Boroughs & Burbs 180 || The Greenest Buildings Are Already Built

In this episode of Boroughs & Burbs, we’re joined by Carol Quillen, President of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, for a thought-provoking conversation titled The Greenest Buildings are Already Built. Carol shares invaluable insights on the intersection of historic preservation and sustainability, challenging the prevailing narrative that new construction is always the most eco-friendly option. We’ll dive into how preserving and repurposing historic buildings can significantly reduce environmental impact, save resources, and contribute to a more sustainable future. Learn how the preservation of our architectural heritage plays a vital role in today’s climate-conscious world. Don’t miss this enlightening discussion on the green benefits of historic preservation!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

The Burroughs are New York City. The Burbs are everywhere else. Real estate is the ultimate game of risk and reward. It's the biggest investment most people ever make. Fortunes are made over a lifetime and lost in a day. And we're not playing with monopoly money. How do you stay ahead? Who's buying? Who's selling? And why? What do they know? We want the truth. You need an edge. Burroughs& Burbs is your secret weapon, giving you the insider knowledge and strategies you need to succeed in the high We press the experts to expose the pain, find the deals, and occasionally predict the future. That's Burroughs& Burbs, Thursdays, 3 o'clock Eastern, noon Pacific. Because everyone can make money in real estate.

SPEAKER_03: 0:52

Welcome, everybody. Burbs and Burbs 180, number 180. We're in season five. And today we're talking about the greenest buildings are already built. And I have a very special guest, Carol Quillen, the new CEO and president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. And I have been waiting for this show for years. I have to begin before I go off to my housekeeping by saying that, Roberto, I met Carol Quillen in 2011 when she was in her first week on the job running Davidson College. Wow. During her time there. And I was in awe. And she introduced me to her friend who was sitting next to her on the bench, who was running Rice University. And I was like, wow, I, you know, there's some star power here. And so what

SPEAKER_01: 1:52

were you doing there?

SPEAKER_03: 1:53

I was just, I went to meet Carol and she was at the football game, the Davidson College football game. So I went, you know, I went to Muhammad and I met her at the, at the football game. Thanks to Eileen Keeley, our mutual friend and my classmate. Anyway, Carol Quillen during her tenure at Davidson exceeded all expectations. And by the time she was done, Davidson was not only like, you know, barely in the top 10, but firmly entrenched in the top 10 in the nation. So I was very excited about the fact that her new chapter running the National Trust for Historic Preservation what's she got up her sleeve, and how is the National Trust going to move forward? So with that introduction, welcome, Carol. So glad to have

SPEAKER_04: 2:40

you. Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. It's great to see you again, John.

SPEAKER_03: 2:44

I should properly introduce my co-host, Roberto. Say hello, Roberto, and where are

SPEAKER_01: 2:50

you? Hi, everybody. I'm on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Just happy to be here, as always. Good to see you guys.

SPEAKER_03: 2:55

And I'm John Engel. Nice to meet you. You'll find me at theengelteam.com. And I'm the burb. Yeah, I mean, he's the burb. I'm the burbs. And I guess, Roberto, today, it's a little bit of a departure. We're not talking about the economics of real estate. But in a sort of a way, we are. Because I think, and it's in our title, the greenest buildings are already built. And so I'll start that way with a question. when we're the greenest buildings aren't we also some of the most sustainable and economically um best buildings so um carol welcome and why don't you tell us um give us a little bit about your background the parts i missed

SPEAKER_04: 3:40

so it's great to be here i want to thank you both for having me and um like i said it's great to see you again john always happy to hang out with a fellow Davidson Wildcat. So thank you. And to talk a little bit about the National Trust and maybe it would be helpful to folks listening if I just say a little bit about the trust before we start talking about sort of the greatest building concept. So at the National Trust for Historic Preservation chartered by Congress, initially in 1949, so has been around for a long time. We're privately funded now. And the purpose of the National Trust really as I see it in a sentence is to activate the power of place, to serve the public good, improve people's lives, and enable a shared future. So what's the power of place? So at The Trust, we believe that historic places, old places, meaningful places hold power. They hold stories. And when we activate that power, we can point the way towards a shared future, especially at a time when our past is so contested and we as a country are so divided. So a lot of what we do is about thinking about the power that places hold. And it might be an iconic place. either because it's an architecturally distinguished building that holds stories. I know, John, you're familiar with a glass house, you know, architecturally distinguished building, beautiful place. How do we activate the power that that place holds so that people can experience the awe and joy that the glass house makes possible? So that's one way in which we activate the power of place by creating opportunities for people to have these experiences that they couldn't have without what we do. But then the other way is when we think about communities and the importance of meaningful places to build in community and economic revitalization. So a lot of our work is actually about repurposing older, underutilized or vacant buildings for new things. So you might have a vacant, I was in North Carolina for a long time. There's a lot of mill buildings in North Carolina. And in fact, when I was at Davidson, we bought one. We bought one and we turned it into a hub for entrepreneurship. So when you repurpose or reactivate an older, underutilized or vacant building for something that serves the community now, that has the capacity not only for community engagement, but also for economic revitalization. So the power of place is a pretty capacious category. It can encompass activating the power of place to connect Americans to our own history, the full history, the true comprehensive, total history of all Americans and everyone's accomplishments. It can have the capacity to give us experiences of beauty and awe and joy And it can have the capacity to bring a community together or to revitalize a regional downtown or to create a kind of economic opportunity that was honestly unimaginable before that place was activated. So that's kind of the... the the range of things that the that the national trust does and if i had to summarize the three areas in which we work we want to remake the commemorative and cultural landscape so that we're telling the full american story we want to create revitalized and energized communities that are healthy and economically vibrant and we want to make sure that we're you know doing what we can to create an energy efficient and sustainable planet so Those are the three areas in which we work. Happy to talk about any of them or answer.

