March 19- Non-Profits and Current Issues

Above: Historic Charleston Foundation's circa 1808 headquarters at 40 East Bay Street. We met with Katherine Saunders, Associate Director of HCF, and discussed important current issues such as the Calhoun Street East/Cooper River Waterfront Plan. Photo by Historic Charleston Foundation.

Meeting Katherine Saunders with Historic Charleston Foundation provided an insightful glimpse into an active historic preservation agency. Their mission is to preserve and protect the architectural and cultural character of Charleston and its environs. In order to promote preservation in Charleston HCF has created several programs that involve the public. Revolving fund initiatives, easements and covenants all help HCF in their mission.

In the 1950s, the historic Ansonborough neighborhood was part of the nation’s first neighborhood rehabilitation effort. However, gentrification and displacement soon followed. We need to find ways to encourage preservation without gentrification and displacement. Our goals as preservationists now should be to promote our cause to every demographic and to preserve the character that comes with a diversity of people, not just the character that comes with historic buildings. In planning for Charleston’s preservation plan for the future, city officials, preservation organizations, and the public need to consider these issues and others, like zoning. Future plans also need to consider green sustainability and re-use of historic materials. Charleston is moving outward, thanks to the active annexing of the surrounding area—there is no one character of Charleston now.
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Above: Part of the corridor for the proposed Calhoun Street East/Cooper River Waterfront Plan. You can find a pdf of the plans if you follow this link: http://www.charlestoncity.info/shared/docs/0/calhounst_091123.pdf.
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Preservation Society of Charleston headquarters at 147 King Street. We met with Robert Gurley, Assitant Director, to discuss the above plan.

Robert Gurley gave us a great introduction to the oldest community based preservation society in the nation. For more information on the Preservation Society, follow this link: http://www.preservationsociety.org/. Like HCF, they have easement programs and view themselves as a preservation advocacy arm of the community. Some of their concerns for the future of Charleston are issues to consider as having important impacts on preservation progress. Tourism has become a major blessing and curse for Charleston. Crucial tourism dollars help fund a city that is weakened by a declining population and increase in absentee property owners. There is little buildable land and much of it is privately owned. Staying vigilant to changing ordinances and broadening their inclusion of historic buildings since the 1950s has made the Preservation Society of Charleston an important cornerstone in Charleston’s preservation community.
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Above left to right: On the way to our last meeting, we passed by an interesting building near King Street and the United Church of Christ's Circular Congregational Church on Meeting Street. The church is very interesting and for a bit more of its history go to this link: http://www.circularchurch.org/content.cfm?id=2002.
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Above: Wrought iron entrance gate to the William Aiken House and the courtyard view of the house and wrap around piazza.

Meeting with John Hildreth of the Southern Regional Office, National Trust for Historic Preservation. Offices are located at the circa 1810 William Aiken House on 456 King Street at Ann. For more information: http://www.preservationnation.org/about-us/regional-offices/southern/.
We met John Hildreth, Director of the Southern Office of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and Nancy Tinker, Senior Program Officer at the Southern Office. The National Trust promotes our historic sites, buildings, structures, and landscapes from an organizational (not governmental) stance. One of the goals in supporting certain sites and buildings is to add to America’s “portfolio of places” examples of true American experiences. For example, the Lower East Side Tenement, Slave Meeting House, and Drayton Hall reflect varying experiences of different people.

Another goal of the National Trust, and one that I see as extremely crucial to the future of preservation, is how to use properties in a responsible way to make them more vital. We need to move away from making more house museums and create model projects to promote advocacy of realistic preservation. The National Trust also acts a way to connect the public and other preservation organizations on a national scale. Programs such as their Endangered Properties List, Gosaic heritage travel initiative, Main Street Initiatives, Rosenwald School Initiative, and Modernism in Recent Past Initiative demonstrate just how involved the Trust is. Through these programs, they hope to apply their National Trust resources on the ground and become even more of a worthy advocate to other organizations.

Inside the Southern Office headquarters:

Above left to right: Sitting room and detail of an earthquake bolt.

Above group: Drawing room chandelier with decorative ceiling medallion, window treatments, and crown molding detail in red salon on second floor.

Below left to right: Chandelier with decorative ceiling medallion in ballroom and a glimpse onto the second floor piazza.