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In This Issue
Staff in the Field
Worth Saving
The Newsletter of the North Carolina Historic Preservation Office

Pineview, constructed in 1838 in the Roxobel vicinity, Bertie County, and listed in the National Register in 1982, is a late example of a Federal-style house with a hall-and-parlor plan.
Rehabilitation Highlights  

Buncombe County, Asheville, Conabeer Motor Company Building

The 1928 Conabeer Motor Company Building in the Downtown Asheville Historic District, a former automobile dealership, was rehabilitated 2013-2014 for first-floor retail and office space with twenty-four market-rate apartments on the upper floors. This project was spurred by the use of the federal and state income-producing historic tax credits with a private investment rehabilitation cost of $2,022,000.
  
Conabeer Motor Company Building, before and after rehabilitation
  
Catawba County, Hickory, Piedmont Wagon Company Warehouse

The Piedmont Wagon Company was established in 1878, and with direct access to the railroad in Hickory, the company prospered and eventually became one of the largest wagon manufacturers in the country. The only structure on the thirteen-acre complex extant after a 1958 fire is the 1878 warehouse that was rehabilitated 2013-2014 for use as corporate offices. This project was spurred by the use of the federal and state income-producing historic tax credits with an estimated private investment rehabilitation cost of $3,010,000.
 
Piedmont Wagon Company, before and after rehabilitation
  
Guilford County, High Point, Carolina Casket Company/Carrick Turning Works

Established in 1906, the Carolina Casket Company constructed this building in 1929 and continued to occupy this building until going bankrupt in around 1940. Subsequently, furniture manufacturers Carrick Turning Works and later Myrtle Desk Company operated out of this facility. The furniture tradition continues with the 2013-2014 rehabilitation of the building as a furniture industry showroom. This project was spurred by the use of the federal and state income-producing historic tax credits with an estimated private investment rehabilitation cost of $1,327,000.
              
Carolina Casket Company, before and after rehabilitation
 
 Hyde County, Ocracoke, Fleig Leftwich House

The 1955 Fleig Leftwich House in the Ocracoke Historic District was rehabilitated in 2014 for use as a vacation rental house. This project was spurred by the use of the federal and state income-producing historic tax credits with a private investment rehabilitation cost of $195,000.
    
Fleig Leftwich House, before and after rehabilitation
HPO and DCR Staff an Integral Part of 2015 National Rosenwald School Conference

By Jessica Dockery    
                                                    
Restoration Specialist Jeff Adolphsen and architect and former HPO intern Laurie Jackson at Panther Branch School, a stop on the Wake County Rosenwald schools tour
The North Carolina HPO is very proud to have been a local co-sponsor of the National Trust for Historic Preservation's 2015 National Rosenwald School Conference held in Durham this past June. Claudia Brown, Survey and National Register Branch supervisor and architectural survey coordinator, was also a representative on the planning committee, a fine fit given her interest and expertise on the subject (See the NC Rosenwald Schools Survey webpage that she maintains).

Several members of our staff, from each of our three offices, also took part in the conference as session speakers, tour leaders, or information booth resources, as did our Department of Cultural Resources colleagues Michelle Lanier, director of the North Carolina African American Heritage Commission, and Western Regional Archives archivist, Heather South. On Thursday, restoration specialist Jeff Adolphsen, Claudia Brown, and National Register assistant Jannette Coleridge-Taylor led the tour of Wake County Rosenwald schools, while Michelle Lanier led Saturday's North Carolina African American music tour. 

Andy Edmonds (right) manning the "Doctor Is In" booth at the conference
Western Office preservation specialist Annie McDonald manned the "The Doctor is In" booth on Thursday to answer questions about public/non-profit board development, and was followed on Friday by senior architectural historian and GIS coordinator Michael Southern and Andy Edmonds, GIS technical support analyst, fielding GIS mapping questions, and Claudia Brown, for National Register and survey questions.  Preservation commission services/CLG coordinator Laurie Mitchell took part in Friday's poster session to answer questions about potential partnerships between local groups and the National Park Service.  

Speakers from the HPO included Eastern Office restoration specialist Reid Thomas on the care and maintenance needs of Rosenwald schools; Eastern Office restoration specialist John Wood on successful rehabilitation strategies, specifically at the Ware Creek School in Beaufort County; Michael Southern and Andy Edmonds on online tools to use for virtual tours of schools and where to find documents and photographs online; Jeff Adolphsen on the Secretary of the Interior's Standards for Rehabilitation; Michelle Lanier, on best practices for conducting oral history research; Claudia Brown, on how to list Rosenwald schools in the National Register of Historic Places; Annie McDonald, on non-profit board development; and Heather South, on basic guidance on the preservation of Rosenwald school archival collections. HPO staff photographer Bill Garrett took hundreds of photos of conference sessions and events.