SPEAKER_01: 7:15

So are you guys proactively going into these communities and doing this or are communities approaching you and saying, listen, we need some help?

SPEAKER_04: 7:23

It's both. So I'll talk a little bit about our Main Street program. So one of our partner organizations is called Main Street America. And Main Street America is about re-energizing regional downtowns. They focus on smaller towns. There's a lot of Main Street communities that are 10,000 or less. These are in parts of the country where capital doesn't normally go on its own. We like to say capital is lazy at the National Trust and it likes to hang out on the coasts. It doesn't go to places where it's most needed. And Main Street America has a framework that they use to help regional downtowns. We always have a local partner. So maybe it's a chamber of commerce, maybe it's a local business business association, maybe it's a community development organization that have a plan for their regional downtown area. They want to revitalize it. And adaptive reuse is a big part of that. If they're vacant buildings, what does the community need? How can we re-energize these buildings to serve as hubs that bring the community together and spark economic development? So Main Street America invites communities to come to us. And we also go out to communities where we think we might be able to be useful. And it's really, I mean, I had never thought about this before, to be honest. I spent most of my working life in higher education, teaching and hanging out on campuses. And I thought about it only in the way that it affected my campus. So at Davidson, as I said, we bought a mill thanks to the incredibly brilliant vision of like our facilities guy, we turn that into an entrepreneurship hub that is much more effective at bringing the community together, not only our campus community, but the surrounding community than an empty building was, right? So we repurpose that building for something else. We preserve the... some of the historical features of the building so that you are still connected to its history. When you walk in, you can see pictures of what it used to look like. You learn what used to happen there. You remain connected to its history and to the town that it's in. But it's doing new things. There's Kambucha now, which I don't think there was when there was a mill. So it's doing new things. At Davidson College, this was long before I got there, we turned what used to be a basketball gym into the student union. And that kind of reuse sparks creativity, right? And it's more interesting. I believe that creativity comes from constraints. So adaptive reuse to me is just a good design principle in general. And when you take an empty building that might, might be making a downtown feel tired or, you know, like, oh, it's empty and it's ugly. There's nothing happening there. And you preserve its historic features. You preserve the particularity of the urban cityscape or townscape and you reactivate it. It's energizing for communities.

SPEAKER_01: 10:18

And you're working with very small communities as much as well as very large cities. Sometimes.

SPEAKER_04: 10:23

If it's a large city, it's usually a portion of a large city, like a portion of Detroit or a portion of Philadelphia. But I've just been, you know, there are a lot of really beautiful facades in some of these smaller downtowns. Like Selma has a beautiful main street and some of those buildings are vacant. And there are folks in Selma that really want to turn those buildings into economically active hubs so that Selma can reap some of the benefits of the civil rights movement. tourism that that now goes to Selma. And it's a really pretty downtown. So I think, you know, you can turn older buildings are easier to adapt sometimes, right, especially for housing, it's easier to adapt them to housing than these newer buildings. So there's a part of a manufacturing plant in Indiana that was converted into affordable senior housing and it's a walkable neighborhood so that it's really convenient for seniors to live there. There's an open-air market, also a part of this conversion project that can deliver food to folks who get housebound for whatever reason. So if you're creative about it, you really can, adapt these older buildings, preserve their historic structures, the connection to the stories and the landscape in which they are, and also serve the community for today. So I would say when we say the greenest building is the one that's already built, we sort of mean use what you have, retrofit it for energy efficiency for sure, take advantage of the passive design features of older buildings, which are also super useful. Thicker walls, better insulation, designed before there was so much climate control so that they're designed to get the breeze or shade part of the building from the sun or protection from the wind. They're sited with awareness of the surrounding environment. And oftentimes these older buildings are in more walkable neighborhoods. So we're also preserving a kind of community feeling and livability. I knew none of this, by the way, when I went to the National, before I started thinking about going to the National Trust, you know, I read Latin manuscripts in the 15th century and tried to do my best at working in this amazing college. So it was a sort of a revelation to me because when I hear the word preservation, I think like, I think, no, I think all the things you can't do. No, you can't do that. No, you can't change that. No, we can't ever imagine doing that. When really preservation is about all the things we can create. I mean, I don't know if you've been to the glass house too, but if you see the glass house, the experience that you have of seeing it and imagining it and being in it and looking out the windows when you're standing inside of it is an experience of extraordinary, it's an aesthetically powerful experience. And that's, you know, that's the kind of thing that preservation makes possible for us. So I've really been trying to focus to all those people out there like me who thought that preservation meant freeze it in amber, leave it alone, never touch it, rope it off. No, preservation is a creative power. It's a power to create. And that's one of the things that we really need right now.

