Hello, everyone, and welcome back to then Again, the podcast of the Northeast Georgia History Center. I am Marie Bartlett, the director of the ADMA Ivester education center here. And today I have with me Malin Erman. I have known Malin since the fifth grade. We went to middle school to other but different high schools and then reconnected when we both walked into the same historic preservation class at UGA. We have both gone to work in historic preservation, but in different ways. So our listeners have a pretty good idea about what I do. But can you tell them about what you do, Malin, and how it relates to historic preservation? Of course.

And thank you so much for having me on the podcast. I'm really excited to be here and have the opportunity to talk to your listeners about what I do in historic preservation. So just to kind of get into this question, my title actually is Interiors and Preservation Designers. So I'm an interior designer by trade, but like you said, I did do some schooling at UGA in preservation. And so in my job now, I really specialize in preservation. I work in an architecture firm under a licensed preservation architect. And so we specialize in historic buildings and preservation in general, not just interiors. And we take on all different types of projects. So there are lots of different projects that fall under the preservation umbrella, whether that's just an assessment, or maybe it's a historic structures report, which is history and assessment, or maybe it's a full blown project that is a rehabilitation or a restoration, preservation or reconstruction.

So historic preservation, I was looking this up on the Internet because I have an idea about what historic preservation is. I'm sure you have, of course, ideas about historic preservation with we took whole classes about what exactly historic preservation is. But the National Park Service and the US. Department of the Interior's Office of Acquisition and Property Management says that historic preservation is a conversation with our past about our future. And through historic preservation, we look at history in different ways, ask questions of the past, learn new things about our history and ourselves. Sometimes historic preservation involves celebrating events, people, places, and ideas that we are proud of. And other time it involves recognizing moments in history that can be painful or uncomfortable to remember. Now the internet at large. If you just type in what is historic preservation, the first thing that actually pops up is, and I quote, historic preservation is built heritage preservation or built heritage conservation, and is an endeavor that seeks to preserve, conserve and protect buildings, objects, landscapes and other artifacts of historical significance, which I think is probably what most people probably think of when they think about historic preservation. They think about preserving buildings. And that's a lot of what you do of right is assessing the buildings, preserving the buildings. In a sense, it's almost like the first thing of historic preservation. Right. He's trying to preserve the.

So obviously, as an interior designer by trade and someone who works in an architecture firm, I'm dealing exclusively with buildings. But I do understand this definition that NPS and the Secretary of the Interior have come up with because historic preservation came about through national parks. And so in the beginning, it wasn't about the built environment at all. It was about the natural environment. And I do really appreciate that they have kept that in their definition, even though their definition is pretty broad, but it's nice to have that in there. And I also really appreciate how they have separated. Sometimes history is things that we like to celebrate, and sometimes it's things that we feel bad about, but it's important not to have an erasure effect when we're preserving things. Yeah, it's a very broad definition, but I think it hits all of the things that need to be hit.

Yes, it hits what you do side of buildings and interiors and in preservation, because I think a lot of people I love house museums, and that's kind of what I think of when I think about historic preservation. But also it's like stuff that we do here at the History Center, which is oral history interviews and preserving objects in our archives and doing events where we learn about things that are sometimes like, yay, we like this thing, and also like, hey, we need to remember that this thing happened.

Exactly. Yeah, I saw you all had a Juneteenth exhibit up. And that's not always something that everyone wants to remember, and it's certainly not things that people are happy about, but it is important. It's part of our history as a country, as a collective people, and it's something that needs to be shown and represented.

Yes, because it's a celebration of freedom, but also a recognition of slavery.

Exactly.

So two things in one. Now, can you tell us a little bit about when you first are starting out on a preservation project? When you're assessing the needs of the historical building, what are some of the first things that you do?

Yeah, so the first step is something we call recordation, and it is what it sounds like it is recording literally everything you could possibly record about a building. So that includes field measuring a building and then drawing the as built plans, doing the same thing. For elevations, we record all of the issues that we're going to use later in the assessment phase. So we're taking hundreds upon hundreds of pictures. We're also recording especially for projects that are not based in the same city that I am based in. We need to take pictures so we can go back and reference them later. Even if we don't see an issue in the immediate area at the time we're taking pictures, we still need to take pictures so that we can go back and reference them later. And then the level of detail that we're recording in kind of depends on what the future plan is for whatever deliverable we're preparing. So sometimes, like, for instance, we're working on a project in Savannah right now, which we can talk about later, but it's a restoration project. And so there are a lot of existing things, existing features that need to be recorded because they're going to need to be matched or recreated in some way where they're missing or they've been removed. And then there are other projects that are maybe conditions assessments or rehabilitations which don't require the same level of matching, and so they wouldn't necessarily need recordation to that high of a level, but in general, we're taking recordation to a pretty high level. One is for our use, like that's useful for us. But two, when you're dealing with these historic buildings, it's really important to have documentation. And so as someone who works on historic buildings, it's a part of my job to make sure that we document things as we found them and then throughout the process before they end up as whatever finished product we're giving our client.

