Historic New England Summit 2023 | Day 1

Historic New England Summit 2023 just finished earlier today! Held at The VETS, or Veterans Memorial Auditorium, in Providence, Rhode Island on Thursday, November 2, and Friday, November 3, this two-day event brought together members of Historic New England (HNE) and others interested in the history and preservation of the area. I also attended the first HNE Summit last year, in 2022, and summarized both Day 1 and Day 2 for that conference. This post summarizes Day 1 of this year’s event based on my fifteen pages of notes. Day 2 is coming soon. If you would like to learn more about any of the sessions, please let me know, and I can post a more detailed write-up or share my notes.

Opening Welcome

The Summit began with an introductory view that reviewed ongoing HNE projects such as the reimagination of the Haverhill Center and the Recovering New England’s Voices project. Danikah Chartier, Indigenous Community Liaison and Researcher at HNE, gave a land acknowledgement for Turtle Island, one name used by Indigenous people to describe North America. Carissa Demore, Team Leader for Preservation Services at HNE, followed up with housekeeping details, emphasizing that “access and inclusion are a huge theme of this conference”. Vin Cipolla, President & CEO of HNE, presented questions to consider throughout the conference, such as “What happens when you bring people together to talk about preservation?”, “How do me help or cities thrive sustainably and accessibly?”, and “How can we assure that housing is attainable for the whole population?”

Welcome Remarks

Next, David N. Cicilline, former Representative of First Congressional District of Rhode Island and current President and CEO of Rhode Island Foundation, welcomed Summit attendees to Providence and the Ocean State. He told a brief history of the Foundation, from its founding in 1916 to its work with the Roger Williams Park Conservancy founded in 2016 during the 100^th anniversary of the foundation. Other project highlights included the renovation of United Theater in downtown Westerly, RI, and the organization Climate Jobs Rhode Island. Cicilline emphasized the need to “listen carefully to the community we serve.”

Opening Keynote: Culture, Arts, and Livability

Providence native Deborah Allinson, chair of the HNE Board of Trustees, reviewed HNE history and current projects, along with introducing the opening keynote speaker.

Susan D. Whiting is currently a board member of the Trust for Public Land, National Women’s History Museum (NWHM), and Chicago Academy of Sciences’ Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum. During her talk, she provided examples of how persistence and collaboration with local communities brought positive changes. NWHM collaborated with Martin Luther King, Jr. Library in Washington, D.C. to host the exhibit We Who Believe in Freedom, which detailed the work of Black Feminists in the District of Columbia. The Trust for Public Land works with communities to designate spaces that belong to everyone, including Meadowood in Simsbury, CT; Norwell Street Park in Boston, MA; and community forests found in Bath, Maine and Mount Katahdin in Maine. Chicago Academy of Sciences went remote during the COVID-19 pandemic and attracted more virtual visitors than other museums in Chicago.

Conversation: Living Heritage

Sharon Meagher of Widener University in Chester, PA talked briefly on the restoration and revitalization of Uptown Chester, a town on the Delaware River downstream from Philadelphia. While I-95 cut through the city and separated the university from uptown, a bridge connects the two halves of the city. The physical bridge became the touchstone of the project Bridge Chester, which planned to reunite the city through shared interests in art and culture. The Barra Foundation invested $211,000 in the project, connecting artists across the city and improving economic development.

Erica Slocum of the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center in Hartford, CT introduced the conversation between Harold Steward and Valarie Tutson, where they described their experiences as Black storytellers. Steward currently is Executive Director of New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA), while Tutson is Executive Director of Rhode Island Black Storytelling. Steward spoke on transitioning from his role at The Theater Offensive, which features art by queer and trans people of color in Boston, to his current role at NEFA, which he took at the behest of leading arts management professional Margie Johnson Reese. Tutson described her journey as a storyteller, beginning with her childhood in New Milford, CT, reading Great Slave Narratives, edited by Arna Bontemps, while a student at Brown University, and living through the storytelling revival movement during the 1980s. Both speakers emphasized the need for preserving folklore and poetry as part of oral tradition, along with uplifting stories of Black love and Black joy

Panel: Inclusive Design: Disability, Culture, and Preservation

After a brief morning break came my personal favorite session of the day.