SPEAKER_01: 13:41

It's really because the negative landmarks preservation in New York has a very negative connotation for people who are trying to you know, to renovate and things like that. It's very, very difficult.

SPEAKER_04: 13:53

So I think part of our task is, and you know, part of what we want to do at the trust is think about, all right, how do we honor the historic features of some of these beautiful buildings and also make it easier to reuse them for new purposes? And I think sometimes, you know, people like historians or people who really love every aspect of an older building might think, well, we should preserve it perfectly. We should keep the old glass and keep the interior the way it is. And sometimes that's not possible. It's just not a possible thing to do. And the alternative is demolition, right? So we need to find a way to preserve the aspects of these buildings that are most valuable to us and protect them so that New York and Philadelphia and San Francisco and New Orleans retain their particularity and also just make it a little bit easier for folks who wanna do that to do it. I agree with that. I mean, there's debate within the preservation community about that, but as someone who's looking at it a little bit from the outside, I think, wow, if we could just make this a little bit easier, more people would do it and we would save more of these buildings that are now at risk of demolition by neglect or demolition intentionally, because people just give up.

SPEAKER_03: 15:17

In New Canaan, I mean, that's very personal for us. New Canaan just went through that debate with our library. The library was built in 1913. It had been added on to many times, not always well. We needed a new library. And the money was raised, mostly privately, and the town contributed. And the preservationists said, well, what about the 1913 library? And they said, no, no, the greenest thing would be to knock it down. down and have a lawn, have a front lawn in front of the new library. Long story short, the 1913 library has been preserved it was moved a few feet back on the property that was very controversial but it is an important i think the word you said was um power of place and they said ideally it would remain exactly where it is exactly where it was built but if it can't be exactly there just put it on wheels and move it a little bit further back on the lot and that's the compromise we struck in new canaan um This weekend, I went up to Yale for a wedding, and I met the head of facilities at Yale. Now, Yale is a major, major force in New Haven, Connecticut. And it occurs to me that, and why do I bring that up? Because you say, oh, it has nothing to do with the fact that I was in higher education. But it occurs to me that some of the best preservation stories are coming out of higher education. Yale takes preservation seriously. very seriously and at sitting next to me at the table was j mike bellamy who runs facilities for yale he says we are a thousand people in my department we own a tremendous amount of historic real estate and try and maintain it in the city of new haven and he said and it's very important for us to get historic preservation right and to be a good partner with the city of new haven and that's really hard to do but i don't think they're doing that for because it's um out of charity, I think it's good business for Yale University. I

SPEAKER_04: 17:29

do think it's good business for universities and colleges to be good partners for the neighborhoods around them, for sure. And a lot of times, universities have, multiple constituencies, one of which is alumni, who like to go back to the campus and see it exactly as it appeared when they were students there. That's often not possible. But you can, if you think about the, so when every time you take down a building, right, you're sacrificing what we would call the embodied carbon in that building, all of the energy that it took to build that building in the first place. If that stuff just goes to a landfill, right? You've wasted a whole bunch of, you know, you've lost that, right? So if there's any possible way, even if you deconstruct the building of reusing those materials, that's better than just sticking it in a landfill. And, you know, when, there's a lot of ways to preserve the facade of buildings or the walls of a building or to add on to a building that, as I said, I think constraint inspires creativity and that the creativity of design that comes from that often results in more interesting interior spaces than you would have if you just started from scratch. So I think there's a lot of reasons to begin with the question, can we reuse what we have before we tear it down? Can we be a little bit more like like our grand at least my grandmother was you know she didn't throw anything away she always found a way to reuse you know plastic bags or you know you all were like I don't my grandmother washed everything there was stuff everywhere you know and I think the resistance to waste I think is important and I think younger people are beginning to share that with my grandmother's generation. So I knew students at Davidson, for example, who never bought new clothes. They would only buy clothes from consignment stores or Goodwill or some other way, rent clothes, find another way to not purchase new clothes as a way of using what already exists on the earth rather than demanding that something new be created. So I think that's also part of it. Right, and I agree with Roberto that it's on us in the preservation community to make it easier and to work with the government and the Department of the Interior and state organizations to try to make adaptive reuse easier because it is in everybody's interest. And there's also different kinds of old buildings, right? I mean, there's iconic old buildings, like for example, we own Montpelier where James Madison lived. That's a building that has a certain kind of historic significance that any random older building may not, you know what I mean? So you can have different rules for different kinds of buildings that hold different levels of stories and have different levels of architectural distinction or architectural significance.