That's so cool. So can you tell us about some of those projects that you've been working on and walk us through what that is going to look like?

Yeah, so I do want to preface getting into projects with kind of some backstory on where preservation has come from. We've touched on that a little bit, but where that's come from and where we get our standards and best practices, because that really informs what we do on a day to day job.

And there's some different theories on that as well.

Exactly. And those theories depend on what type of treatment you're doing for a project. So it's all really important. So as we talked about earlier, preservation came about through the preservation of national parks, and therefore it's been put under the umbrella of the National Park Service and under the larger umbrella of the Secretary of the Interior. And they come up with all of the standards and the best practices for preservation. And a lot of that started with the National Preservation Act, national Historic Preservation Act of 1966, and those practices and treatments have come out of that. But basically there are four treatments for historic preservation of buildings, and I believe these go to landscapes as well, although I'm not one who preserves landscapes, so I don't know for sure. But these treatments are preservation, restoration, rehabilitation, and reconstruction. So preservation means basically stabilizing, and all of these will be in terms of buildings, but preservation means stabilization. You take whatever form the building is in currently, and you have some limited ability to fix things that are in really bad states of decay, but otherwise you just kind of stabilize the building. Rehabilitation is more of what we do. That's the most common one, I think, in general, and it's also the most common for what I do. And that is you're taking a historic building and you're converting the use. So maybe you're taking a historic house and you're converting it into a museum or offices or really anything. And so you're taking a historic building. It's becoming a new use. So you're doing all of those necessary changes sensitively, and that may allow you to install HVAC, which is nice and we love today, but was not necessarily always there in historic buildings, sometimes running water. Running water.

It's kind of a necessity, especially if you want to have flush toilets. But some historic buildings don't have that. I've been in historic houses where you can definitely tell the bathroom, you have to step up into it because I had to put all the pipes under the floor there.

Exactly. I am working on a project right now where that is the exact case flush toilets are nice to have for a modern day use. And so it's good that there's a recognized treatment that allows you to do that. So that's rehabilitation. And then there's also restoration, which is kind of like rehabilitation, but a little more strict in that you have what's called a period of significance, which is a period of time, a date range in which your building was significant and historically significant. And that can range from a couple of years to a couple of decades. And it really just depends on what the history of the building is. And so in a restoration, you are restoring the building to what it looked like in that period of significance. So a lot of house museums are restorations because they're restoring it to whenever the famous person whose house that is lived there. So like the Martin Luther King boyhood home. There are plenty of house museums. I mean, here in Gainesville, in Savannah, in Atlanta, they're everywhere. And then the last treatment is reconstruction. And reconstruction is pretty much when you have a building that is either fully fallen down or no longer extant or is in a really bad state of decay, and you have to reconstruct some elements with modern materials and practices. So that is when you would use documentation of what used to be there. Again, you have a period of significance, but you're basically matching things to what was there based on documentation. That one's pretty hard to do, because if there's no documentation, you can't reconstruct something if you don't know what was there.

I mean, you can it just doesn't hold the same historical significance. So true, because I was literally, as you were talking about this, I was remembering in our classes, we learned about Vile Le Duke and how he wanted to rebuild medieval structures to his idealistic medieval structure ideas of what he thought a castle should look like and not exactly what it actually should have been. But he was like one of the huge historic preservationists in France. And I just remember our professor showing us a picture of a castle and being like, it shouldn't have roof lines like this. It's in southern France, and this is what the roof lines looked like in northern France. And Villa Le Duque just did whatever the heck he wanted because he thought it looked you know, he was, like, one of the leading historic preservationists who had that idea of, like, let's rebuild it to its former glory. But then there's also John Ruskin, and he was like, don't touch it. Do not do anything to it. This is history. We are going to preserve it as it is. If it falls over on its own, let nature take its quartz and it will fall over, but then we'll just build, like, a canopy over it to make sure it happens. So there's so many different ideas about exactly what historic preservation should be, and that's, like, in the beginning of historic preservation, I want to say that was, like, late Victorian era over in Europe is, like, when people started having these ideas of, like, hey, industrialization is moving really fast. Maybe we shouldn't tear down everything.

