PreservationNation

You may have heard about the “25 Random Things” meme that’s making its way around Facebook these days — but if you haven’t, the New York Times, Washington Post, or Time magazine can fill you in on the latest craze in navel-gazing.

Since we have a page on Facebook, a few of us here at the National Trust for Historic Preservation decided to put our heads together and craft a list of random facts about this place where we spend so much of our time.  We’re posting the list both here on the blog and on Facebook, though we’re not actually sure Facebook will allow us to “tag” our partner organizations, as the rules require. So, in case we can’t tag… Fellow preservation organizations, consider the gauntlet thrown down! Our list — and the rules for playing along — are below.

1. We do an annual 11 Most Endangered list because the year we started it, we couldn’t narrow the list down to 10.
2. The National Trust has given the same parting gift to its interns for the past two decades: “The History of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, 1963-1973.” You know, despite the fact that most of these interns were born after the book was published.
3. Our congressional charter requires that our headquarters be in Washington, DC.
4. The National Trust Library used to fit on one side of an office, but now has 18,000 volumes and is housed at the University of Maryland.
5. Number of National Trust Historic Sites with bowling alleys: two (Lyndhurst and Montpelier).
6. We have Main Street programs in a wide variety of places, including the home of US nuclear program (Los Alamos, New Mexico) and the home of Leinenkugel’s beer (Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin).
7. The full legal name of our organization is the “National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United States.” We go with “National Trust for Historic Preservation” because that’s all that fits on our business cards.
8. Our headquarters building once housed six luxury apartments, but now is filled with more than 200 staff. (So, were they really huge apartments or are we in tragically cramped offices?)
9. The Main Street movement created 370,514 jobs between 1980 and 2007 — so we’ll take Main Street over Wall Street any day!
10. The Dixie Chicks played at the National Preservation Conference in Fort Worth in the mid-90s, before Natalie Maines joined the band (and, therefore, before they were famous).
11. The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado – a member of National Trust Historic Hotels of America – was Stephen King’s inspiration for “The Shining.”
12. We invested $54,287,438 in historic properties last year in the form of grants, loans, and tax credits.
13. Country music star Kenny Chesney featured the Farnsworth House, a National Trust Historic Site in Illinois, in his video, “Don’t Blink.”
14. Staff on the fourth floor of our building sit in rooms that displayed part of the art collection Andrew Mellon (who lived on the fifth floor) donated to create the National Gallery of Art.
15. On Thursday, our entire headquarters staff received the following email message: “does anyone have the big roll of bubble wrap? if so.. please bring it back to the mailroom… thanks…”
16. More than 200 of our current and former staff and interns have profiles on Facebook. Among our current status updates:
    “…is at Tastee Diner. Yum!”
    “…is wishing Rick Astley a very happy birthday.”
    ‘…thinks that tomato soup makes for weird dreams.”
    “…is convinced that the same person who has been siphoning his salad dressing has now completely jacked his bottle of mustard from the breakroom fridge.”
17. Despite what some of our moms think, our name isn’t, in fact, “National Historic Trust.”
18. Number of National Trust Historic Sites with formal cemeteries: eight (six for people, two for pets).
19. Average number of visitors to National Trust Historic Sites each year: 801,096.
20. The Northeast Office regularly offers to take representation of either the US Virgin Islands or Puerto Rico off the Southern Office’s hands (just to help out, really)…no luck yet.
21. The Westchester County Kennel Club Show is one of the most popular events held each year at the Lyndhurst Estate (a National Trust Historic Site) in Tarrytown, NY.
22. Once upon a time, our logo featured an eagle, so to promote this, we briefly offered a friendly stuffed bald eagle named “Trusty” as a membership gift. Some lucky staff members hung onto a few irregular or remaindered Trustys. They are now a highly endangered and coveted species.
23. Once and for all – the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the National Register of Historic Places are not the same thing – not even close.
24. If you really want to see anyone on our staff fly into a righteous tirade, bring up the latest example of a perfectly reuseable and retrofittable historic building being torn down to clear space for a new “green” building.
25. Filoli, a National Trust Historic Site in California, was the Carrington Mansion on Dynasty.

Share Rules:
Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.

(To do this, go to “notes” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right hand corner of the app) then click publish.)

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This entry was posted on Friday, February 6th, 2009 at 4:32 pm and is filed under Preservation Matters. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.