SPEAKER_01: 20:35

And what John was talking about with Yale is where the institutions of higher education working with municipalities and things like that, which is typically the more progressive, the universities or the municipalities?

SPEAKER_04: 20:49

I don't know the answer to that question because my own experience is so limited to the institutions that I know, but

SPEAKER_03: 20:59

I can tell you that government is not very progressive.

SPEAKER_04: 21:03

In

SPEAKER_03: 21:03

New Canaan, New Haven, or Selma. Fair. We're trained in government to like, okay, what's the rules? Oh, okay. And then we're not trying to get creative.

SPEAKER_04: 21:14

So there can be bureaucracy, right? Which I think is what you, Roberto, were talking about. There can be processes that seem cumbersome and perhaps unnecessary and maybe don't always... put so much emphasis on the process that you lose sight of the goal. There's that challenge, which we all face in many aspects of our lives. I think towns, generally speaking, don't want to, it depends on the town, but Davidson, for example, is sensitive to the, what I would call the streetscape of the town and not wanting some jarring new thing to disrupt that streetscape, the context of the building is important and the campus exists in a context. Some campuses have architecturally significant buildings because the person who designed them or built them and they want to preserve those.

SPEAKER_01: 22:10

But does that mean then, let's just say there's a building that is really not salvageable or it's in disrepair and you have the opportunity to build something new, is that a situation where they want it to conform with exactly what's there? Or would they lean towards something that, look, let's put something here that is of the era or something that can inspire us to the next generations?

SPEAKER_04: 22:37

It depends. So it depends on the institution. So I would say that there, and a lot of institutions work with very renowned contemporary architects, right? So there you're going to get a building that reflects both the architect's vision and is connected to the function of the building. Science buildings have an enormous number of demands on them for just what their function, what they can do. And a lot of the design features are related to that function. So, you know, And there's controversy always. Princeton, where I went to graduate school, just built a new library. Some people will love it. I'm sorry, not a new library, a new art museum. Some people will love it. Some people will hate it. And so we will have that conversation. I can't tell you how the town of Princeton felt about it because I just don't know. But I expect that some people some members of the Princeton community and the public will look at that building and they'll think, oh my God, this is amazing. I can't believe we lived for so long without this. Look at these interior spaces. Look at how amazing this building is. And some people will look at it and not love it. And I think that's just, to me, those are good conversations to have, right? Some people love the glass house. Some people probably don't. I

SPEAKER_03: 23:56

wanted to talk about that. Tastes do change. And we did just see the brutalist, right? A really great example of what we're talking about. The brutalist, and everybody suddenly learned what this word meant, the brutalism architecture. And a lot of people said, really? We're preserving that? That's not pretty. And as soon as some of those brutalist buildings went up, people started saying, that's not pretty. And it wasn't meant to be pretty. It wasn't meant to be pretty when it was created, and yet we're racing to preserve Breuer's right there in New Haven. It's now an Ikea, and Ikea has to preserve it. I mean, it's an old Pirelli tire building along I-95 in New Haven, if anybody knows it. Now we look at that and we say, what a brilliant piece of brutalist architecture. Thank God it was saved. And thank God that negotiation with IKEA took place.

SPEAKER_04: 24:56

I think some of it, I think it's less about what we individually like or the kinds of structures that we respond to personally. And it's more about- They're

SPEAKER_03: 25:07

not all pretty?