And then the US caught up in the 1970s.

Yes. About like 100 years after Europe thought about it. And when you said the Historic Preservation Act of 1969, I was like, oh, we didn't write. We didn't have one till then because we lost so many beautiful buildings in the, quote, unquote progress. And I'm sure we can get into a whole nother conversation about how that's probably why Europe, you can look at pictures and be like, that's this city. And in the United States, you can be like a generic city. In the Midwest? Maybe. There's not a lot of places that have that character of architecture. There's some, like, you can look at New York skyline. Chicago has some iconic buildings, san Francisco, but there's not a whole lot in between.

We do have, what, 600 years of 600 fewer years of built history as we know it today.

That's also very fair.

Yeah.

Yes.

They have a leg up. They had way more time, way more time.

And we had, like, log cabins for the first European settlers. And a lot of that, those don't last. They're really hard to preserve. They take a lot of care. We know, because we have one here.

But yes.

Could you tell us about some of the projects that you're working on? So now that we know how you would kind of go about how you would start, what treatment are you needing? I'm sure that there are some. I mean, it depends on what your goal is, obviously, and what your client's goal is. But do you have any fun stories to share about some of your favorite projects?

Oh, yes. And as I have learned, working in preservation, I'm sure you know as well, it's a very heavy storytelling industry. Everyone loves to swap stories about, oh, I worked on this project, or, oh, I worked on that one, and you wouldn't believe what we saw. So happy to tell some stories here today, one that I actually worked on. I guess it's been about a year or so now, but it's really pertinent to your listeners, I'm assuming is Gainesville First Episcopal Methodist Church. Very long name. It's over on Academy, West Academy. And oh, I don't remember the cross street, but it's in downtown Gainesville.

It's like right across from the History Center. We're on East Academy Street. And it's on West Academy Street.

It's like two blocks from here. And that was a really cool project. That was basically a conditions assessment. It had been acquired by a new owner, and the owner asked us to kind of go in and see what was wrong. So there's a conditions assessment and then there's also what we did for this project, which was we assessed the conditions, but we also told them, here's how much money it's going to cost to fix it, and a general idea of what you're going to need to do to get this back in running order so you can use this building. And so we don't always go that far, but for this client, we did, it was like a great little project. We started out, like I said, with recordation. We did so much recording. I mean, we were up here three times a week for like two months, recording everything possible. We did fion measurements of this, like, 35,000 square foot building, and we went in the crawl space and the towers because it was a church, so it had two towers, big bell towers. And those were very interesting to get into. The ladders aside here for a minute, we always think of historic structures as, wow, the craftsmanship was amazing, not always true. They took some interesting liberties, made some very questionable choices.

OSHA was not there.

OSHA was certainly not there. So it can be fun to see what you find in a historic building. These ladders were maybe not historic, but they were certainly homemade. And so that was an interesting time. We also went in the attic, which was incredible. This particular church in the sanctuary has a big dome kind of in the middle of the sanctuary. And so from the outside, you can't see it. It's not something that you can see just looking at the building. You have to go into the sanctuary. But that whole structure for the dome is hidden up in the attic. And it was incredible to see it's original plastered. So this whole structure was like wood frame plaster and laugh. A feat of engineering, for sure. And then also within this conditions assessment period, we got on a boom lift to inspect the roof. That was not fun because I'm afraid of heights. Won't do that again. I've since become licensed as a commercial drone operator, so now I can stand on the ground and look at high places and let other people actually go into the high places.

Nice.