HPO and other DCR staff enjoyed their roles in making the conference a success experienced by more than 300 attendees. Many of their presentations will live on in videos of their sessions recorded by DCR videographers Brian Nestor and Jim Willard. Look for links to the edited videos in coming months.
Coinjock Colored School, Currituck County, Saved from Demolition

The Coinjock Colored School (listed in the National Register in 2013), one of only two remaining Rosenwald schools in Currituck County, has been threatened by continued neglect and the future widening of Caratoke Highway/Route 168 for years; the school already stands within feet of the road. Negotiations for the purchase of the school by local businessman Paul Robinson have finally met with success and Robinson now plans to move the school about half a mile to the site of his restaurant. Once in place on its new site, Robinson intends to restore the ca. 1919 school, which was so important to the local African American community. Click here to read the article.
Coinjock Colored School
Environmental Review Staff Convene in VA to Discuss Transportation Research Needs                                        

By Renee Gledhill-Earley

Section 106 review and compliance staffers from five State Historic Preservation Offices, including North Carolina's environmental review coordinator Renee Gledhill-Earley, took part in a panel discussion on transportation consultation and research needs as part of the mid-year meeting of the Transportation Research Board in Richmond, Virginia. They explored how state departments of transportation and historic preservation offices are addressing the huge numbers of post-World War II suburbs that need to be assessed as part of transportation projects, the use of programmatic agreements for different classes of projects, updating statewide inventories of highway bridges that are scheduled for replacement and dealing with the changing boundaries of historic battlefields. The audience was made up of state and federal transportation agency employees plus engineering and cultural resource consultants. To learn about an exceptionally creative mitigation strategy, the group visited Shirley Plantation, a National Historic Landmark, where dredge spoil from the replacement of the Woodrow Wilson Bridge in Washington, DC, was used to fill borrow sites to restore the nineteenth-century landscape of the historic property.  
Historic Context for Schools in Three Western Counties Created as Mitigation

NCDOT is very interested in using the development of historic contexts as a form of mitigation as it provides good research for professionals and an accessible reference and tool for the public. They have sponsored the preparation of contexts for crossroad/country stores, Rosenwald schools, bridges, and Pomona clay tiles, and a historical/ethnographic study of life on the Outer Banks. All are related to the historic resource(s) that are affected by NCDOT's projects and are generally regional rather than statewide contexts.

Recently, NCDOT hired consultant Heather Fearnbach to write a historic context report for Cleveland, Henderson, Polk and Rutherford County Schools as part of the mitigation for the adverse effect of the Rutherfordton Bypass on the historic Ruth School in the Rutherford County community of Ruth. It should prove helpful to anyone studying North Carolina's early to mid-twentieth-century public grade schools, especially those of the consolidation-era (1910s to 1930s). Click here to read the full school context report.
Tips for Taking Photographs for Tax Credit Projects or the NC National Register Study List
By David Christenbury
Photographs submitted to the HPO for either rehabilitation tax credit projects or as part of a North Carolina National Register Study List application are helping people who may never actually visit your property feel like they have walked around and through it. In other words, you are providing a photographic tour. Click here for guidance for taking the best photos for this purpose. 
Mount Airy Becomes Newest NC Certified Local Government

Wally's Service in Mount Airy. Photo courtesy of Laurie Mitchell.

In August, Mount Airy, purported inspiration for "The Andy Griffith Show," was made the newest NC Certified Local Government (CLG). Click here for more information about Mount Airy's CLG status.

In 1980, Congress amended the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 to require each state to establish a procedure by which local governments may be certified to participate in the national framework of historic preservation programs. This requirement has become the "Certified Local Government (CLG) Program" in which many North Carolina counties and cities participate.

Since Congress created a preservation program for the United States in 1966, the national historic preservation program has operated as a decentralized partnership between the federal government and the states. The federal government established a program of identification, evaluation, and protection of historic properties and gave the states primary responsibility for carrying out this program. The success of that working relationship prompted Congress to expand the partnership to provide for participation by local governments. Click here to learn more about the requirements, application process, and benefits of being a CLG.
Raleigh's Haywood Hall is Exploring a Partial Restoration
  
Haywood Hall
Haywood Hall, at 214 years old, is the oldest house in Raleigh on its original foundation. It was constructed by John Haywood, the state's first treasurer and Raleigh's first mayor, first as a place for entertaining and second as a home. The Haywood family lived in the house until 1977, when John's great-granddaughter, Mary Haywood Fowle Stearns, left it to the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in North Carolina. In her will, she stipulated that Haywood Hall be preserved "as is" for the "enjoyment of the community" and to promote a greater understanding of the history of the state and of Raleigh. She also specified that one significant change could be made to the house: restoration of the large first-floor room that existed during John Haywood's entertaining heyday by removing a later partition wall between two rooms flanking the center passage. Recently restoration specialist Dean Ruedrich undertook an exploration of the structural elements hidden within Haywood Hall's walls in order to help a local committee decide if this project is feasible. In the process, he uncovered clues to the building's intriguing architectural history. Click here to learn more about this project.  
Department of Interior Names Four New National Historic Landmarks