SPEAKER_04: 25:08

Well, I mean, they can be moving or they can be fascinating or they can be, you know, a building can be, you know, I can look at it and say, oh my God, this is so gaudy. And other people could look at it and say, oh, it's beautiful. So I don't think we have one standard. I think what's interesting about it is the sparking of curiosity. Why is it like that? I grew up in an old town, an old house, early 19th century house, the foundations of which were 18th century. So old house, old town, brick sidewalks, cobblestone streets, thick walls, molding, the whole thing. I go into mid-century modern house and I'm like, wow, like what is this space? And, you know, think about the relationship of the inside to the outside and the environment and the way, and it's an entirely different feeling. But the first, my first reaction is curiosity. Like, why is this like this brutalist? Why is it like this? Why is everything exposed? Why can you see the guts of this building? Why is it all this concrete? And, and, and, it's curiosity, you know, similar. It's like the first time you, someone explained to you the shape of a cathedral, you know, why is it like this? Why'd they build it like this? And I think that's what we miss is, that curiosity when everything looks the same. You know what I mean? When every hotel room and every coffee shop and every road and everything looks the same. And in this country, we are a place with global roots. You know, we have a complicated and rich history that reflects global roots and our landscape should reflect that. So that when I go to a new place, I don't just think, oh my, where is the nearest Shane Hotel and my favorite highly individualized latte, right? Instead, I want to know what's it like here? And what do people drink here? And I learned to drink tea because I lived in London for a while, you know? And it's, you know what I'm saying? Just like that curiosity about how other people think. And this is going to sound maybe too Pollyanna-ish, but as a teacher, I think that's how we become, that's how we foster empathy in ourselves, right? If I get curious about why a town is different or why this building is different, I'm not going to expect all the people there to be just like me. And at a time when we're so divided and split and our history is so contested, and so many people want there to be one story of American triumphalism, I just want us to be curious about other people and why places look different and why not every place is the same. And I worry that this... homogenization of the built environment and our desire just to build it fast, build it new, build it easy is not in the end gonna serve our humanity and our capacity to be humane and caring people.

SPEAKER_03: 28:16

Anybody who can't see the connection between higher education and what you just said is missing out because I think we now see an intellectual curiosity is part and parcel of the story of place. You have to have that intellectual curiosity. And just like you weren't just teaching students and they're reading, writing and arithmetic at Davidson, but you were trying to feed their souls and much of the same thing is happening. in at the National Trust. I wanted to get down to question nine of all the questions that we sent to you.

SPEAKER_04: 28:53

Okay, I don't know what that is.

SPEAKER_03: 28:54

Or maybe it was eight. It was talking about partnerships and collaborations. I think that the National Trust has more than 50 building sites and they're across a great range of geographies and architectural styles. And it occurs to me that the Rockefeller estate, which is very close to New York, is supported by New Yorkers. And the Glass House also, very successful in partnership with a lot of institutions, New York institutions, for whom the Glass House matters. And I would imagine that they are succeeding through those partnerships. If you could talk about some of those partnerships and some of the others that have maybe need partnerships and need our help. I was told that the Farnsworth House, which is an equally beautiful piece of architecture is too far away for a lot of people from Chicago. And a lot of people don't know where to find it or, you know, how to connect with it. So could you just talk about some of these sites and how they succeed through partnerships?

SPEAKER_04: 30:03

Sure, sure. So we have, we own or operate or own and operate 20, 20, eight sites, 27 of which are open to the public, but we have connections to hundreds of them. We have a historic artist homes and studios network of over 90 places across the country. And we build relationships and affiliations with sites that we don't necessarily own. We don't need to own everything. And in fact, I would say that owning should not be our default. And what makes a site unique underlying your question really is kind of, you know, what sustains these places? You know, how do you sustain these places which are expensive to maintain? yet really important. And how do you make sure more and more people have access to them? You know, we exist for the public. We serve the public. We don't serve, you know, some tiny segment of the public. We want to serve the public. And it's a really interesting question to me. What makes a place like the Glass House or another example close to New York is Lindhurst. So Lyndhurst was Gould's house. It looks like a castle. They filmed the Gilded Age there. It's like this, it's really the first kind of really romantic home built in this country. It's on a lot of land. There's a lot of features there in the Hudson Valley. The executive director there has the challenge of thinking, okay, how do I activate this place, tell all of its stories, bring people in so that I have a sufficient audience to sustain it? And he does all kinds of things there. So your question is partly about partnerships. And I do think we need partnerships with other organizations that care about preservation. We also need to think of ourselves as running organizations little mini educationally oriented mission-driven businesses. What's going to make somebody go back to Lindhurst over and over and over again and not just go once? So it's not unlike the challenges that some museums are now facing where it's harder sometimes, except for the big ones, it's harder to get people to go into these more regional local museums, especially if their exhibits don't change. So So part of the answer to your question is how do we activate these places so that they are drawing people to them and the public is getting the benefit of their existence and we're actually fulfilling our mission of activating these places for the public. So you'll see that a lot of these places do, for example, outdoor sculpture installations on a beautiful landscape where you have the opportunity to look at art in a very particular context that you can't repeat anywhere else. And you do that, you have installations like that every summer or every spring, or you do flower shows at a certain time of year, or you have concerts in the context of this beautiful landscape. Lindhurst actually does theater in one of the rooms in the mansion. So there's... I think we have partners, but we also have smart executive directors who are curating a range of experiences for the public that actually bring people onto the property. Hornsworth, which is a Mies van der Rohe house, is difficult because it is far from... The places where this is hardest to do are places that are far away from people. How do you get people to go there? And I'm interested in thinking about how technology can help us there. I don't know enough. I'm not smart enough to figure that out. But I think we have to find a way of making more places available to people to fulfill our mission and somehow finding a way to generate the revenue that these places need to be able to survive and thrive. Some of them have big endowments. Some of them don't. And there's a lot of places all across the country, these museums, houses. We are now working on Nina Simone's house in North Carolina where she was born. And that house, I always ask the question, what should happen there? And that house should inspire people. Nina Simone's creativity and power and commitment should inspire future generations. So whatever happens there and in Tri and North Carolina around that house should reflect her legacy and carry it on. And so I think when you ask that question, this is a really important place in our history. What should happen here? You know, how could this place best serve the public now? Then you start to get really interesting answers and identify the kind of partners that you're talking about. We're working with artists in that case who are really invested also in preserving this place and activating it for the public. Did that answer your question? It did. Okay. I try to answer the question I'm asked. Sometimes I go a little...

