The Park Service oversees three overlapping areas: Technical Preservation Services, Cultural Resources and National Park Service.

The Technical Preservation Services (TPS)

…develops historic preservation policy and guidance on preserving and rehabilitating historic buildings, administers the Federal Historic Preservation Tax Incentives Program for rehabilitating historic buildings and sets the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties.

TPS Publications

TPS prints both free publications and publications for purchase; it also co-publishes materials with other agencies, foundations and associations.

The following is a list, along with links, to some of TPS’s free publications.

WINDOWS

• Planning Approaches to Windows Preservation
• Exterior Storm Windows: Casement Design Wooden Storm Stash
• Replacement Wooden Frames and Sash: Protecting Woodwork Against Decay
• Interior Metal Storm Windows
• Interior Storm Windows: Magnetic Seal
• Maintenance and Repair of Historic Aluminum Windows
• Repairing Steel Casement Windows

HISTORIC GLASS

• Repair and Reproduction of Prismatic Glass Transoms
• Repair and Rehabilitation of Historic Sidewalk Vault Lights

HISTORIC PRESERVATION TAX INCENTIVES

• Historic Preservation Tax Incentives
• Introduction to Federal Tax Credits for Rehabilitating Historic Buildings – Barns
• Introduction to Federal Tax Credits for Rehabilitating Historic Buildings – Rowhouses
• Introduction to Federal Tax Credits for Rehabilitating Historic Buildings – Main Street Commercial Buildings
• Introduction to Federal Tax Credits for Rehabilitating Historic Buildings – Wood Frame Houses

MASONRY

• Water Soak Cleaning of Limestone
• Non-destructive Evaluation Techniques for Masonry Construction
• Stabilization and Repair of Historic Terra Cotta Cornice

METALS

• Restoring Metal Roof Cornices
• Conserving Outdoor Bronze Sculpture
• In-Kind Replacement of Historic Stamped Metal Exterior Siding
• Repair and Reproduction of Metal Canopies and Marquees with Glass Pendants

–Jean Danielson is director of operations for Indigo Dawn.

Frank Lloyd Wright

Frank Lloyd Wright was not a green designer in the contemporary sense, but he was doing some things that today one might call sustainable. He was concerned with natural climate control, particularly trying to keep buildings cool and ventilated naturally. He believed in the value of natural light and maximized its creative use in his designs.

The relationship of site and structure was of central importance to Wright’s thinking, and he frequently adapted his designs to conditions, including climate extremes. This may be seen in the structural designs of Photo 1.

A structure should also have a relationship to nature, he believed, not only through light, air, and views but also in terms of designs that are in harmony with their surroundings and make nature and landscaping part of the building. This may be seen in Photo 2.

Wright favored the use of natural materials in unadorned ways that brought out their best qualities, and he would frequently try to draw on materials native to the area, like local stone and woods. His color palette was natural: earth tones, greens, reds, yellows, stone. These may be seen in Photo 3 and Photo 4.

Photo 1: Casement art glass allows for views, light, and air while enhancing privacy, and makes decoration organic to window (Frederick C. Robie House, Chicago, Illinois [1910

Photo 2: A low building profile on the windy prairies of Wisconsin: The bermed “back” of Wright’s second house for Herbert Jacobs (Middleton, Wisconsin, 1943)

Photo 4: Urns and planters bring nature into the structure and make it organic to the building (Frederick C. Robie House, Chicago, Illinois [1910

Photo 3: Pale ochre color of cantilevered concrete slabs matches color of fallen rhododendron leaves; red painted steel evokes color of its base metal, iron ore, and the process of steel-making (Edgar Kaufmann House, Mill Run, Pennsylvania [1936

– Joel Schorn is an editor and writer in Chicago who is also a volunteer tour interpreter with the Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust. His coffee is often inexplicably tepid on Wednesdays.

Frank Lloyd Wright

Sustainable Building and Cooperative Housing

Like a number of other architects of his era, such as Daniel Burnham and the French early modernist Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright became interested in urban and community planning and gave it considerable attention throughout his career.

