A Preservation Success Story - Pulaski Depot

Photo from The Southwest Times

 

Back in November 2008, we were all heart-broken to hear of the fire in the historic Pulaski, Virginia train station.  A beautiful stone passenger depot built in the late 1800s, it housed the town's museum and Chamber of Commerce.  The fire was electrical, starting in the ceiling of the museum and probably smoldering for quite some time before breaking into flames during the night.  There wasn't a fire alarm system in the building, but a passerby saw smoke pouring from the roof and called 911.  The volunteer fire department went far above and beyond the call of duty pulling museum items out of the structurally unsound building in the heat of the moment, saving far more than one would have imagined given the intensity of the fire.  

Photo from WSLS

Despite the depot's stone walls and slate roof, the building did not fair well in the fire.  The roof collapsed, taking parts of the upper walls with it and interior features were incinerated.  Even given the best efforts of the fire fighters, the fire was too far advanced when they were called to have had a better outcome.  With current budget constraints and the state of the depot, many municipalities would have decided to give up and demolish the building.  The Town of Pulaski is resilient.  They've been through town fires, the closing of their furniture factories, flooding, two fires in their historic courthouse, and, since the depot fire, a tornado.  The Town decided to use the insurance money they received from the fire to reconstruct the train depot and restore many of the depot's original features.

Last Saturday, June 11, 2011 was the grand reopening of Pulaski's depot.  It was exhilarating to see how many people gathered for the celebration.  The exterior of the building has been restored to its appearance prior to the fire.  The slate roof with its distinctive cupolas has been reconstructed along with the upper sections of the stone exterior walls that were lost to the fire.  The interior has been returned to its original appearance with fireplaces at the ends of the main rooms and beadboard covering the walls. Some changes were made to reflect the new functionality of the building.  A new museum will be built across the street, so the depot will become a meeting space for local groups and those looking for retreat space.  New restrooms and a ramp were added.  Probably the most important new feature added to the building?  An alarm and fire suppression system.

What's in the Walls?

An interesting thing about gutting an old house to add insulation and new wiring, plumbing, and HVAC is what you find (or don't find) in the walls.  Our project house is definitely a vernacular house added onto and built with whatever the carpenters had.  Some walls had plaster, others old sheetrock.  When we got to the studs, we found that none of the walls had insulation and that the sheathing was flipped over and reused painted siding from another building.  Must've been pretty cold and drafty in there with the mountain winds blowing in winter.

We've also found that you can look straight up the wall cavities from the first floor to the second.  In other words, we've got balloon framing.  Today's buildings generally use platform framing where each floor is a platform extending to the outside wall and the wall studs are attached to the floor above and sit on the floor below.  With balloon framing, longer studs are used that reach from the base of the first floor to the second floor ceiling.  The floor joists are nailed to the wall studs.  The structure will usually have some bracing and the sheathing also helps to strengthen balloon framing.

Balloon framing doesn't meet today's building codes because the open walls create a chimney that can transfer smoke and flames throughout the building quickly and with devastating results.  So, one of our tasks is to add fire blocks in the walls.  We'll be insulating, which will reduce the chimney effect, but we'll also be adding 2x4 blocks that fit between the stud bays to further block airflow.  Since we've got real 2x4s and the distance between studs is probably not uniform, we won't be able to simply use big-box-bought lumber and cut all the pieces to the same size.  It'll be time consuming, but worth it in the long run for the safety and comfort of the new occupants.

Salvaging What We Can

We're currently in the demolition phase of the rehabilitation of our project house.  That means we've been wielding our sledgehammers and have got a dumpster outside.  We're pretty selective about what we're throwing away though:  

• The old wood windows will stay and be reworked.  We'll add storm windows to make them just as efficient as new double-glazed windows.
• Some of the doors will stay and be stripped and repainted.  The front door is a new door so we'll get rid of that.  Not all of the interior doors match and we'll be changing the layout of the rooms, so we'll be visiting our local architectural salvage to buy some solid wood 5-panel doors.
• The wood floors just need to be refinished.  The old yellow spotted linoleum kitchen floor and vinyl bathroom floor will go.
• Lumber and trim will be reused in this house or another.
• The bricks from the chimneys that are no longer necessary will surround planting beds and create a retaining wall in the yard.
• The acoustic tile ceilings?  Outta here.
• Old insulation? What old insulation?
• Old metal pipes, electrical wiring with copper in it, and the old appliances will be recycled.
• The old kitchen cabinets will find new life in the shed in the backyard.
• The old blue bathroom fixtures will be donated to the local ReStore.  (Can you believe the architectural salvage place wouldn't buy them from us?!?)

It's in everyone's best interest to be selective about demolition debris.  The bottom line for us is money savings: a lighter dumpster means cheaper tipping fees and reusing materials means we don't have to purchase them new.  The less that ends up in the landfill and the more that we can reuse, the better.  Reused materials mean less energy is consumed in making new and probably inferior products.  It's a little more effort for us, but worth it in the long run.