SPEAKER_03: 35:14

So what I heard was it's part... programming that brings them back. And it's also partly the partners who help us expose. Some of them are very good at marketing and they help us expose these properties and generate enthusiasm for these properties.

SPEAKER_04: 35:33

It's partners. It's philanthropy. Honestly, it's philanthropy. It's people who care about these places and want to see them preserved. And it is the experience that a very creative executive director can curate to demonstrate the value of this place for the public and to keep the public coming back. And it's always some combination of programs that are, you know, really available to everyone, highly curated, maybe more programs that are expensive that support everyone else's access to the site. So it's a combination of things. And all of these programs have

SPEAKER_03: 36:07

to- We love all our children equally, not just the rich ones, right? All 90.

SPEAKER_04: 36:12

Well, you know, all of the places that we're connected with, you know, and we want to- always identify new places that can be activated and serve the public so that we are telling our full story. There's a lot of important places in in our history that I didn't know about as a child, just like there's a lot of important events in our history that I'm embarrassed to say that I didn't learn about until I was in college or in graduate school. And we want our commemorative landscape to reflect our actual history and the achievements and stories of everyone and not just a select few. And so that's also part of the work and paying attention to that. A lot of important sites come to us from the community too. Like a little community will say this church really matters to us for these reasons. And we have one church that we worked with last year that was the only surviving structure from the black section of a segregated coal camp in West Virginia. I didn't know anything really about segregated coal camps, you know, where you had Housing for workers, you know, you had immigrant town and what was called American town, which I guess was for white people. And then you had a black part of the housing was all segregated. And this church served the black community in that town. In

SPEAKER_03: 37:36

some respects, it's easier when it's architecturally important or beautiful, like Gould's mansion. But what you're talking about, it sounds to me like you're saying that these are even more vulnerable because they're not they don't they don't readily capture the public's imagination you can't just show a photo of a segregated coal town and get people excited the way you might with farnsworth

SPEAKER_04: 38:04

well i think so i think it's different i think

SPEAKER_03: 38:08

um

SPEAKER_04: 38:08

Sometimes some people respond more very powerfully to either a building by an architect who they've heard of or have known. Frank Lloyd Wright, we moved to Frank Lloyd Wright House to preserve that house. So our architectural history is important. Sometimes vernacular architecture is really important for the style that it represents. And we want to make sure that the town or the landscape that gave rise to that style that we built preserve and activate that if that's possible. Sometimes a place is important for the stories it holds. And there's something, it's really hard to deny the reality of our past if you're standing in a place where it happened. And it's a powerful thing to stand in the place where our history happened. It is more powerful than reading about it or learning about it in a classroom. And I say that as a very textually based person, right? But if you stand there, And every time I'm on the National Mall in DC, I think of all of the times that Americans have borne witness to our right to free assembly on that mall, in that place, for very different reasons. And I'm proud of that history, and I wanna protect that right to assembly. It matters to me. So I think that's another part of it, where our history happened.

SPEAKER_01: 39:25

Can I ask you about your organization? So when was it founded, you said?

SPEAKER_04: 39:29

It's been our 75th anniversary this year.

SPEAKER_01: 39:31

And when did it go from publicly funded to privately funded?

SPEAKER_04: 39:36

Yeah, I can't answer that question in the year, though I should be able to, but Dick Moe, who ran the National Trust for a really long time, at one point decided that it was in the interest of the trust and probably in the interest of Congress as well that we not rely heavily on an annual appropriation from Congress. And so he shifted the funding to, we have an endowment mostly tied to our sites, and then we raise money to support our operations. So our operations, we do a lot of legal advocacy work too. Trust is really well known for legal advocacy work around preservation across the country. We have great preservation lawyers who can help a community with certain issues. And these are big policy issues, right? We all use our cell phones. Where should we put data centers? Where should they go? shouldn't, and I'm sort of, maybe we should have a national approach to that. Maybe they shouldn't just be cropping up all over the place in places that can't afford to resist them or places that are, you know, ecologically vulnerable or whatever. Maybe we should have a plan. So I think we think about things like that as well.

SPEAKER_01: 40:38

Which are being privately funded. You feel your mission's protected. It's not going, I mean, right now what's happening now, there's a lot of things that are being, you know, scratched off the list.

SPEAKER_04: 40:49

Yeah. So, so Preservation as a set of activities, cultural resources, historic sites, the civil rights trail, identifying new sites, a lot of that is done by the federal government through the Department of the Interior and the Park Service. So I would say that we advocate very powerfully for that funding, even though it doesn't come directly to us because that funding supports preservation projects all across the country. And that funding is really crucial. So the other thing that's really crucial are tax credits. A lot of developers would not do these adaptive reuse projects if they couldn't avail themselves of federal and state tax credits. They make the project possible. All of the projects that I know about that we've been involved in that have created affordable housing through adaptive reuse have relied on tax credits because otherwise you can't make it work. And so there's a policy and a regulatory environment that we need to do preservation. And we do really push hard and advocate for preservation funding from the federal government. And it's being, and, you know, the National Endowment for the Humanities also has funded a lot of libraries and archival projects that are related to preservation. One of our one of our goals is to tell the full American stories. Certainly a lot of the projects that are supported through libraries is funded by the federal government. So we are impacted by this environment for that reason.

SPEAKER_03: 42:24

That's a great segue. I mean, we have a few minutes left. I guess what I just heard was The average American can't just say, oh yeah, government is handling that. Yeah, government is funding the National Trust. I mean, look, there it is right in the name, National Trust for Historic Preservation.

SPEAKER_04: 42:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 42:43

Government's taking care of that for us. Not the case.

SPEAKER_04: 42:46

I would encourage anybody who's interested in telling the full American story and finding out what we do about adaptive reuse to consider joining the National Trust. We're a member organization. We welcome all kinds of members. We have people who care about preservation for different reasons. And so I would urge folks to join and check out our website and look at all of the different things that we do. And it's a privilege to serve the National Trust and to think about what it means right now to use, to activate the power of place so that we can tell the full American story, use what we have and build healthy communities at a time when I think our country really needs that.

SPEAKER_03: 43:31

We're looking at some of these beautiful buildings on the donation page on your website right now. So

SPEAKER_04: 43:42

if you go to our website, you can find all kinds of examples of the kinds of work that we do through the Action Fund, the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, which works on sites important in Black history, through Main Street America, which works to re-energize regional downtowns and historic commercial districts. through NTCIC, which focuses on impact investing through adaptive reuse and driving capital to where it doesn't go. And then all of our preservation projects through which we support activating the power of place across the country. So it's a wide range of activities and that's why it took me a while to figure out how to express our purpose succinctly in a sentence.

SPEAKER_01: 44:30

It's really amazing.

SPEAKER_03: 44:31

Really amazing.

UNKNOWN: 44:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 44:34

So I've been showing the women page where women made history. And then we just, a moment ago, looked at the African-American Cultural Heritage Action Fund. What a dramatic photo that is. Wow. Really cool. Where is that taken? Is that one of your

SPEAKER_04: 44:52

sites? And I would think that the, if I can just say, like many other things in our history in this country, we used to think about what we preserved in terms of a very narrow, we had very narrow criteria, right? We were going to preserve presidents' houses and, you know, architectural, you know, houses by famous architects and iconic squares in cities and things like that. All of that is very, very important. And it's not enough. If we want our built environment to reflect the global roots of our history, and all of our stories and the richness of our architectural heritage. And we wanna use what we have to serve the public now. Preservation has to change the criteria we use to consider what's important. So the Action Fund in particular has been really key in shifting the entire mindset of people who do preservation work to focus on different things. What if you center Black history? What kind of narratives do you see? What if you center Indigenous history? What if you center women? How does history look different? And what sites come to the fore? And then when we look at these other places that we've always saved, who else has a story associated with that site? But if you look at the masonry on some of these houses, like the carving, it's unbelievably beautiful. I'm always wanting to know who did that. How do they do that? Who did that? And we can now recover some of those stories and learn more about the lives of the people who actually built these incredibly beautiful buildings. So I don't know. Do you all have a favorite building? Do you have a favorite building in New York? What's your favorite building in New York?

SPEAKER_03: 46:41

Chrysler Building. That's easy.

SPEAKER_01: 46:43

Well, that's tough. The Petrosian Building is something that I wonder, who did that? which is at 58th and is it seventh? Do you know what I'm building I'm talking about? It's so intricate. It's just unbelievable. It's hard to believe that, I mean, you could never produce that.

SPEAKER_04: 47:01

Yeah. Well, see, this is the thing. And a lot of times in some of these older buildings, if you're in New Orleans, for example, and you look at some of these older buildings, it's really hard to find people who are able to repair them and maintain them. And I think that's another aspect of our work. You know, can we, as we look at the construction trades and the building trades, can we also introduce people? kind of help cultivate the skills that are required to do really sound preservation work so that there is a group of people that know how to take care of these buildings going forward. And some of the techniques are worthy of imitation now. I really do think if we learn more about these aspects of passive design that are characteristic of older buildings and more livable, smaller communities, we would build more humane spaces for people now. I worry a little bit about just building what would in effect be warehouses for human beings. And human beings deserve to live in places that are inspiring and are humane. And I don't think all buildings do that. And it doesn't have to be an old building. I mean, my apartment is not an old building, but it's got a lot of windows. There's a lot of natural light. The spaces are interesting. You know, I'm grateful to be able to live in such a place. It looks

SPEAKER_03: 48:19

good on Zoom. So when Le Corbusier said we're doing machines for living, that's what we're building back in 1929. We're taking him perhaps a little too literally. So

SPEAKER_04: 48:34

there's a great, have y'all ever talked to the folks who do cheap old houses? So their line is, they work on cheap old houses and their line is, there's a different American dream out there. And the American dream that you've been sold, the house you think you want, It's not actually the house you might want. So think about buying an older house. And they work mostly in rural areas or smaller communities. They're cheaper. They wrote a whole book on houses that you could have for free to$150,000. Buy an older house. Learn about it. Figure out how you're going to make it your own. And over time, turn it into a disaster. you know you have a relationship with it turn it into a place that you want to be that's yours and I do think there's something to be said for that you know instead of everybody wanting x number of bedrooms x number of square feet x you know open floor plan or whatever you know maybe there's other things that we could want yes I highly recommend the cheap old houses um approach for people who are trying to enter the housing market. That

SPEAKER_03: 49:41

is so cool.

SPEAKER_04: 49:43

They would be great on your show too.

SPEAKER_03: 49:46

All right, we're going to do that. We're definitely going to do that. I'm intrigued by the balloons. I want to know their story.

SPEAKER_04: 49:53

Yeah, yeah. It's definitely worth knowing. So I think part of preservation is also engaging younger people in it. And the way that these folks do it is by sort of saying, you can buy a house for less than you think. You just have to take your time and you don't have to do everything all at once. You need to think about it. And so this book and their podcast talks about all of these available properties that are older and range from mansions to farmhouses to churches that can be adapted and used as homes. And I think that's one of the things that preservation at its best also focuses on, right? We focus on how do we use what we have to serve people now? And they have a different version of what it means to become what home ownership could look like. And especially now post COVID, when so many people are working remotely, you have options to live in it. You don't have to live close to your job. And some of these places are beautiful and offer a different kind of life than the one that's the house that's got five bedrooms or whatever it is that people want and bathrooms and open floor plan. And so I think that's kind of what I would say. Particularity matters. These are not New York

SPEAKER_03: 51:20

prices, Roberto. I think we can do this.

SPEAKER_04: 51:24

I really think it would be an interesting... They have a really great... You could go on their podcast. It could go on your podcast. It's a really... I think it's a really interesting... It would be an interesting thing to think about because... Carol's a connector. I am a connector. That's mostly what I am is a connector. But yes, and for anybody who's listening, I would really encourage you to explore more about the National Trust and what we do and to think about the power of place right now, especially the power of places where history happened to bring us together and maybe enable us to have different conversations than the tired, boring, polarizing ones that we're having now.

SPEAKER_03: 52:04

That is great. I'm excited. This is the savingplaces.org. This is where we're going to find the National Trust for Historic Preservation. And you can begin by having your gift matched and read more about their different programs and different sites. I want to thank our sponsor, Grace Farms. This is the famous river building. And Grace Farms' entire mission in New Canaan is about a sense of place and giving back to the community a sustainable, a beautiful site, a sustainable site, ecological, and giving back to the community. BurroughsandBurbs.com. You'll see we have all the past episodes here at BurroughsandBurbs.com, and next week you'll see, or tonight, you'll see Burroughs and Burbs number 180. This episode will be posted. Roberto Cabrera.com has his newest monthly newsletter up at RobertoCabrera.com, and so...

SPEAKER_01: 53:08

For whatever reason, that's the old one.

SPEAKER_03: 53:11

I don't know. Okay. That's the old one, but you're putting up the new one this week.

SPEAKER_01: 53:14

It should be up. I don't know why you're getting that.

SPEAKER_03: 53:16

Okay. The Angle Team, you'll find me at theangleteam.com. And once again, savingplaces.org. Thank you very much. This has been an awesome show. And I learned so much. I thought it was the government. I thought the National Trust was part of the government. And what I learned was that you are amazing. I think the most important line of the entire hour, we serve the public. And I thought that was so important. And you serve the public and you are supported by the public, not by the government. And so I think we all need to go check out your website and get involved.

SPEAKER_04: 53:54

Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate you all having me on the show. Thank

SPEAKER_01: 53:57

you so much. Thank you so much. You're wonderful. See you next week, Roberto. See you, my friend. Cheers.