Betty Siegel, Director of the Office of VSA and Accessibility at John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and founder of Access Advisory Group, LLC, moderated the discussion. She began with a short presentation defining the differences between the Medical/Impairment model of disability that claims something is wrong with a person, versus the Social/Civil Rights model that claims something is wrong with society.

Valerie Fletcher, Executive Director at Institute for Human Centered Design and Board member for International Association for Universal Design, shared statistics on disability. Currently, 1.3 billion people, which is 1 in 6 people or 16% of the world population, have a disability. The percentages is about 1 in 4 or 25% in the United States, as the country keeps better records, counts invisible disabilities, and includes people of all ages, not just working age.

Heidi Swevens, Director of Community Partnerships at Inclusive Arts Vermont, talked about relatively simple ways to meet accessibility needs in an art gallery, including verbal descriptions for artworks, arranging for transportation, and providing enough chairs.

Charles Baldwin, Access and Inclusion Program Officer at Mass Cultural Council, described the ability to provide accessible design solutions by working with the disability community, even when only able to use a small budget. He cited the Wheelock Family Theater as a pioneer in the field, it being the first theater to have audio description in Boston, open caption for all performances, and Deaf interpreters.

Keynote: Loud Libraries: Cultivating Community Through Shared Stories

Tony Pell, former trustee of HNE, introduced keynote speaker David Leonard, President of the Boston Public Library. Pell noted that the library has over 26 million assets in its collection. Leonard began with a quote from the façade of the McKim Building, which was constructed in 1895: “The Commonwealth requires the education of the people as the safeguard of order and liberty.” He shared a short video of drone footage showcasing the building, which was filmed by the company Above Summit.

Leonard highlighted three smaller collections within the full collection at the library. BPL has seven original copies of the Declaration of Independence, each with its own unique capitalization and number of signatures. The library holds Shakespeariana, or works of William Shakespeare, which Leonard described as “One of the strongest outside the UK, if not including the UK itself.” In fact, BPL has a first, second, two third, and a fourth folio of the complete works of Shakespeare. The library holds the work of Phillis Wheatley, the first Black person, first enslaved person, and third woman to publish a book in British North America. (As this is the 250^th anniversary of the publication of her book, Poems on Various Subjects Religious and Moral, I have previously attended events on Wheatley hosted by American Antiquarian Society and Massachusetts Historical Society.)

Besides housing historic books and documents, the Philip Johnson Building on Boylston Street was renovated in 2015 and 2016 to create a modern, louder, and contemporary space shared with WGBH radio station. Additional, BPL has 25 branches, one for each neighborhood in Boston to give access to all residents. Finally, BPL partners with libraries in Brooklyn, Seattle, San Diego, and Los Angeles County to provide digital access to banned books through Books Unbanned. The project is funded privately through an initiative led by the Boston Public Library Fund.

Keynote: Only Connect: Storytelling and Place

R. Tripp Evans, history of art professor at my alma mater, Wheaton College, along with the spoke about his upcoming exhibition The Importance of Being Furnished: Four Bachelors at Home, which will appear in Eustis Estate from June 21 through October 27, 2024, following the publication of a book by the same name on June 4. Evans concentrated on the lives and designs of four gay New England men:

1. Charles L. Pendleton of Pendleton House in Providence, RI, which is now part of the RISD Museum. (I visited prior to the start of this blog, but I will have to make a trip back!)
2. Ogden Codman, Jr. of Codman Estate, a HNE property in Lincoln, MA. (I visited in June 2022.)
3. Charles Gibson of Gibson House, an independent museum in Boston, MA. (I was unaware of this museum and added it to my ever-expanding list.)
4. Henry Davis Sleeper of Beauport, the Sleeper-McCann House, a HNE property in Gloucester, MA. (I visited in September 2022 and saw a virtual tour in August 2023.)