Lost Communities of Virginia

We now interrupt the regularly scheduled blog for bit of shameless self-promotion...

Are you curious about small rural towns and how they came to be?  Are you intrigued by commercial structures that now seem to be in the middle of nowhere?  Do you enjoy hearing stories of the past from those who lived it?  Lost Communities of Virginia is a new book by Terri Fisher and Kirsten Sparenborg from the Community Design Assistance Center at Virginia Tech, published by Albemarle Books, and distributed by University of Virginia Press.  

 

From the book jacket:

"Virginia’s back roads and rural areas are dotted with traces of once-thriving communities.  General stores, train depots, schools, churches, banks, and post offices provide intriguing details of a way of life now gone. The buildings may be empty or repurposed today, the existing community may be struggling to survive or rebuilding itself in a new and different way, but the story behind each community’s original development is an interesting and important footnote to the development of Virginia and the United States.
 

"The Lost Communities of Virginia project began with curiosity as Kirsten Sparenborg followed a green highway sign pointing to Eggleston and found a rural Giles County community, an elderly storekeeper, and the no longer obvious story of a once-thriving springs and railroad community. The Eggleston encounter planted the seed for Virginia Tech’s Community Design Assistance Center’s project to locate and document small Virginia communities before their built history and storytellers are lost. Over 2,600 communities were surveyed with 30 chosen that best represent the range of community types found in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
 

"Each community, though typical, is also unique. Lost Communities of Virginia documents stories of coal towns and grist mills, railroads and steamboats, clay smoking pipe makers and excelsior manufacturers, maple syrup and shad, church meetings and jousting matches, traveling salesmen and springs resort visitors to pique the imagination. The communities have lost their original industry, transportation mode, or way of life, but contemporary photographs, historical information, maps, and excerpts of interviews with longtime residents
awaken the bustling past."

 

Kirsten began this project, but I completed it, researching and visiting each of the 30 communities, writing the chapters, making maps, and taking additional photographs as needed.  Each of these small communities is, in its own way, a microcosm of American history.  Some contributed to national causes like Pocahontas coal powering U.S. Navy ships; all were affected by national economic and social circumstances such as Depressions and the advent of the automobile.  

I urge you to look at your own home town and learn more about its past.  If you live in a city or large town, look at your neighborhood.  What economic driver caused its development?  What happened when that driver was lost?  Why would new development be likely to survive today when it didn't in the past?  Are there older residents who can tell you about your community's past? Be curious about your home and you will learn a lot about the community's place and its attitudes in today's world.

The Lost Communities of Virginia book is available through on-line sellers and at your local bookstore if you live in Virginia.  Be sure to visit the Lost Communities of Virginia Facebook page for more information.

How National Register Listing Can Attract Business

Our small town was once a bustling metropolis.  Okay, not really, it's always been a small town, but all of the empty buildings downtown used to be full of stores, restaurants, and other businesses.  Today, we have a few businesses and some traffic, but nothing like the photos of 50 years ago.  What happened?  The main road bypassed town.  Fortunes changed as employment at the chemical plant dropped to less than a quarter of its peak.  Reliable cars and improved roads made it easier to drive farther for supplies.  So today, we're left with a downtown full of empty storefronts.

In the last several years, a renaissance of sorts has begun with the old hotel reopening.  The owner has helped restore several other buildings so we now have a cafe/coffee shop to complement the well-known locally-owned home style restaurant and an artisan's shop to complement the art gallery that has been here for years.  These are wonderful businesses for a county that has embraced tourism as one of its future economic drivers.

The town has outgrown its old office building just off of Main Street and needs to either build new or rehabilitate an existing downtown building.  This is not a rich town so all expenditures undergo extensive scrutiny.  A local developer has offered to purchase the empty old furniture store on Main Street, rehab it, and rent it to the town with the option to buy in the future.  The idea is that this could bring a viable entity to downtown that could entice others to rehab other buildings and make downtown a vibrant place once again without costing the town as much as it would if they were to pay for the construction themselves.

So what is the sticking point?  The developer won't begin the project unless the downtown area is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.  This makes perfect business sense.  If the building is listed or in a district that is listed, then the developer will be able to take advantage of federal and state tax credits to reduce the cost of the rehabilitation by up to 45%.  Furthermore, National Register listing can help attract other investment downtown because other developers can take advantage of tax credits as well.   

There is some concern among residents that having a National Register Historic District will limit the town in some way.  This couldn't be further from the truth.  Unless the town creates a local historic district with local zoning ordinances, building owners are able to do as they please with their National Register buildings.  Being registered encourages owners to be good stewards of the buildings, but there is no legal means of making sure that happens.  Registered buildings are eligible for state and federal rehabilitation tax credits of up to 45% and technical assistance from the Virginia Department of Historic Resources for such projects.  