It's been a real fun time. So one of the other things we do, which is kind of cool, it's definitely like how technology has progressed and how we are integrating that into preservation. Nowadays, there's a lot of different technology. One that we do in house is photogrammetry, which is a process in which you take photos of a certain object and basically you go all the way around. You take photos up and down, capture the whole thing, and then you can put them into a program which will stitch them together and create a 3d model of whatever you just took a bunch of pictures of, which is incredibly useful for us because we can cut it's called an ortho elevation, and it is an elevation of a building's facade. But all of the pictures that make up that elevation are taken from straight on, which is not a picture you could physically get in the actual world because of perspective. And so these are super useful for us. They're scalable. We can trace them, we can zoom in crazy far and say, oh, look, there's a brick missing from that wall. It's incredible. I mentioned that I have recently become a commercial drone operator. I got my license to do that. And so that has helped us perfect this method of photogrammetry, because now we can take a drone. If we're photographing a building that's 60ft tall, we can take a drone all the way up to the top and actually take photos that are dead on. And that just helps the photogrammetry. Also taking photos of the roof, one, we don't have to go up in a boom lift. And two, they're like really detailed photos that can be stitched together in this photogrammetry software. So that's really cool. We did that on the church project in Gainesville. Also something we did on the church project in Gainesville was laser scanning. And so we don't do this in house, but there are companies that will. They have some really cool laser scanning equipment that basically send out lasers into a space and capture the points in 3D where those lasers bounce back. And so you can get what's called a point cloud, which is basically a 3D model of all of those points where a laser bounced back off of an object. And so it really looks like the interior of a room, if that's what you're scanning, or the exterior of a building, if that's what you're scanning. So those are really cool. And then kind of in the middle of those two technologies is what's called matterport scanning. And that's basically it's like laser scanning, but it also captures photographic documentation. And so that's really useful for us and especially for projects, again, that aren't located in the same city that I'm based out of. You can get those projects scanned with a matterport scanner, and it generates a 3D model that you can walk through in their online software. And so when I'm working on a project and I say, oh, I remember in that bedroom I noted an issue and I don't remember what it was. Oh, I can just hop on the computer and walk over to that bedroom and look at the thing that was the issue. So it's super cool and really useful and just like a very fun technology and thing that we get to use that shows like, wow, the world has progressed, and now we are super cool and technologically savvy. We did asbestos testing, I should say we got asbestos testing done that needs to be done by a third party licensed asbestos tester. But that's something to think about when you're in historic buildings. And I think that comes up a lot in people's minds.

Lead paint. Asbestos.

Exactly.

Poison.

Poison in general. Yeah. We don't do structural calculations. We have our structural engineer do that. But we had a structural engineer come out and do a ton of calculations on the floor. There's a lot of current code that you are required to abide by if you change things in a historic building. And there are plenty of exceptions that code gives for historic buildings. But then there are also some things that they can accept, like is your floor structure strong enough to support all of the people that you want to support on it? I would argue that's a pretty big thing, and so would they.

Floor collapse is bad.

Floor collapse is bad. And I think we can all agree on this.

Yes.

And then we also, for this project, did some exploration into historic tax credits. That's cool. Yeah. So I don't know if you all have talked about that at all on any of your podcast episodes, but there are state and federal tax credits that you can get for preserving a building, and that's preserving in the sense of doing any of those four treatments. And so there are different amounts of tax credits that you can get based on if it's an income producing property or not an income producing property. And the paperwork and bureaucracy to get those tax credits can be really confusing. But there are people out there who do that for a living. They consult and they tell you, this is what you need to do to get your tax credits.

We had a whole class about historic preservation law, which was incredibly difficult, but also very interesting. I think that's probably one of the hardest ones. Probably just because I'm not it was like a pre law class almost, in a sense. But it was like, hey, forget all of the intro to law stuff. We're just going to dive into historic preservation law. But I think it was like in there we kind of touched on if you can get a tax credit for this, and this is a thing that actually is a law, and then this is a thing that's just kind of like societal pressure about historic buildings but has no actual teeth. I'm looking at you. National Register of Historic Places.

Amen. But yeah, that class was taught by a lawyer. It was like a person who has passed the bar. Yeah, that was an interesting class, but yeah. So historic tax credits can be incredibly useful for someone who is looking to do a preservation project but also needs to pay for it, which is kind of everyone. So we did some exploratory stuff for the client there because that was something that they wanted to consider. I mean, it was a really big project. And when you get those really big projects, one, you are better positioned to get more tax credits, and two, you're spending more money on a project, so it's more important for your whole pro forma of financing to get those tax credits. So that was really cool. And that is something that's in your town, in your vicinity. So yeah, that was just really cool. It was an amazing project and it had a lot of really fun original features. The sanctuary was a 1908, started in 1906, finished in 1908 building. And then they had a 1951 annex, which I'm really into that kind of mid century architecture, which is just now coming about. I mean, 1951, that's been historically significant per the definition of historical significance by.

Past 50 years, right?

Yeah, that's been historically significant for 20 years. But the stuff that's 70s built, that's just coming into its kind of historical significance, that stuff's really cool.

So what did you all end up doing after your assessment?

