in the turn of the last century or during the last century. Cool, I hope he can come in. I look forward to locking that visit down. But I'd like to thank everybody for putting up with us and thanks for tuning in to CCTV Live at 525 and Preservation Burlington. This is the beginning of the new year and we're hoping to have a lot of good guests and a lot of stuff to talk about. And a lot of great books. Books and buildings. Books and buildings. Books and buildings. So people know what the heck it is we're doing, why and how we find out about it. How they can help. So more information on Preservation Burlington as always, our tours, events, sort of get a marker for your historic house. Go to preservationburlington.org and see our new website. I think it's up and running yet or not yet. No, soon. Very soon, very soon. Very soon. And then we'll see everybody next month. Thanks for tuning in. Bye.