On August 4, Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell and National Park Service Director Jonathan B. Jarvis announced the designation of the following four new National Historic Landmarks, including:
  • First Peoples Buffalo Jump, Cascade County, MT
  • George Washington Masonic National Memorial, Alexandria, VA
  • Lafayette Park, Detroit, MI
  • Red Rocks Park and Mount Morrison Civilian Conservation Corps Camp, Jefferson County, CO
Click here to learn more about the newest NHLs and click here to learn more about the program.
2015 American Battlefield Protection Program Planning Grant Winners Announced

The American Battlefield Protection Program (ABPP) recently awarded 25 grants totaling $1.198 million to assist the preservation and protection of America's significant battlefield lands in sixteen states. This year's grants provide funding for a variety of projects at endangered battlefields from the Pequot War, Revolutionary War, Indian Wars, Second Seminole War, the Civil War, and World War II. Funded projects include archeology, mapping, cultural resource survey work, documentation, planning, education, and interpretation. 

Click here for the full list of 2015 grant recipients. For more information about the ABPP visit their website 
Teaching with Historic Places Lesson Plan Published for Rosenwald Schools

The National Park Service has published The Rosenwald Schools: Progressive Era Philanthropy in the Segregated South as part of their Teaching with Historic Places lesson plans. The lesson's author, Rebekah Dobrasko, is a historian with the Texas Department of Transportation and is the author of www.SCEqualizationSchools.org. Dobrasko previously wrote a lesson plan on equalization schools for Teaching with Historic Places. 

Click here for more information about Teaching with Historic Places or here for the Rosenwald Schools lesson plan.  
New Publication on Historic Tax Credits

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency recently published "Historic Tax Credits: Bringing New Life to Older Communities." This updated edition describes how national banks and federal savings associations can use historic tax credits to facilitate the rehabilitation of historic buildings and discusses how investments in these tax credit transactions may be considered under the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). This report also highlights the new IRS safe harbor guidance and details the public welfare investment authority for these type transactions. Click here for the report. 
Rosenwald School Documentary Rosenwald to be Shown in Theaters

Film maker and historian Aviva Kempner's latest documentary is Rosenwald, on the life of the Sears, Roebuck CEO and philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, who funded more than 5,300 public schools across the South for African Americans in the 1910s through 1932. The movie was released in theaters in August and so far there is only one screening scheduled in North Carolina, at the Regal Park Terrace 6 movie theater in the Park Road Shopping Center, 4289 Park Rd., Charlotte, where it will open on September 18. For more information about the documentary, including screening locations, see http://www.rosenwaldfilm.orgAn interview with Aviva Kempner on NPR's All Things Considered may be found at this link.
For  Your Entertainment and Edification . . .
  • Click here to learn about the latest developments in recent Lost Colony research. 
  • Interested in agricultural history in North Carolina? Louisburg College is offering a lecture series on agricultural improvement in North Carolina and the Tar River Valley. Visit this website for more information. 
  • Are you a fan of "The Astronauts' Wives Club" or of 1960s interiors in general? Click here to view production designer Mark White's shots of the sets.   
  • And who does not love neon signs? Apparently local officials in Hong Kong (click here to read the article). But historic preservation planners in Tuscon, AZ, really love them (click here to read the article). 
  • Do you think gorgeous building when you hear parking deck? You will after you see these San Francisco examples (click here to read the article). 
  • Here is a design that could take your next beach house to a whole new level (click here to read the article).
Events, Awards, and Grants    

For statewide events lists, visit the HPO Facebook events list
Preservation North Carolina events list, or a September 2015 - November 2015 calendar of events and workshop and conference list courtesy of the Federation of NC Historical Societies.

September 10 Historic Wilmington Foundation's 5K Run & Mile Walk, "Race for Preservation," will begin at 6:30 PM at the Best Western Plus Coastline Inn and Convention Center, 503 Nutt Street, Wilmington. Open to all ages and skill levels. Individual pre-registration entry is $27 and $32 on the day of the race. Pre-registered entry for teams of at least of 5 members is $110 + $22 for each additional members and $135 + $27 for additional members on the day of the race. Entry includes race registration, a post-race awards party, and t-shirts guaranteed to the first 300 entrants. To register online or for more details visit this website.  