So this project was kind of phased. Our deliverable for the client was simply a historic structure report. So we also did a lot of the history, digging up the history on the building, which was really cool and super fun. If you haven't checked out the Georgia newspaper database online, it's just a huge database of historic newspapers from all over Georgia. And it's a great resource for people who are looking up things because they just put everything in the newspaper in the olden days.

Yeah. Got married newspaper, had a baby newspaper.

Had friends over to your house newspaper.

Yeah, the social columns. Exactly.

Everything's in there, which is great when you're looking for documentary research or documentation of anything. So that was phase one of this project. And phase two is kind of putting it back on the client and saying, okay, here's what you need to get done. They have to make some decisions on what they're going to do. They have to figure out how they're going to finance this project. And then the end phase would be them actually executing that project and designing the building in a way that works for what they need it to do.

Very cool. You probably know that I'm going to ask you about this next project that you work on because it is a project that I have a personal vested interest in, and that's because it was my sorority house when I was at UGA, the Delta Pi Epsilon house. They chartered like the year before I came to UGA, or rechartered because they had been at UGA, took a hiatus, came back, and they ended up getting a new sorority house on Millage. And that house had been a fraternity house. And good gracious, I have stories about what they did and what we found, and it's terrible, but that's a whole different thing because the pledge class above me was the first ones to live in there, and then my pledge class was like the second. But we couldn't fit everybody in because the sorority was way larger than the fraternity. So we had to essentially get an extension added onto the sorority house. And they have been promising that to us for forever. And it's finally happening. So this one is really a historic structure. In the front, it's a beautiful Queen Anne Victorian home, but then it also needs to be like a sorority dormitory and feed and house 60 girls. So can you tell us a little bit about that? Because that's like a whole different situation.

That you've also dealt with that is such a good project to talk about. I'm really glad you brought it up because that's a very common kind of trope, is you have a historic building or a historic residence, and you're rehabilitating it into a different use, but it's too small, and there are different theories on what you should do in those cases. And the best practices as given by Secretary of the Interior is that when you are making an addition to a historic house, it should be compatible. It should look compatible with the historic structure, but you should not be able to confuse or someone with an untrained eye. So not a preservation professional should not confuse the new structure as being historic. And so that's what we did. Like you said, there's a huge addition on the back to house a bunch more sorority members, and it looks on the outside compatible, but certainly not mistakeable. And then in terms of the interiors, the original historic house was a residence. And so there are a couple of parlors. I mean, I know you know this, but for the listeners, there are a couple of parlors like living room size spaces, and there are a couple of bedrooms on the second floor, too, which is already great because built in bedrooms, you need bedrooms in a sorority house, too. So those kind of stay maintain their function. Like you were saying, there needed to be a place where the sorority could gather, where dinner could be served. And for a sorority, especially at an SEC school, this sorority is large. It needs to be a really large space, and there's not really anywhere in the historic house to accommodate that. And so one option you did try it, did.

Not go well, we had to find another place.

Yes. And so one option is to knock down a bunch of walls in the historic house and make a space force your space onto the historic layout. Obviously, that's not super endorsed by any preservation professional. So the next best thing is to put that space in your new addition, because then you can keep the historic house mostly intact. And of course, rehabilitation allows for you to make some changes to the historic house, so long as you're doing so sensitively and you're maintaining any of the character defining features, which is what we did. The historic house in your new rehabilitated sorority house will basically be the same layout, and then all of the new functions go into the addition that's put on the back.

I'm very excited to go look at it. I know that it's been in the works for about the past year of them doing all of because you have to be really careful when working with a historic home, of course, and building behind it, especially where there's not a lot of extra room on the property at all. So trying to figure out how to do that and also figuring out parking can be really hard. Like little things that you wouldn't think about as being like, oh, well, of course you have parking. It's like, okay, but where, where are you going to put the car? There's things that you have to think about, because they didn't think about that in the 18 hundreds. They didn't have cars, they had carriages. So you have the nice, lovely carriage portico at some historic buildings. Sadly, we don't have one at the sorority house. But those are things that, as a historic preservationist who's making these houses accessible to modern people is like, well, you have to figure out where the toilets and the cars and the HVAC system is going to go.