While it cannot be said that Wright was a direct pioneer of sustainable building and cooperative housing, several of his principles and practices in the areas of small-home construction and social planning looked ahead to these movements (I’ll talk about some connections to cohousing in this post and to sustainability in a future one).

Progressive Architecture

Wright was a progressive architect who believed architecture had a moral, social and even spiritual purpose—that the spaces people lived in shaped their values and quality of life. So it is not surprising that social planning would attract his attention. Also informing his views were the Progressive movement’s support for cooperative action and self-ownership of homes, farms and places of employment—in other words, self-sustaining and self-determining communities that practiced cooperative decision-making.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s futuristic drawing of a Broadacre City community.

As early as 1900-1901 Wright had developed a ‘Quadruple Block Plan’ in which each home would be placed in an one-acre circle with commonly held and maintained landscaped parcels floating between the circles. His grander vision for community living came later, a proposal he called Broadacre City. In this plan, each family had a home on an acre of land each (hence the name “Broadacre”).

These homes would be grouped around open green space and community buildings which would be centers for the arts, recreation and relaxation, worship and education; however, the effect was more like a medieval village than a modern suburb. Each community would be self-contained and self-sufficient. While the auto made the creation of these communities in exurban locations possible, cars themselves would be pushed to the periphery of each settlement to make the community pedestrian-friendly.

In an upcoming post I’ll talk about sustainable design and Wright’s approach to the affordable single-family home, which has some Iowa connections.

– Joel Schorn is an editor and writer in Chicago who is also a volunteer tour interpreter with the Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust. He does not think Thursday is the new Friday.

The old school in Cambria, Iowa needed a new floor at the same time Green & Main was looking for salvage flooring. Repurposing the old maple floor was a perfect fit for the main floor — and sustainability goals — of our Pilot Project.

The original maple hardwood flooring in the Green & Main Pilot Project building provided solid footing for many, many years, probably since the 1930’s when the building housed Sherman Hill’s H&H Grocery Store.

“We could actually see how the store was used by how the floor was worn,” remarked Chaden Halfhill, developer of the Green & Main initiative. Most noticeable was a small area of the wood worn down to only 1/8” thick by the shopkeeper himself who stood in one part of the floor serving customers for years.

Preserving as much of the original floor as possible was of paramount importance to the Green & Main team. However, wear and tear and some exposure to the elements had taken its toll on the solid maple flooring. So a process of painstakingly cleaning the tongue and groove maple flooring began. The Green & Main construction crew carefully pulled up individual slats of the maple flooring, evaluated each piece to ensure that it could be salvaged, and cleaned and replaced the slat back into the floor.

Preparing the repurposed maple flooring for installation.

However not all the maple slats were in good enough shape to preserve. So, the Green & Main team set out to find matching maple flooring to fill in the areas of the floor that couldn’t be saved.

Flooring from Cambria, Iowa in Wayne County

Around the same time maple flooring matches needed to be found, Mike Kinter of Des Moines’ Kinter Construction had discovered that a public school in Cambria, Iowa was hoping to replace the gym’s original wood floor. The southern Iowa community in Wayne County was converting the school, which closed in 1991, into a community center. The old gym floor was for sale, and it was hardwood maple. A perfect match!

“I drove down to Cambria and found the flooring in good shape,” said Kinter. “Most hardwood flooring in older school gyms is subjected to many layers of varnish over the years. Given how old the Cambria school gym was, it was amazing to find this flooring with just one or two layers of varnish which takes much less time to remove. So much of it was salvageable, it took me two truckloads to bring it all up to Des Moines.”

Through the grapevine, Mike heard that the Green & Main building was in need of supplemental maple flooring. The width of the maple flooring from Cambria’s old gym was a perfect fit. The needed pieces were identified, cleaned and integrated into the existing flooring. Now a beautiful ‘new’ maple hardwood floor is ready to support the many people who will step foot into the Green & Main building’s education space in the coming decades.

“It turned out that re-using the Cambria gym floor was a good solution for everyone,” concluded Halfhill. “We’re estimating that 70% of the new floor ended up coming from the Cambria maple. And, the purchase price for the old maple gym floor will go to completing construction of the Cambria Community Center.  Any wood flooring that we determined to be too damaged to be used in the Pilot Project will be recycled.”

That’s a win-win-win!

A shot of the Green & Main Pilot Project main floor shortly after the maple flooring from the Cambria school was installed. It’s now ready for finishing and many more years of traffic as the flooring for this building’s education space.

– Ann Wilde is a Des Moines marketing strategist and writer who also has a special interest in preserving and creating sustainable communities. She likes traveling to places that have amazing technological gadgets.

Sustainable brick patio in a suburban backyard.

The other day I was helping the teenage son of a friend pick weeds out of the backyard brick patio. I took that moment to tell Owen about stormwater management and how, even though we live in a built environment, we are not separate from the world around us. We are responsible for managing and engineering ways that are compatible at the very least – and assistive at the very best – in creating a sustainable way to exist and thrive in tandem with one another.

After talking about this briefly, and hearing pauses and seeing head tilts, I put it in language I knew he would understand. “It is about urban engineering,” I said, as I knew he created worlds in his computer games and understood causality well. “Instead of having a slab of concrete that moves the water to places around the base of the house that could impact the structure, the cracks between the bricks help the water soak into the ground where it lands, instead of moving it en masse to places where it could do damage.”

He nodded and we returned to our weed picking.

A Chiminea fireplace with potted flowers.

For many days I have been thinking about sustainability and memory, historical preservation and remembrance. The built environment provides us with a different type of memory. It is a perpetual ‘memorial’ to what went before us. As memorials too often reference something or someone that no longer exists, I was struggling to figure out ways to re-imagine how individual and collective memories are made solid around us and how to talk about this. In doing so, I was immediately reminded of the Main Streets Conference in Des Moines last week, put on by the National Trust for Historical Preservation in Washington D.C.

An untold number of volunteers have gotten together through the Main Streets program to create dynamic and sustainable forms of community living that repurpose buildings so they may be used in current, economically viable ways that provide a solid footing for not just a few years down the line, but 20 years, 50 years and beyond.

These volunteers and managers understand that their present will be the past of those who are yet in pre-school or junior high. Once these young ones reach adulthood and have families and work in their home communities, it will be a present that they, too, seek to enrich by shared community histories and experiences.

Buildings are part of the language of memory. The structures of our main-street, urban and rural communities are tangible narratives of the best ideas and worst ideas of who we are. The Green & Main Pilot Project seeks to take the best of a particular piece of history in the Sherman Hill neighborhood and re-envision it. We are doing this through extensive dialog with preservationists and just as extensive dialog with sustainability experts at the intersection of building science and green technology.

As my mother said to me the last time she hugged me before we parted, “I am creating memories.” This is what the Green & Main team is doing as well – though we are still in the throes of creation.

– Jean Danielson is director of operations for Indigo Dawn. She believes that lemonade is best served with sunshine.

Chaden Halfhill speaking with Tim Reinders, Design Consultant with Main Street Iowa.

The National Main Streets Conference

The National Main Streets Conference opened earlier this week in Des Moines. Events ranged from tours to evening outings while the central meet-up point was the Polk County Convention Center where 1,300 people convened over a four-day period.

Sunday offered a free session on the Main Street Four Point Approach, created through the National Trust for Historic Preservation in Washington D.C. The Four Point Approach is characterized by Design, Organization, Promotion and Economic Restructuring. It is a very specific template to follow in order to be considered a Main Street Community through the National Trust’s program.

A pilot project began in 1977 through the Chicago office. Three communities throughout the Midwest were chosen and the Trust pledged to work with them for three years to assist with strategies that identified assets and impediments to ultimately leverage the good stuff for downtown economic revitalization. A book grew out of this experience and currently 40 U.S. states have active Main Street programs and communities, the direct outcome of which is new business, physical improvements and community vitality.

