Conservation Educational Development: A discussion on the Urban Conservation Primer (Episode 36)

08/21/12 • 14 min

Preservation Technology Podcast

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Masonry, History, Integrity: Urban Conservation Primer (Episode 36)

Stacey Urlacher speaks with Tom Russack, Masonry Preservation Instructor at the Abyssinian Development Corporation Workforce Development Youthbuild Program in Harlem, New York City, and Project Associate at Rand Engineering and Architecture. NCPTT awarded Mr. Russack a grant to compile a masonry conservation primer to introduce preservation trade, skills, and knowledge to inner city high school kids in Harlem, New York.

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TRANSCRIPT:

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Stacey Urlacher: Thanks for being here today

Tom Russack: Well it’s my pleasure and an honor, thank you

Stacey Urlacher: You have written Masonry History Integrity: An Urban Conservation Primer, can you tell us more about this primer and the inspiration behind writing it?

Tom Russack: Well, I received a grant, and am very grateful for the opportunity to put my thoughts and experiences in teaching masonry conservation to inner city kids here in NY City into a book form. The inspiration is from the students, and the classes that I teach.

Stacey Urlacher: That sounds great, so it’s something that teaches kids at a younger high school age about conservation and hands on working. How is this primer organized and what kind of topics does it cover?

Tom Russack: Well, that’s a great question, because I have never written a book before, never written a textbook and that was part of the challenge. How do I get this huge amount of information palatable to a young mindset, and how do you make it interesting, and what aspects do you cover? That’s the challenge I have in class and that’s what I enjoy, is springing new ideas and new creations on them so that it’s not something disinteresting or stale. I want them to walk into class saying what are we going to do today, what is this?

So the book is filled with different activities from making homemade terra cotta clay, to making molds of hands, learning how to repoint mortar joints, and getting tools to carve stone. I think one of the basic needs we have today is to let kids explore what tools are. I mean, we give kids basketballs, baseballs; we send them off to gymnastic camps and swimming lessons, why don’t we give kids tools, and teach them how to fix things?

There are enough buildings out there that need restoration, let them go to work, and teach them how to do it correctly. The pride is in craftsmanship. When they are done, and in the process of doing this, let them look at what they have done, and feel that pride. That is one of the key goals to the book and the program.

Stacey Urlacher: Exactly, it really seemed when you read through it that it not only teaches these hands on skills, but it teaches history, a good work ethic, teamwork, and things like that that can really take you far after school.

So in creating this type of a resource for this age group, topic, and subject, what other kind of resources did you glean from and get inspiration from?

Tom Russack: Well, there is a wealth of information out there, and it is important and interesting. The students, they actually do appreciate finding out about buildings, and history. Unfortunately, I think a lot of the material isn’t as palatable to a younger audience, and I kind of had to reword it, and make it a little bit easier to understand and condense it in a way that they don’t get avalanched with so much information and dates.

Just give them a little snip-it to kind of say, wow that’s interesting, with the hope they will move on. The back has resources, websites mostly, because that is the most applicable and easiest to access. So they can not only revisit the things we discussed in class, but do some further research also.

Stacey Urlacher: That seems very important because this is such a good introduction to this subject. What is kind of the, next step after one learns about these different types of masonry, history, and skills like this in order to in hopes one day become a professional in the field?

Tom Russack: Very good question, the program I teach at here, in Harlem, is for inner city kids to get their high school equivalency, their GED, which is the main focus. This is a small portion of their understanding of some of the employment opportunities out there, some of the resources. It’s an investigation, it’s an experiment, it’s an exploration, and so if we get one out of ten who follows through and carries on in preservation or masonry then that’s ok, that’s a success.

We had one student accepted to the American College of Building Arts, we have had another student working for the Central Park Conservancy, we have had a couple of students working for a restoration masonry company, we have had one apprenticeship with Evergreene Architectural Arts, so these are success stories and we are incredibly proud of these students, even for those that haven’t gone on into careers or these studies.

I’m real excited when a student comes...