Exactly. And also bringing up accessibility, you have to figure out how these historic buildings, which definitely were not set up for anyone with any mobility issues, wheelchair users, anything like that, they have to abide by certain Ada rules, especially if you're making changes. And so in the instance of your sorority house, there wasn't a good place to put an elevator that wouldn't really mess with the layout of the historic house. Also, elevators can be expensive. So it's important that when we are designing those spaces as preservation professionals, but also design professionals, we keep those things in mind. So, like, in the instance of the sorority house, there are Ada accommodations for students who need them on the first floor and all of the public uses. So any gathering spaces, any lounge spaces that the residents might want to use, there are those functions on the first floor. So even though there's not an elevator and someone in a wheelchair would have a really difficult time getting to the second floor, they don't need to all of the functions that they need to use are on the first floor.

And that is something that is really tricky. With historic homes and even going to a historic college with a historic campus like UGA, you run into a lot of problems just from the landscape being incredibly hilly and not flat and not really easily accessible from a walking or rolling standpoint to really old buildings that might have been retrofitted in the 50s or 60s before we really had the Historic Preservation Act or even, like, Ada compliance. I'm thinking particularly of the History building because it's probably one of the worst examples of how to retrofit a historic building to be Ada compliant. They literally put a chairlift on the outside of the building. Like there is a elevator that they just put onto the back of the building.

Nice. Yes.

So it technically is there. They cut a hole into the back of the building, but you have to go outside to the back to get into the elevator to get up to the second floor.

Oh, my goodness.

It is a very interesting situation.

That is quite interesting. And I imagine that if that chairlift.

Isn'T covered, it's not covered well.

Yeah. So it's like those things like that. Although if we're going to go on a tangent about chairlifts, I have been obsessing lately because of one of the projects we're working on which we should talk about next. I have been obsessing about these chairlifts that are recessed into stairs. They do it a lot in Europe because as we've talked about, europe is like years ahead of us in building and in preservation. And they recess these chairlifts into the stairs, and then the stairs depress, the chairlift comes out, and then you get on the chairlift and you go up, and then the chairlift goes back under the stairs and the stairs expand again into actual stairs. I really hope that I'm explaining this.

In a way that it sounds magical.

An auditory medium can capture it's incredible. And it's so useful because the building keeps its historic appearance, but the function changes to accommodate the user, which is really important, especially in the case of Ada. But they're really cool.

So cool. Yeah. So what is this next project about that? Are you going to have one of these magical cheer lifts?

We discussed it and it is certainly out of the budget. That's upsetting. But budget is important. Budget is important, and especially now, budgets can go really quickly, but it would be magical to have it. I wanted to mention this project because it's a restoration rather than a rehabilitation, and we do a lot of rehabilitations and not so many restorations. This is a project in Savannah. It's the Savannah City Hall, so right. Downtown Savannah on the river. And it's a restoration of a couple of the spaces to the period of significance, which is basically when the building.

Was built and when was that for our listeners.

1905.

Yes.

So it's a really cool building. One of the fun features about this building is that it was built right around the time where gas lighting was changing into electric lighting. And they were really excited about that in this building. That was one of the, like, oh, look at me. Look at what we did in this building. And so in a couple of different places, they have these light fixtures, the sconces, I should say wall mounted light fixtures. And you would think they have, like, globes, they're kind of like torture sconces. And you would think that they would point up with the light pointing up, but in a lot of instances, they flipped them upside down because they were electric lights. And if they were flipped upside down with the light pointing down, you knew that that wasn't a gas light. You knew it was electric because a gas lamp couldn't function upside down.

Interesting.

Yeah.

So it's like showing off. Look, we have electricity.

Exactly. They also had a couple of combo electric gas lights, which is actually pretty common for that specific time period right then when gas was changing to electric.

Is that safe, though?

You know, it was safe for 1905.

Okay.

Yeah. I would argue that nowadays gas lighting probably not safe. Well, I take it back because we do have, like, outside exterior gas lamps. Generally, I think gas lighting indoors is kind of frowned upon. Yeah. So that's this project, and it's very cool, and it's a different type of project, a restoration. And luckily, a lot of things are still intact, and there's a good amount of documentation because it was such an important building, and it's been an important building since its erection.

So kind of along the lines of that. Now that we know what you do, what do you think are some of the misconceptions that people have about historic preservation?

Okay, so I love this question, and I may have thought too much about it. I have a couple so the first thing, and I think we've talked about this pretty extensively in this conversation, is that a misconception that historic preservation means keeping things exactly as they are and leaves no room for change of any kind. And as we've talked about, that's not true. There's rehabilitation for one. And so preservation is accessible to all different types of projects, which is fun, which is good. The second one, which you hinted at, and I feel like we need to just lay bare for listeners, is that a misconception that getting your building listed on the National Register is the end all, be all, and will protect your building? And that is absolutely not true.

It does nothing besides give you a really nice plaque.

Yes, the plaque is lovely. You get listed in their register, which is fun. But National Register listing gives no protection for demolition, for changes to the interior or exterior. No protection at all.

It gives you a little bit of social pressure because, like, someone in the news again with the newspapers, that someone will go to the newspaper and be like they're going to change or tear down this building. And it's on the national register, so there might be a little bit more of a public outcry, but really the only thing that gives you any ounce of protection is with social pressure. It does nothing legally.

Yes, and it does for federal agencies who are looking to do projects in your area for, say, the Dot, the department of Transportation. If we're a building that's listed on the national register, they have to take precautions, and they have to do what they can to mitigate any disruptions to something that's on the national register. But that still doesn't guarantee that they're not going to make disruptions. They just have to make sure they do their due diligence in mitigating those disruptions. If the Dot has planned a road right down in the middle of your historic building and they say, hey, we've done our due diligence and this is the only place this road can go, sucks for you. Your house is getting demolished, or you have to move it, or whatever. The moral of that story is, if you want protection, get your building listed as a local landmark or in a local historic district that will give you protection against demolition, against changes to the exterior. It still won't give you protection to changes to the interior. If you don't have a local ordinance or a local historic preservation commission, you can get an easement on your building. So if you sell it or if it gets passed to a new owner in some way, they have a legal obligation to keep typically, these easements are exterior easements, and so they have a legal obligation to keep the exterior as it looked. However, the easement stipulates it, whether that's a period of significance or as it looked the day the easement was signed, et cetera.

Yes. Do you have any other ones?

Oh, I sure do.

Okay. I'm intrigued.

So I came up with four because I sat with thinking about this I came up with four because I sat thinking about this for probably too long. My third one is a misconception that preservation ethics and best practices are common knowledge. And I think we've also tackled that issue during our conversation as well, talking about these historic preservation philosophers that potentially listeners haven't heard of, and the Secretary of Interior's best practices and treatments. Those are multi page documents of what is and is not considered appropriate for each different treatment. And so there's a lot of research and a lot of knowledge that preservation professionals have that they learned for that specific purpose. One of the things I run into all the time is people who are old building enthusiasts or history enthusiasts, which is great. Don't get me wrong. I'm not discrediting that at all. But they'll say, like, oh, yeah, I got my mantle from an architectural salvage place, and it was in, like, an 18 six house, and I preserved it. I'm like, well, great, but you live in a Colonial Revival, like a house that does not match this style at all. And there's no documentation for anyone coming after you to say, other than a trained eye to say, this doesn't belong here, and when did it get here, and what is it doing here? And so, contrary to popular belief, salvaging character defining features from historic buildings is not generally looked upon. Well, not approved.

It's one of those things where it's like, oh, yeah, we love this beautiful historic door, but it's like, okay, great, but how are you going to use this again? What are you going to do with it?

Yeah, you're going to paint it?

Please know.

Oh, my gosh, don't paint it. I am firmly. I don't know if you've seen the two camps online of should we paint historic or should we paint vintage wood furniture, or should we not paint vintage wood furniture? For whatever it's worth, I'm very much in the camp of not painting historic wood furniture. I don't know if that's going to gain me points with listeners or deplete them, but it's where I stand.

Well, I'll let you know if we get any emails. Oh, good. All right. And then the last question is, what do you enjoy most about the historic preservation process?

I actually had one more.

Oh, I'm sorry.

No worries.

Let's get that one, and then we'll go to the last question.

I think this one's really important. Yeah. And I probably shouldn't have saved it for last, but my last misconception that I think applies generally to a lot of people because it applies to homeowners, and lots of people own historic homes. The misconception is that wood windows are terribly inefficient and should always be replaced. So historic windows are typically pretty much always, unless they're metal, are wood, typically single pane windows. They're not the most energy efficient. That's valid. However, wood windows are going to last 100 plus years, easy. I see it all the time. Wood windows that have lasted 100 plus years. The modern vinyl energy efficient, quote, window is going to last 30 years, maybe, before it needs to be replaced. Not to mention that it looks aesthetically mismatched on historic houses and buildings. Like, really, obviously historically mismatched, not even just to a trained eye. Like, to anyone. They look weird. And there are lots of aesthetically pleasing ways to make your wood windows more energy efficient in a way that can match a vinyl wood window, because as we know, historic buildings weren't made with HVAC in mind like we do today. And so there were made to be cracks and crevices that air could get through because that's how they were ventilating their house or their building. And so there are lots of different ways, like window inserts, energy panels, film that you can put on your windows that you actually can't see but is keeping some of the UV heat and damage out of your house, and exterior storm windows if you want to go there as well. But there are even interior window inserts that'll do the same thing that look aesthetically pleasing as well. So that's me on my soapbox and now I'll get off.