A small investment of $10,000 for a consultant to prepare the National Register nomination will help us to get a new town office building, and potentially attract businesses, and their accompanying tax dollars to downtown.  The town can help its residents embrace the future through the county's tourism initiative and other local business so the next generation will live in a bustling metropolis and the empty buildings will be but a memory.

Buildings Aren't Consumables

When did Americans become so reactive instead of proactive?  Why do we wait until something reaches a critical point before we fix it rather than treating it early, before it gets to the critical point?  Why do we throw money at the effects rather than the causes?  Why do we discard rather than repair?  When did we become such a consumer society? 

What do these questions have to do with historic preservation?  A lot.  Preservationists understand the importance of being proactive with an old or historic building to reduce costs and maintain the life of the building:

• Being proactive will save money over the life of the building.  Buildings fall down or become extremely costly to restore if we wait until the roof leaks or the windows fall out or the termite damage is visible before we fix them.  Inspect the building at least yearly.  Spend money to repair the roof when damage is evident, get out the glazing putty when the windows panes are loose, and spray for bugs yearly. 

• Fixing the cause will save money by fixing the effect. Rather than just fixing the bubbling plaster wall, determine what is causing the plaster to bubble in the first place.  Is it caused by water coming in the wall?  How is the water getting in?  Is the gutter in the wrong place?  Are the window sills holding water instead of shedding it?  If you don't fix the underlying problem, the plaster will keep bubbling and you'll continually need to spend money fixing it.
  
• Repairing saves money and often lasts longer than replacing.  Your old windows are hard to raise and you need to put a stick in the track to hold them up?  Fix them!  You just need to open up the trim and attach new rope to the weights.  Add some weather stripping and new storm windows if they're drafty.  It'll save you more money than you think because you won't have to replace your new vinyl windows yet again in 20 years when they cloud up.
  
• Buildings shouldn't be considered consumables.  A well-maintained old building can last hundreds of years.  The materials and workmanship used to construct old buildings are often not available anymore.  The dimensional lumber, hand-formed bricks, old-growth wood, and other materials are far superior to what is available today and will likely last longer than most buildings constructed today of less robust materials.  Why spend the money to bulldoze a perfectly viable building built of high quality materials for something built from lower quality materials?  Rehabilitate, reuse, don't bulldoze.

Preservationists get it.  Spend a little time or money now, save lots of time and money later.  Now if we can just break the rest of America from reactive and consumptive habits...

We Need More Historic Building Tradespeople!

I may have mentioned before that it is nearly impossible to find anyone in our area that knows how to work on an old house (or new one for that matter, but that's another story).  In addition to working on our own rehabilitation projects, we are both museum directors responsible for historic house museums and their upkeep.  At home, we can take things apart, work on them, put them back together, and learn during the process. At work, it's not our responsibility (thank Heavens!) to fix bubbling plaster or make the windows functional again. But, that means we have to find someone who can.  And not just someone who can, but someone who knows what they are doing.

We may live in Virginia, but we are far from Jamestown, Williamsburg, Richmond, and the historic places where buildings matter.  We are in the mountainous southwestern part of the state that was settled much later than the east.  Our county has just celebrated its bicentennial.  The farther south and west you go, the younger the community.  And, for whatever reason, there isn't a reverence for historic buildings that translates to their upkeep.  People revere the land that their ancestors have owned for generations and will gladly point out their homeplace.  But, more often than not, that homeplace is falling to the ground.

So when it comes to finding someone to do plaster work, properly repoint brick, repair wooden windows, or replicate old woodwork, it's nearly impossible.  The trades consist of vinyl, vinyl, and more vinyl: siding, windows, porch columns...  Replace it don't fix it.  Just another example of our throw away society.  Throw away the old, dependable fixtures.  Throw away money.

Our consumptive Walmart society is one problem.   The American view that all children must go to college to be successful is also problematic.  No matter that a person who is successful at a historic building trade is likely to make more over their lifetime than many college graduates and not spend their life paying back college loans.   There is an unfortunate stigma related to the trades, that can lead high school students who would be far happier working with their hands tackling a new preservation problem to a long, struggle through college classes and an unsatisfying desk job. 

And for those high school students who might want to pursue historic building trades, they probably don't know the opportunity exists.  In our area in particular, it is likely that students don't recognize that historic buildings are different than new construction.  If their school happens to have a technical track, it is likely they will build a new vinyl house with metal studs.  A two-pronged approach requires an understanding of the built environment and different types of construction, as well as the technical skills and critical thinking required to build or repair different types of buildings.  Until we can make the preservation trades a mainstream educational track, it will be difficult to find young people to replace the older generation and it will be come increasingly harder to find someone qualified to fix the amazing features of old and historic houses.  

Note: The Preservation Trades Network preserves and teaches historic building trades and is working to develop education initiatives to keep the trades alive.