Portland planner and longtime Historic Landmarks Commission member Leo Dean Williams is being honored with the seventh annual George McMath Historic Preservation Award. For nearly thirty years, Williams, an urban design architect, was an essential member of a team of civic leaders who created, expanded, and implemented Portland’s historic preservation program. He is also credited for reinstituting urban rail in Portland.
The A&AA community continues to take steps toward creating its future home on University Street. The location of the Phase I A&AA building is on the site of the current McArthur Court. To help keep interested constituents and stakeholders informed, a blog has been created to follow the progress of the “Phase I A&AA Learning and Innovation Hub” capital project. Here you can view documents and design studies that outline the design process, including reports, timeline, and correspondence.
In the late 1600s, a wooden synagogue was erected in the small Polish town of Gwozdziec. By 1731, a wooden dome, or cupola, was inserted into the roof of the synagogue. Its ceiling was elaborately ornamented with colorful paintings of animals and zodiac symbols and came to be known as the “celestial canopy.”
The synagogue was destroyed when the town was burned during military action in World War I, but a similar wooden synagogue was constructed on the site.
The Pacific Northwest Preservation Field School is celebrating its “20 Years Reunion” November 7-9. In addition to an evening of remembering, socializing, and learning at the White Stag Block in downtown Portland, attendees can participate in field trips to past and future field school sites.
Professor Kingston Heath, director of the Historic Preservation Program, has been awarded the 2014 Excellence Award for Directors of Graduate Studies by the UO Graduate School. The honor will be formally presented during the Director of Graduate Studies spring meeting at approximately 4:30 p.m., Wednesday, May 28, in the Knight Library Browsing Room.
“I am humbled by the recognition and truly appreciative,” Heath said. “Mentoring students along their journey as professionals is the most fulfilling aspect of my role as a program director.”
Historic Preservation Program students at UO have produced a handbook on conserving historic masonry. The students of Adjunct Professor Lauren Allsopp spent twelve weeks analyzing masonry structures of all kinds in Cottage Grove, Oregon, whose Main Street is a classic example of a late Victorian town. The handbook, which offers recommendations for building owners, is available for free online.
Asked what Pacific Northwest Preservation Field School project he’s most proud of since the annual projects began twenty years ago, Associate Professor Emeritus and Field School Founding Director Don Peting defers. “That's a Sophie's Choice question,” he says. “It's like your children—you can't isolate and favor any one.”
Professor Kingston W. Heath, director of the UO Historic Preservation Program, will be keynote speaker at “The River and The Rail: A Symposium on Enterprise and Industry in New Bedford,” February 15-16 at the New Bedford Whaling Museum in New Bedford, Massachusetts.
The conference addresses the historical evolution of the port of New Bedford as a manufacturing and commercial center. Heath’s talk is entitled “Whalers to Weavers: New Bedford’s Promoted and Neglected Legacies.”
Over the summer, students in the historic preservation program completed internships in both urban and rural settings as local as Salem and as remote as Croatia.
The students presented their accomplished work recently in Lawrence Hall to faculty members and first-year students looking for future internships in preservation.
In 1965, a young labor organizer catalyzed what soon became an international movement to unionize farm workers seeking better wages and improved working and living conditions. Over the next thirty years, he would organize thousands of workers and lead millions of consumers nationwide to boycott purchases of grapes, lettuce, and wine, eventually changing agricultural practices in America.