I really liked how you said historically mismatched because I think especially to people who really love historic preservation, which are probably a lot of people listening to this podcast. And if not, we're going to convert you to historic preservation by the end of this podcast, hopefully. But is that when you have this beautiful historic building and then there's just some things where you're like, this could be so beautiful, but somebody in the 1960s decided to upgrade it to some reason, and then it just kind of became this conglomerate of mismatched, modern, historical, and then it just doesn't feel right. And I wanted to point out as well when we were talking about how you said that if you add on to a building, right, if you have a building addition.

Addition.

If you have a building addition, it should be compatible to the historic building that it's being added onto. But I also distinctly remember about how it can't be connected. You have to make sure it's very different. And I almost have always seen that it's like a glass hallway that connects them. Is that like a thing that you have to do?

It's not a thing that you have to do, but it is absolutely a strategy that's taken. It's called a hyphen. And a Hyphen doesn't have to be glass, but a Hyphen is what that portion of the building that connects the addition to the historic building is called. And you don't have to do a hyphen.

Oh, interesting. I really thought you had to do a glass Hyphen because I've seen it so many times.

It's really popular. And there are some examples. Like there's another sorority house.

Alpha fee.

Yes, it's Caddy corner to your sorority house. And my firm did that project as well, not to toot any horns. And it's beautiful. I personally think that that's a really great use of a glass Hyphen. And there are reasons why it's a great use and we don't have to talk about this. But yeah, that's just one way to differentiate an addition. Other ways to differentiate an addition, you could do a breezeway and then also paying attention to the materials that you're using because you might not think so, but even someone with an untrained eye, someone who's not a preservation professional or a design professional, can recognize and does recognize modern materials versus historic materials. And so when someone looks at an addition with a breezeway that's made out of modern materials or even to an addition that's directly attached to the historic house, but uses modern materials, they'll be able to recognize it. Everyone can recognize that.

All right, so what do you enjoy most about the historic preservation process?

Oh, great question. Overall, I really enjoy the ability to preserve the buildings that tell a story about our collective past and that are worthy of keeping around, which is a lot. That's a pretty broad category. And that's my favorite thing about preservation, I guess you could say, the specific process that we do. My favorite part about that is absolutely the assessment and the initial fact finding, so that's when you're walking through a building, you're making discoveries, you're using your knowledge of historic building materials and processes, collecting historic data from archives like the newspaper database, online. And you're just kind of collecting all of those together to discern an idea of what has happened to that building, which I think is really fun. And just personally, I really like having that knowledge of, say, this is a certain type of hinge that was only common between X date and X date. And so I know that this door was installed between those two date ranges. Call me a nerd, but I really enjoy knowing that stuff.

That is amazing. I love that so much. I love old buildings, and yes, I.

Love it so much, and I love.

Your passion for it. It's obvious as we talk about it, and it's just so cool. I think historic buildings, they really transport you back in time in a way that just other things can't, because we can look at an object. But to have the context for that object or to have that context for that dress, it really sets the scene for talking about different periods in history and having that collective identity of a town of Savannah, which is so well known for its certain styles of architecture. Or Charleston. It has its almost own style of architecture, like, there's a Charleston house. It really adds to the character of a place. And it's just so cool that you get to work in that and preserve that character. I also really like how you phrased why you love historic preservation, and it sounds very much like the NPS, when they about historic preservation, is a conversation with our past, about our future. And I feel like I can't really add more to that. So go outside, stare at a historic building. Just feel empowered to I'm not sure where I'm going with this statement. Just go look at a historic building. They're fun.

Yeah, just stand in front of a historic building.

Yeah. Appreciate it.

Appreciate it.

Yes. Appreciate historic building. And thank you so much for listening to Then Again. We so much appreciate our listeners. And until next time, take care. Then again is a production of the Northeast Georgia History Center in Gainesville, Georgia. Our podcast is edited by media producer Juada Rodriguez. Our digital and on site programs are made possible by the Ada may I? Vista Education Center. Please join us next week for another episode of Then again.