Banners representing Iowa’s 45 Main Street communities as displayed at the National Main Streets Conference.

What is a Main Street Community?

So what is a Main Street Community? As over a hundred of us sat in a large conference room, we learned it is a shared vision with a tremendous amount of work. The outcomes, however, are incredible and far reaching. There are 45 active Main Street Communities in Iowa, including Woodbine, Spencer, West Union, Marshalltown, Ames, West Branch, Central City, Burlington, Osceola, Iowa Falls, West Des Moines and the 6th Street Corridor in Des Moines.

In 1985 the Iowa Legislature adopted the program and placed it within the purview of the Iowa Department of Economic Development in order to

…improve the social and economic well-being of Iowa’s communities by assisting selected communities to capitalize on the unique identity, assets and character of their historic commercial district. Main Street is economic development within the context of historic preservation.

The National Main Street Community Criteria that is followed are ten-fold:

1. Have broad-based public and private support

2. Vision and mission statements

3. Comprehensive work plan

4. Historic preservation ethic

5. Active board and committees

6. Adequate operating budget

7. Paid, professional program director

8. On-going training for staff and volunteers

9. Reporting of key statistics

10. Current member of National Main Street Network

Economic & Cultural Development presentation.

Volunteers & Community

The formula is comprehensive and community-driven. It seeks to flesh out and leverage traditions and expertise of a town or region meeting needs for economic stability, growth and solid expectations about a vital future.

There are an untold number of volunteers around the state who see that their future will one day be somebody’s present. These are motivated people who want their extensive efforts for the cultural and economic revitalization of their communities to be a solid footing on which many others can learn, grow, contribute and thrive.

– Jean Danielson is director of operations for Indigo Dawn. She likes sidewalks and walking down them while window shopping. And then buying things.

This historic photo shows one of the many Des Moines streetcars that ran on the Sherman Hill trolley line until 1951.

The lower level of the Green & Mail Pilot Project will be used as a green education center for the public. So significant renovation is taking place in what was the basement of the building. Since the construction crew will have to underpin the entire building, there was a decision made to remove the basement floor and replace it. As part of this process, the entire floor will be lowered to increase the ceiling height, accommodating the comfort of future visitors. However, the elevation of the sewer in the street was already established, and the Green & Main crew needed to tie into the street sewer at a lower level.

Excavation Surprise

Sinkhole resulting from discovered trolley line.

Time to dig up the street!

Prior to digging, all possible existing utilities had been researched via Iowa One Call. (The Iowa One Call notification system is a free call and a free service to anyone planning an excavation in Iowa.) The street was marked to highlight various known lines and the location of the existing sewer. But, not surprisingly, this historic Sherman Hill street had some history to reveal under its layer of asphalt and then layer of brick.

The crew used a diamond saw to cut into the street from the exit of the building to the sewer main under 19^th Street. Suddenly, sparks started flying. Quickly discovered were two old trolley tracks that ran down 19^th Street, along with four wooden rail ties that had provided the frame for the tracks. While digging with an excavator to remove the tracks and rails from the street, the crew also discovered a four-inch cast iron pipe running parallel to the tracks, five feet under the street’s surface.

Des Moines Utilities and Public Works Lend a Hand

The sink hole discovered was the size of a Smart Car!

The construction crew stopped work immediately and made a few calls. Enter Des Moines Public Works, Water Works and Mid-American Energy. As the city crews cautiously investigated the situation, a small sinkhole was discovered under the old trolley line; then an even larger sinkhole emerged about the size of a Smart Car. However, the initial concern remained:  the proper identification of the pipe.

The pipes did not appear on any existing city utilities map. And so to identify the purpose and contents of the pipe, Public Works asked the Green & Main construction crew to drill into the pipe looking for either water or gas. Neither were found, but the pipe did contain some ground water and traces of a petroleum odor. (The electrical lines to run the trolley were typically coated with a tar-like substance to protect the wires). Once deemed safe to proceed, the crew cut and removed the abandoned pipe.

Excavation of street asphalt and brick layer to connect the new plumbing system to the city sewer.