As part of the Recovering New England’s Voices project, Evans explored themes of LGBTQ+ history, American masculinity, class, profession design, collecting, and the Aesthetic Movement. He proposed new ways to introduce modern artists to HNE properties and artifacts, citing successful past projects including the sculpture Shipwreck Mirror (2019) by Beth Katleman, and the film Corridors (2003) by Lorna Simpson.

Panel: Placemaking in Action

Eric Hertfelder, former director of the Rhode Island Historical Preservation & Heritage Commission (RIHPHC) and current member of the HNE council, introduced the panelists in the next session, which focused on community engagement with arts and archives.

Kara Elliot Ortega, Chief of Arts and Culture at City of Boston and developer of the Radical Imagination for Racial Justice (RIRJ) grant, moderated the session. She described creative placemaking, acknowledging that the term is broad and varied. First popularized in a white paper released by the National Endowment for the Arts in 2010, creative placemaking includes the rituals and cultural used by communities to establish and reclaim spaces. She cited the Design Study for Social Intervention (DS4SI) while describing spatial justice, which emphasizes the importance of a sense of belonging, ownership, authenticity, and collective imagination.

Tom Kaufhold incorporated the Seacoast NH LGBT History Project in 2015. The project collaborates with other Portsmouth cultural organizations, including Portsmouth Public Library, Portsmouth Athenaeum, and Portsmouth Historical Society (which I visited in September 2022). Volunteers created pop-up and panel posters available to loan. He warned that cataloging is a lot more work than he anticipated, and the collective of Portsmouth organizations need a better space for their shared archives.

Marta V. Martínez, PhD, is executive director of Rhode Island Latino Arts and Nuestra Raíces (Rhode Island Latino History Archive). She founded the archive in 1988 and currently has over 200 oral history recordings, including an interview of Josephina Rosario, the first Dominican person in the area. Martínez traced the first arrivals of Spanish speakers to Rhode Island, including a single family from Spain in 1920, Mexicans in the 1940s, and Guatemalans and Columbians in 1964. She hosts barrio tours describing the history of Broad Street and other parts of the community, but has no building or museum. Today, the Providence Children’s Museum has a replica of Fefa’s Market, the first Latino small business in the area. Martínez highlighted the importance of trust with members of the community and the need for more bilingual, Latino librarians.

Lorén M. Spears is executive director of the Tomaquag Museum, which contains the belongings of Indiginous people, including photographs, music scores, newspapers, and more. The museum has worked with other community organizations to create a mural in downtown Providence and a stone arch honoring Indiginous veterans at the Rhode Island Veterans Memorial Cemetery. In an effort to decolonize her own institution, she worked with board member Amanda Thompson to write “As We Have Always Done”: Decolonizing the Tomaquag Museum’s Collections Management Policy. Spears focused on the importance of creating partnerships between the communities, enabling culture bearers to educate younger generations while allowing the public to participate. The museum is currently looking to repatriate some of the collections, as these belongings came from Indiginous people outside New England.

Conversation: Town, Gown, and the Future of Education

After a short break, David Fithian, president of Clark University in Worcester, MA, joined Joanne Berger-Sweeney, president of Trinity College in Hartford, CT in a discussion about how high education institutions can collaborate with and benefit their local communities. Fithian described the close relationship between Clark and the City of Worcester, especial in the Main South neighborhood. The university prides itself in being a city anchor and creating a national model for how research universities should connect to the community. Fithian warned that higher education institutions are often perceived as wealthy, ivory towers. To combat their image, Clark created a grade school in 1997 and gives scholarships to academically qualified students who have lived in the area for five or more years.

Berger-Sweeney spoke about the 200-year-old Trinity College campus located three miles from the State Capitol of Connecticut, which was the original site of the college. As a small, liberal arts college in the heart of a major city, the college community strives for a sustainable, long-term, mutually beneficial relationship with permanent residents. Professor Serena Laws, an appropriately named political scientist, students to become volunteer tax experts, sending them into the community to assist low income people with filling out tax forms. The college participates in Southside Institution Neighborhood Alliance (SINA) along with Hartford Hospital and Children’s Connecticut Hospital to prove a healthy, safe, and education space for children in Hartford. A recent project was transforming a bus depot into a learning corridor, which houses four schools and a Boys & Girls Club.