Next Episode

Historic Landscape of the Civilian Conservation Corps, Part 1 (Episode 37)

Jenny Hay speaks with Cindy Brandimarte, Director of the Historic Sites & Structures Program in the State Parks Division of the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department. In the first installment of this two-part series, they’ll talk about the iconic landscape of the Civilian Conservation Corps and their role in the development of the Texas State Park system.

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TRANSCRIPT:

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Jenny Hay: Thank you for joining me here today, Cindy. I just want to start with a pretty general question. What is the Civilian Conservation Corps, or the CCC, and why is it important to the Texas State Park system?

Cindy Brandimarte Many people know that the CCC as abbreviated stands for the Civilian Conservation Corps, and it was one of the key agencies that FDR created during, as part of his New Deal for America. And it was generally young men, although there were some veterans from WWI and even the Spanish-American War, who were part of it. And they were in general suffering the slings and arrows of the Great Depression, and it was a works program. And it became very important to Texas State Parks because they, we always say the Corps built the core of our system.

Jenny Hay: Wow – and what kind of work did they do in the parks?

Cindy Brandimarte Well, some of it, if you went, it would be invisible. They cleared brush, they planted trees – we can’t really see those kinds of things, except the mature trees. That’s kind of invisible – even road construction. But then there are these beautiful visible elements of the cultural landscape that get so much attention – or that got so much attention back in the 1930s. So much material, so much labor was invested in them. They are the refectories, which are also called combination buildings or concession buildings, they’re cabins, there are picnic tables galore, fire pits, shelters, that create just a masterful and beautiful landscape. Texas State Parks, and I’m sure other state park systems, are grateful – at least in Texas, before the CCC came here, we had convicts who were sent in to help fix up the parks. There were no master plans, there were no talented designers and architects, there was no large workforce that could be relied upon. And that took place from about 1923 to ’33, when the Civilian Conservation Corps first made its mark on our parks.

Jenny Hay: I see. And is there a distinctive CCC style?

Cindy Brandimarte Yes. In many, but not all of the parks, it is commonly referred to as ‘NPS Rustic.’ It’s distinctive in its – it’s been inspired by natural forms, local materials. For example, timber in East Texas, and stone in the Texas Hill Country, where these materials are plentiful. There’s a lot of handcrafted woodwork, they are set unobtrusively in the landscape. As Jim Steely, who was talking about Herbert Meyer, one of the architects in the National Park Service that helped design our parks, there was a horizontality about them and Meyer talks about the horizontal key. So they tend to be low to the ground, they’re not these vertical Victorian resorts of the 1870s, ‘80s, and ‘90s. That said, the NPS Rustic which is distinctive, the CCC was very conscious of the local setting in terms of cultural settings and local history. For example, in the Davis Mountains which is far West Texas, we have a pueblo style hotel: the Indian Lodge at the Davis Mountains State Park. It looks a little West, to New Mexican architecture, to Native American architecture. And we also have what’s called Goliad State Park and Historic Site which is a reconstructed 18th century mission that’s very much a part of the local history of South Texas. And then I would be remiss if I didn’t mention some of the more modern design that came in at the end of the CCC. We’re talking 1940, ’41, right before World War II. There’s an architect up in Northeast Texas by the name of Joe Lair, and he executed a really remarkable, modern design for Tyler State Park that was a clear break from the NPS Rustic. So we have a gamut, and we have some highly distinctive NPS Rustic architecture within our parks.

Jenny Hay: Yeah, that’s really fascinating – the wide variety of styles that you can see and yet the coherence that’s kind of woven through those parks. I’m going to bring us back up to today. The website “texascccparks.org” is an innovative website displaying the extensive documentation of the work of the CCC in the Texas State Park system. Can you tell me a little bit about the development of this resource?

Cindy Brandimarte Well we were quite fortunate, because there was something in the air in 2006 and 2007 that caused us all to look at earlier architectural models. Whether it was an awareness of sprawl, whether it was a sense of economic crisis soon to come – whatever it was, certainly at Parks & Wildlife and in more broad circles, the CCC was seen to be a good topic and a topical one. We started writing grants and we were so fortu...