Preservation New Jersey to foster more municipal historic preservation efforts

It has been more than 28 years since I was the first part time executive director of Preservation New Jersey, but I am enjoying being back in the state to help Ron Emrich the current executive director with an important project. Ron was able to secure a grant from the NJ Department of Community Affairs to assist and encourage municipalities in the state to update existing or formulate new historic preservation elements of municipal master plans. I am the consultant to PNJ for this project and I will help up to 12 communities around the state to boost their local preservation efforts by updating or formulating new historic preservation elements.

The New Jersey Municipal Land Use Law requires that any municipality that seeks to regulate historic sites, must adopt an historic preservation plan element into their municipal master plan. This plan element must be in place before adopting a local historic preservation ordinance to regulate historic properties, so it is the first step toward protecting historic sites at the local level.

The historic preservation plan element is optional, but more than 200 municipalities have them in their local master plans according to the NJ Historic Preservation Office. The Municipal Land Use Law is clear about the contents of an historic preservation element of a municipal master plan, and there are several exemplary examples from communities around the state. As part of my research I have collected close to 30 examples from communities that span a wide spectrum of preservation activity; from those that have no local preservation ordinance, to those that have advisory, regulatory or certified local government preservation ordinances.

So far I have worked with Metuchen, Fanwood, Mountain Lakes and Ridgewood, and will begin working in Hightstown next month. An article describing the work I will be doing with Highstown can be found here from an article in the May 26, 2008 Princeton Packet newspaper. http://packetonline.com/articles/2008/05/26/windsor_hights_herald/news/doc4836fb9bcd03 7807121124.txt

If you are interested in participating in this effort of Preservation New Jersey's, contact me at donna@heritageconsultinginc.com or email Ron Emrich at ron@preservationnj.org. We can explain how this free of charge assistance works, and what information we will need from your community to get started.

They say you can't go home again, but it has been a real joy to work in New Jersey again after all these years.

Back from Baltimore and Annapolis

My husband and I took a short holiday to Baltimore and Annapolis this weekend. I found excellent hotel prices on Hotwire in both places, the Sheraton City Center in Baltimore and the Westin in Annapolis. Both cities were thick with people. As cultural travelers, we went to the expected places, the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Walters Art Gallery as our main destinations. Both had great shows and both were FREE. Amazing. How do they do it?

We ate in Fells Point at the famous restaurant Bertha's known for its mussels--and for its green bumper stickers that say "Eat Bertha's Mussels." The mussels were the largest I have ever seen. Succulent. For lunch at the BMA we both had crab cakes at Gertrude's, one of the real gems in Baltimore cuisine.

We got recommendations for our visit from Rob Saarnio, a colleague and old friend now living in Hawaii and from Nick Rudolph, who works as a business specialist with Baltimore Main Streets. Both steered us to some great places, including Federal Hill, with its expansive view of the Inner Harbor from high above, and Tides Point, further down the river, with a great bay side view of Fells Point.

Federal Hill and Fells Point are both local Main Street communities, and look good. Fells Point is a lively entertainment district with bars and restaurants galore. Federal Hill's main drag Light Street serves the community surrounding it. Some great housing stock in both places. We also wandered around the area near Johns Hopkins' main campus and the lovely neighborhood of Glenside. Ian wanted to see both the HL Menkin House and the Poe House, which we drove by and photographed, so we saw some other parts of Baltimore that a tourist might not see. Both historic sites were closed.

We were charmed by Mount Vernon Place and its four small parks. We had a hearty breakfast at Spoons across the street from the Cross Street Market, one of the many thriving public markets in Baltimore.

We ended up in Annapolis in time to tour the Paca House and its recreated garden, owned by the Historic Annapolis Foundation. The tour of the house and garden took about 1.5 hours and we had an agreeable guide and a small group of 10. Seemed like Annapolis was still teeming with folks staying for the weekend after the graduation ceremonies from the Naval Academy on Friday. The best meal of the weekend was at Cafe Normandy on Main Street, which served traditional French bistro dishes, in a nice atmosphere, with great service. The bouillabaisse was excellent as was the traditional surf and turf.

Spent a great deal of time walking the streets radiating out from the State Capital building--closed for restoration. Like the commercial districts in Baltimore, the storefronts were beautifully restored, while others were simply maintained from their 1880s or turn of the century appearance. Main Street in Annapolis was full of baby carriages, baby boomer couples like us and young families, not a demographic I completely expected. Some upscale women's chain stores like Chico's or White House/Black Market, but the vast majority of the shops were independents. There were a fair number of tea shirt shops/Navy apparel, at least four upscale jewelers and various ice cream shoppes.

The Historic Annapolis Foundation runs a gift shop in the city dock area and has an adjacent building that houses exhibits called History Quest, which can best be described as a visitor center and starting point for the many tours offered by costumed and non-costumed guides of the historic district. There are restrooms, a small gift shop and exhibits on all three floors of this handsomely restored brick building. The building is dedicated to St. Clare Wright, the indomitable spirit behind the early preservation work of Historic Annapolis Foundation.

We found Cafe Normandy, on our walk up Main Street from the city dock area after visiting the History Quest building. On Western Avenue on the other side of Church Circle, there were at least 6 different restaurant/pubs, all independently owned. There were more service businesses on this side of town along with the Visitors Center. With small signs, it is hard to find the first time around, since you approach the site from the back, and are directed to a paid parking garage, and then only a small sign directs you to the Visitor Center proper.

The traditional Memorial Day Parade went on this morning in the downtown, which we decided to skip because we could not get to it easily with many blocked off streets. On our way back through the Eastern Shore, we passed through Chestertown Maryland, and Odessa and New Castle both in Delaware. All had superb residential architecture, beautifully restored and maintained. Chestertown has a cute downtown worth visiting on a non-holiday weekend, when everything was closed.

Odessa's historic homes, once managed by Winterthur, have now been turned back to private use from what we could see from the street. And New Castle's four block long downtown adjacent to the Green, has a smattering of shops catering to residents in this charming community. There was a large contingent of people using the waterfront park today.

Our weekend was a nice get away, despite the cost of gas. I cannot imagine that we are different than the majority of American's, who are eager for a break, but not willing to travel too far or spend our entire stimulus check on a tank of gas or two.

Houston and St. Louis reporters talk to Donna about house museums

I have spoken to reporters in St. Louis and Houston in the past month for stories about house museums either struggling or trying new approaches.


The Samuel May Williams House in Galveston was the story in the Houston Chronicle on May 1, 2008 in "Historic Home Needs a Curator and a Tenant." This site owned by the Historic Galveston Foundation is being converted from a house museum use to a dwelling. Tenants are being interviewed to take on the maintenance of the property. Before the conversion however, the Foundation has turned the property into a designer show house, which will update the kitchens and bathrooms for the property. See the article here http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl?id=2008_4560343



The Chattlon-DeMenil House was featured in an article called "This Old House" in the May 8, 2008 issue of the St. Louis Post Dispatch where I was quoted. Contact me if you would like a copy.