Panel: The Future of Cities

Bear Albright, an HNE trustee, gave quick reminders for Day 2 of the Summit, while fellow trustee, Ed Gerber, introduced the opening speaker for the final topic of the day. Joe Cadiga, Jr. is State Budget Officer of the State of Rhode Island and a skilled speaker, as he made this topic interesting. He described the “bare bones” operating budgets of historic sites such as Old Colony House in Newport and Old State House on Benefit Street in Providence. Some older buildings have been transformed to serve new purposes or need to undergo such transformations. The state psychiatric hospital is currently in a tuberculous sanatorium built in 1905; the state maximum security prison was built in 1878, and a 1936 hospital facility in Burrillville is now a modern office building. Many schools suffer from deferred maintainence. The state receives financial assistance from many organizations, such as the Colonial Dames, Newport Historical Society, and Save America’s Treasures grants from the National Park Service. Additional, the Rhode Island State House is currently undergoing restoration on its stonework, windows, HVAC and grounds. The state gives millions of dollars to the upkeep and restoration of landmark properties through the State Historic Structures Tax Credit and Rebuild Rhode Island Tax Credit.

Alex Eberhardt, President & CEO of Greater Haverhill Chamber of Commerce, introduced the final panel of the day. Eberhardt is a alum of Brown University and University of Rhode Island, making her the perfect Providence representative.

Carol Coletta, CEO of Memphis River Parks Partners, moderated the session. She compared Providence to larger, older, and less diverse European cities like Vienna and Copenhagen. In these cities, residents sometimes used bikes instead of cars to travel, and they allowed children to travel through parks and walking paths unsupervised. While Providence is less bike-friendly, its population grows at at time when many other Northeast cities shrink. However, changes in climate threaten the coastal city.

Mayor of Providence, Brett P. Smiley, emphasized the importance of the waterfront to the Providence community. The city has experienced healthy growth from waves of immigration throughout its history. With seven colleges and universities in the city, its population also grows during the school year, experiencing an increase of 15% to 20%. With the advent of hybrid and remote work, people choose to live in Providence even if the job market is not as big as Boston or New York City. Smiley had ideas on how to continue attracting new people to Providence, although housing has become expensive and scarce. Currently, Providence has a cultural boom, with the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra, Providence Ballet, Trinity Repertory, and emerging art scene, including WaterFire. The city has a bus system, city bikes, and city scooters as alternative modes of transportation. However, the city experiences difficulties due to climate change and deferred maintenance. Many city water pipes are over 100 years old, and schools have no air conditioning. Even with these difficulties, Smiley was optimistic about the future of the city.

Surprise! Kickin’ Brass Band

After the final session, we were greeted by a special surprise. Kickin’ Brass Band of Smithfield, RI appeared to play catchy and incredibly loud music during the first half of the networking event.

Awards Ceremony and Reception

After a reception with tasty hors d’oeuvres, HNE awarded three prizes. The HNE Honor Book Prize went to The Builder Book: Carpenters, Masons and Contractors in Historic New Haven, by Susan Godshall and Jack Tripp. Both of these Yale alumni were present to accept the award. Godshall gave a brief speech about working with Tripp, who graduated Yale in May.

MIT professors Karen Weintraub and Michael Kuchta won the HNE Book Prize for Born in Cambridge: 400 Years of Ideas and Innovators, published by MIT Press. Weintraub was teaching a class, so Kuchta accepted the award for both of them.

The HNE Prize for Collecting Works on Paper went to Darlene Lacey and The Candy Wrapper Museum. This California resident wrote two books on Necco, a New England candy manufacturer that produced mints with the texture of chalk. She sent a delightful video accepting her award.