As a precautionary step, Des Moines Public Works scoped the sewer line and discovered that about 25 feet of the existing main sewer line was cracked and had partially collapsed. The sewer line was cleaned and temporarily fixed and the main sewer line will be replaced sometime this year.

Still to be resolved, though, were the sinkholes. A self-leveling grout-type substance filler called K-Crete was pumped into the sinkhole to fill the void, preventing the street from becoming unstable. Public Works crews completed this and the resurfacing of the patched area.

Green & Main Pilot Project Benefits from New Sewer Main

Although this temporary fix resolved some surprise issues under the street’s surface, Green & Main crews won’t be able to connect to the main sewer line for some time as they await Public Works’ permanent repair of the main line. The good news? Since a new sewer main is necessary, when it is in place Public Works will run it directly up to the curb of the Pilot Project building which provides the depth we need to lower the sewer line.

Not only will this provide the needed elevation drop, accommodating the needs of the building, it allows the construction crew to proceed with the installation of the ground work and installation of a subsurface drain within the building. This installation will then allow the crew to reinstall the concrete floor. Much appreciation goes to Public Works’ Jay Bennett, Sewer Operations Manager, and Ron Silvers, Senior Construction Inspector, who worked extensively with the Green & Main crew to develop an ideal solution that would allow them to continue the groundwork inside the building.

The challenge will be that the building will lack the capacity to drain anything into the sewer until the city repairs the sewer and the street. But it’s worth the wait. Pending the completion of the new sewer line, we will continue to work on preparing the building for interior work and its future occupancy.

Street construction barricade around the sinkhole.

– Ann Wilde is a Des Moines marketing strategist and writer who also has a special interest in preserving and creating sustainable communities. She prefers it when plants bloom with minimal human attention.

Steve Wilke-Shapiro

Sustainability has become a core component of modern-day historic preservation activism. Indeed, we now recognize that the two are integrally related: there is no building greener than the one not built. By finding ways to creatively reuse and adapt existing structures to modern-day activities, we not only “save” our history, but also reduce the need for new construction.

As a designer, I often lament that the loss of historic building craft has had a negative impact on both the character and longevity of the structures we build today. It also has a negative impact on communities in terms of employment and multi-generational tradition.

Renovation in general, and preservation in particular, are labor-dependent. That is, a greater percentage of the project cost in a renovation project is paid as wages rather than materials. Since wages equal jobs, preservation can be a great economic development tool. The Green & Main Pilot Project promotes socioeconomic sustainability by utilizing a broad range of skilled labor and specialized technical expertise. Even deconstruction of the interior is being performed in an intensively conscientious manner.

On a broad scale, preservation and renovation of existing buildings (particularly in urban areas) allow us to better utilize existing infrastructure and provide services more effectively to more people. Because many older neighborhoods were developed in a time before widespread automobile use, they tend to be more compact and connected. In addition, an already developed site allows for reuse of existing roads, sewers and utilities. This pilot project is reutilizing a building in a connected and walkable urban neighborhood that is accessible by a variety of transportation modes.

At the individual building level, extending the useful life of a structure through renovation allows us to improve energy efficiency while also minimizing use of new-source construction materials. Preservation encourages adaptive reuse of existing buildings, even as our needs and technologies change over time. The Green & Main building will be retrofit to a high level of energy efficiency while respecting the historic character-defining elements. For example, the historic storefront windows will be painstakingly recreated, though insulated glass will be utilized in place of the original single panes.

It is critically important for us to regain an understanding of how sustainable communities operate at both the individual building level and the broader urban scale. As a pilot project, Green & Main will serve as a brilliant case study. However, most of the projects I work on do not overtly address “sustainability” as part of their stated goals. Most of the people I work with simply love their homes and want to invest in the continued success of their neighborhoods. Sustainability is inherent in – and inseparable from – the act of renovating.

– Steve Wilke-Shapiro is a designer with Silent Rivers Design + Build. He is often found rummaging through the kimchee aisle at Gateway Market.