Not surprisingly, we spend a lot of time here at the National Trust for Historic Preservation thinking about threatened sites and how we can play a role in saving them – especially at this time of year, when we announce our annual list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places. Budget cuts, deferred maintenance, road construction, and development are among the dangers faced by sites on 2008’s list, which includes California’s State Parks, Charity Hospital and adjacent neighborhood in New Orleans, and New York’s Lower East Side.
The History Channel has prepared a great video, posted below, that describes the places listed this year, and why these places matter. You can also learn more — and take action — at the special 2008 11 Most Endangered section of our website.
This is really, really exciting news. And we commend the USGBC for taking on this very complicated update to LEED. In less than a year, they have substantially restructured LEED by turning it into a weighted system based on life cycle analysis indicators AND providing an alternative compliance route for existing buildings which looks at the durability of assemblies and materials.
Our Sustainable Preservation Coalition will also be collecting comments to send in together.
Read my blog from March 24th, updated May 6th, to learn the impact of LEED v3 on preservation and social/cultural metrics. If you would like more information, don’t understand how to submit comments or just want to chat about the implications to existing or historic buildings, feel free to post a comment to this blog or email me directly and I will be happy to help you. No, I haven’t read through the draft yet. I’ll be spending Memorial Day doing that, hopefully in my sunny courtyard after a nice long bike ride!
I walked around the Lafitte housing development this weekend and took these photos. The section between N. Rocheblave (the northern most boundary) and N. Galvez Street (the center traffic artery running through the site) is mostly piles of bricks, twisted metal (including the scrolled ironwork porch supports and metal windows) and personal effects. As I passed on foot, two men ran out of one of the standing buildings clutching some kind of materials that they threw into the trunk of car and then sped off. I imagine they were stripping the buildings of valuable building materials or helping themselves to the contents of the apartments, many of which are still furnished. So, about half of the development is demolished, but the potential 196 interim units in 18 buildings are still standing at the southern end of the site closest to the Claiborne overpass.
As the work moves relentlessly on, Rick Denhart of Mercy Corps has been trying to work with the demolition contractor for Lafitte to determine the value the contractor assigned to various materials which the contractor intended to obtain as scrap (and hence lower the amount of his overall bid). This information has been slow in coming. The idea, as Rick explained it, would be to try to get intact items like windows and figure out a way to have the contractor accept payment of that value. Time is working against us here as the attempted negotiations stall.
While the writers of the PreservationNation blog are on staff at the National Trust for Historic Preservation or affiliated organizations, their posts are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