September 16-18 2015 Annual Preservation North Carolina Conference, Salisbury. Keynote speakers will be Don Rypkema and Tom Mayes. Visit this website for more information and to register. 

September 16-19 American Association for State and Local History Annual Meeting and Online Conference, Louisville, KY. Information is available here.

September 17-18 Historic Tax Credit Conference, San Antonio, TX. Click here for more information.

October 8-10 2nd Annual Slave Dwelling Project Conference, North Charleston, SC. The conference's mission is to convene attendees from around the United States and abroad to exchange ideas and resources and to share perspectives and solutions for preserving extant African American slave dwellings for future generations. For more details go to this website

October 8 NC National Register Advisory Committee Meeting, 10 AM, 109 E. Jones St., Raleigh. Open to the public. For more information, please contact Ann Swallow by phone at 919-807-6587 or by email at [email protected].

October 9-11 2015 Charleston Heritage Symposium, "Charleston - British and Beyond," Charleston, SC.This year's symposium will feature national and international decorative arts experts who will address how some of Charleston's earliest settlers - including French Huguenot, Jewish, African, German, and Flemish as well as British - set the standard that would make Charleston among the earliest of our nation's multicultural and cosmopolitan cities. William G. Allman, Curator of The White House, and Dr. Tessa Murdoch, FSA, Deputy Keeper, Department of Sculpture, Metalwork, Ceramics, and Glass at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, will be the keynote speakers. Limited to 80 patrons. To make reservations for the symposium or request a brochure, please call 800-770-1817 or visit this website.

October 14-17 2015 Annual Southeast Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians (SESAH) Conference, El Tropicano River Walk Hotel, San Antonio, TX. For more information go to this website.

October 14-15 Maritime Cultural Landscape Symposium, Pyle Center, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI. Join the National Park Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, and the Wisconsin State Historic Preservation Office for a two-day exploration of Maritime Cultural Landscapes in Madison, WI. The symposium will explore how the terrestrial and submerged resources near and in the nation's oceans, rivers, and lakes might be identified, characterized, and evaluated, and what benefits may be derived from the broader recognition of these landscapes as unique entities "worthy of preservation." Hear presentations by subject experts and join in the discussions on how agencies, tribes, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, and State Historic Preservation Offices might use the MCL concept to more effectively preserve and protect their maritime heritage resources. Click here for more information.Space is limited - please register early.

November 1-5 Association for Preservation Technology (APT) Conference, "Convergence of People and Places-Diverse Technologies and Practices," Kansas City, MO. Details about the conference and registration information can be found on this website.

November 3-6 PastForward 2015, the National Trust Annual Conference, Omni Shoreham Hotel, Washington, DC. For more information or to register go to this website.  

November 18-21 Southeastern Archaeological Conference, Nashville, TN.  More information available on this website.
 
March 16-19, 2016 National Council on Public History Annual Conference, Baltimore, MD. Visit this website for more information.
 
March 19-20 7th National Forum on Historic Preservation Practice, "A Critical Examination of the Next 50 Years," Goucher College, Baltimore, MD. Click on this link for details about the call for papers for this conference.
 
June 1-4 Save the Date! 2016 Vernacular Architecture Forum Conference, "From Farm to Factory: Piedmont Stories in Black and White," Durham, NC. For information, visit this website, where details will be added as planning progresses. Click on this link for the call for papers. The deadline for proposals is October 30, 2015.
 
July 27-31 Save the Date! National Alliance of Preservation Commissions FORUM 2016, Mobile, AL.  A historic preservation conference and training program focused on the issues of preservation commissions and commission staff. More information and a request for proposals can be found on the NAPC website. Proposals are due September 15.

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Our Town Grants: The National Endowment for the Arts currently is accepting applications for its Our Town grant program. The grants support creative placemaking projects with the arts at their core. Creative placemaking occurs when artists, arts organizations, and community development practitioners deliberately integrate arts and culture into community revitalization work. This funding supports local efforts to enhance quality of life and opportunity for existing residents, increase creative activity, and create a distinct sense of place. Deadline September 21. For more information, go to http://arts.gov/grants-organizations/our-town/introduction

National Trust Preservation Funds These grants encourage preservation at the local level by providing seed money for preservation projects. The grants help stimulate public discussion, enable local groups to gain the technical expertise needed for particular projects, introduce the public to preservation concepts and techniques, and encourage financial participation by the private sector. Grants generally start at $2,500 and range up to $5,000. The selection process is very competitive. Only members of the National Trust at the Forum or Main Street levels are eligible to apply for funding from the National Trust Preservation Fund. Click here to learn more about the grant program and how to apply.
Please send any comments or suggestions to Jessica Dockery at [email protected] . Please forward this newsletter to others who might be interested in the information.


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North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office
Division of Historical Resources | Office of Archives and History
North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources