2006

John Matteo

Preservation Engineering—A' New' Curriculum

In 2006, Mr. Matteo received the Kress Mid-Career grant. Matteo developed theory and parameters for a Preservation Engineering curriculum. The advocated coursework offers a sustainable component to engineering programs, which focus primarily on new construction, and adds breadth to architecture and historic preservation curricula to further develop studies in the technology and engineering of historic construction. The final product was multi-disciplinary in nature and focused on problems derived from the academic and professional separation of engineering and architecture, bridging gaps through education and communication.

2006

Samuel Gruber

Saving American Synagogues

In 2006, the Fitch Foundation awarded a Fitch Mid-Career Research grant to Dr. Samuel Gruber. Gruber is the Director of the Jewish Heritage Research Center in Syracuse, New York. Gruber's project was to better promote the documentation, protection and preservation of historic synagogue buildings in the United States. His goal was to facilitate the protection and preservation of surviving historic synagogue buildings. Gruber produced a book, a preservation manual and web-accessible materials pertaining to the history, architecture, and religious significance of older American synagogues.

2005

Susannah C. Drake

Beatrix Farrand

Susannah C. Drake, Principal of dlandstudio in New York City, received a 2005 Fitch Mid-Career Research grant to study the work of Beatrix Farrand. Drake's project studied Beatrix Farrand's use of campus landscape design to accentuate campus architecture through the use of plants. This interplay between architecture and landscape was a common thread throughout Farrand's campus landscape work at Princeton, Yale and the University of Chicago. Drake's project examines the original design vision, implementation, intended maintenance and life cycle planning, the current function and aesthetic and spatial sensibility of the original design and the institutions' plans with respect to the preservation and evolution of Farrand's landscape planning legacy.

2005

Gregory Free

American Gulf: An Architectural Story

Gregory Free received the 2005 Kress Mid-Career Grant for a study of the architecture of the American Gulf Coast and define a context for the region's domestic architecture, stretching from Matamoros, Mexico to Key West, Florida. Free is President of Gregory Free & Associates, an Austin, Texas design firm specializing in historic preservation. Free completed a great deal of his primary documentary research prior to Hurricane Katrina in September, 2005. Now his photographs are among the last documentary evidence of some of the region's most important buildings and sites. Understanding of the unique Gulf Coast culture created through the synthesis of centuries of European and African tradition and the architecture it produced will be critical to the preservation and restoration of the buildings lost in Hurricane Katrina.

2005

Alison Isenberg

Second Hand Cities

Alison Isenberg, an Associate Professor of History at Rutgers University, also received a 2005 Fitch Mid-Career Research grant to study the role of antique dealers and the second-hand market in helping to create the preservation mindset. Isenberg's book, Second-hand Cities will examine the people, markets, trades, and districts that dealt in old artifacts between the 1860s and 1960s. The book will also trace the often-unlikely paths and places through which preservation sensibilities spread, even when modernization and modernism seemed to command the day. Isenberg's article, "Second-hand Cities: Inheritance, Preservation, and the Racialized Origins of the American Antique Trade, 1860s-1930s," will be her first publication on this topic.

2004

Marilyn Kaplan

New Codes for Old Buildings

Marilyn E. Kaplan received the 2004 Kress Mid-Career grant for “New Codes for Old Buildings: the Preservation Perspective.” In the last ten years there have been more changes in the building regulatory field since World War II. A new regulatory approach, proportional rehabilitation codes, has been developed to remove code-related obstacles to rehabilitation of historic buildings. This is a study of the impact of the code revisions on historic preservation. Marilyn Kaplan has more than 25 years of experience in the preservation field and is an acknowledged expert on building codes and preservation.

2003

Donna Ann Harris

Saving Houses, Saving Legacies: New Futures for House Museums

Donna Ann Harris received the 2003 Kress Mid-Career grant for “Saving Houses, Saving Legacies: New Futures for House Museums”. Historic house museums are the backbone of the preservation movement. This project provides historic house museum boards with the tools and resources to make changes, including new uses, to ensure the long-term preservation of their beloved buildings. Donna Ann Harris is a historic preservationist based in Illinois with extensive experience in the government and not-for-profit arena.

2002

Ronald Anthony

Investigating Wood in Historic Structures Using Real-time X-ray Technology

Ronald Anthony received the 2002 Kress Mid-career Grant for his study of real-time digital radioscopy, a non-destructive investigation technique. This technology can produce three-dimensional images inside walls in historic buildings.

Jeffrey Cohen

Picturing the City of Commerce: American Street Panoramas of the 19th Century

Dr. Jeffrey Cohen, a professor at Bryn Mawr College, received a Fitch Mid-Career Research grant in 2002. The project focused on the street panorama, a dispersed and often rare species of image depicting key commercial parts of the 19th-century American downtown. These images recorded the city of commerce during a moment of dramatic transformation, at the dawn of the modern consumer economy that would redefine the city. The goal was to locate these views, interpret them, and make them more widely accessible through publication.

2001

Andrew S. Dolkart

The Early Twentieth-Century Redesign of New York Rowhouses

Andrew Dolkart received the 2001 Kress Mid-career Grant for a book on early 20th-century redesign of 19th-century New York City rowhouses. Professor Dolkart examined the impact of this remodeling of facades on the upgrading of neighborhoods and the subsequent fate of such architectural remodeling when subjected to later attempts at restoration.

Robert Weyeneth

The Architecture of Racial Segregation

Robert Weyeneth was awarded a Fitch Mid-Career Research grant 2001 to further his general exploration of how societies choose to preserve or demolish the physical remnants of recent history when they are associated with a past that they would prefer to forget because it is embarrassing, shameful or controversial. Professor Weyeneth’s report is important to contemporary preservationists and social historians concerned with the issue of remembering and preserving chapters of the recent past that are problematical.

2000

A. Elizabeth Watson

Lasting Landscapes

A. Elizabeth Watson received the 2000 Kress Mid-career grant for a book on historic landscape preservation. As the country struggles with urban sprawl and the loss of community character, historic assets, cultural traditions and natural resources, Watson’s project reflects on major national efforts to preserve regional landscapes.

1999

Marjorie Pearson

New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (1962-1999): Paradigm for Changing Attitudes Towards Historic Preservation

Marjorie Pearson received the 1999 Kress Mid-career Grant for a study of preservation commissions, focusing on the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, which handles the greatest number of ongoing regulations and most diverse array of Landmarks in the country. This important history will be made widely available to the preservation community, who can learn from New York’s example.

1998

Wellington Reiter

The American Garden Cemetery

Wellington Reiter received the 1998 Kress Mid-career Grant for a study of the social and design aesthetics of the American garden cemetery, particularly the first example of the type, the Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Mass. Reiter’s study made the properties of these singular man-made landscapes available to a new audience. Insights from his study can be applied to a number of issues of concern in the built environment, particularly urban public space.

Margaret Crawford

Public Spaces from the Bottom Up

Margaret Crawford, a professor and chair of the history and theory program at the Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles, received a special 1998 award to fund a chapter of her book Public Spaces from the Bottom Up. This is a study of the creation of new forms of urban public space in Los Angeles, where areas of activities such as street vending, garage sales, and uses of vacant lots demonstrate ways urban residents are redefining public space.

1997

Mary Ellen Hayward and Charles Belfoure

A Study of Baltimore's Rowhouses

Charles Belfoure, an architectural historian based in Baltimore, received the 1997 Kress Mid-career grant to support the photography for his book The Baltimore Rowhouse, published by the Princeton Architectural Press in 1999. The classic rowhouses are in great danger of demolition from both development and abandonment. The purpose of this book is to document them and heighten public awareness of their major significance by documenting the 500+ surviving blocks of rowhouses dating from the 1790’s to about 1915 that are targeted for removal by the City.

Anat Geva

Frank Lloyd Wright's Architecture: A Computerized Energy Simulation Study

Anat Geva, an architect, received a special award in 1997 to study the question of how architects shape the design of buildings for energy performance. Dr. Geva’s research was to assess and compare the energy performance and comfort level of the Unity Temple (1904) and three single family houses in Oak Park, Illinois designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in the same period.

1996

Carolyn Douthat

Historic Resource Mitigations

Carolyn Douthat, an attorney and preservationist practicing in Oakland, California, received the 1996 award for a study of historic resource mitigation. The grant supports research and a report on methods of mitigation, or alleviation, of the adverse effects of Federal or Federally sponsored or licensed projects on historic and cultural resources. While the standard mitigation today is documentation and salvage, the possibilities for mitigation are unlimited. The report, analyzing methods of mitigation and recommending new approaches, was distributed to agencies and preservation organizations.

1995

Natalie Shivers

Preservation of Southern California's Early Modern Architecture

Natalie Shivers received the 1995 Kress Mid-career Grant from the Fitch Foundation for research on the early modern architecture of Southern California. The innovative period in architecture and planning in Southern California between the two World Wars produced one of America’s most valuable collections of Modernist architecture. Her study documented and analyzed prototypes of the early modern movement and developed criteria for significance. The research is the core of a book: LA’s Early Moderns: Art, Architecture, Photography (Princeton Architectural Press, 2004, written by Shivers, Victoria Dailey, Michael Dawson and William Deverell).

McCluster-Billups

Central Avenue, Los Angeles, California (South Central, 1920-1950)

McCluster Billups, a Los Angeles design professional, received a special 1995 award for research and development of an informational brochure on Central Avenue in Los Angeles. This street, known as “The Avenue” played an exceptionally significant role in the cultural history of African Americans in the first half of the 20th century. The brochure identifies the architectural artifacts of Central Avenue and their historical and cultural significance. The Foundation also awarded McCluster Billups $500 for printing in 1998.

1994

Julie L. Sloan

Manufacturing Processes of Colored Glass and Lead in 19th Century America

Julie Sloan, a stained glass conservationist and president of McKernan Satterlee Associates, a stained glass conservation firm, received the 1994 award for the study of a neglected type of 1 th century decorative window glass, opalescent glass. This important glass type, used extensively by Tiffany and LaFarge, has not in the past been accurately understood, thus hampering conservation efforts. The grant supported research and a report entitled “Origins of Early Opalescent Window Glass.”

Medicine Wheel Coalition for Sacred Sites of North America

Travel for Protection of Sacred Sites

The Medicine Wheel Coalition is a not-for-profit group established in 1980 of Native American Indian traditional tribal elders representing 11 western United States tribes. The special 1993 award supported travel to meetings for tribal elders and to scared sites and compensation for time spent.

Richard Burnham

The Historic and Modern Rural Housing Form and Associated Land Forms for Affordable Low-Cost Incremental Single Family Housing in the Hilltowns of New England

Dr. Richard Burnham, a Massachusetts architect and planner, received a special 1994 award for research into low cost housing. The study focused on historical low-cost New England housing—early settler, self-built housing—and its lessons for the present. A prototype for modern low-cost but environmentally sensitive housing was developed from this research. The accompanying report “Housing Ourselves: Affordable Self-Help, Environmentally Sensitive, Sustainable and Incremental Shelter for the Countryside” is addressed to policy makers and designers, planners and other housing professionals.

1993

William T. and Kathleen O. Frazier

Impact of Design Guideline Publications on 8 Virginia Historic Districts

William T. and Kathleen O. Frazier as principals in Frazier Associates, an established preservation consulting firm in Virginia, received a special 1993 award for a retrospective study of the effectiveness of design guidelines on local historic districts and commissions. The research report was the basis for an article in the professional preservationists’ publication, Preservation Forum (v. 10, #3, Spring, 1996).

Linda Laird

Preserving the American Grain Elevator

Linda Laird, a preservation planner, received a special 1993 award for a study of an endangered building type, the Mid-western American grain elevator. The grant supported research, documentation, a report, and an informational brochure. The report, “Preserving the American Grain Elevator” contains over 100 original color photographs of this disappearing structure.

1992

Partnerships in Education, Pittsburgh:
Carol A. Crumby, Claire Gallagher, and Diane LaBelle

Our Town—An Architectural Perspective

“Our Town—An Architectural Perspective” is a program for at risk third, fourth and fifth grade students, designed to encourage an awareness of the built environment through field trips, sketches, maps and construction of a model town. The Fitch Foundation grant funded a model program to educate the students about the built environment and the role that preservation plays in the history of a neighborhood. The program includes field trips, a video documenting the students' neighborhood, and computer labs for mapping and design. The three principals of Partnerships in Education are mid-career educators. This grant was made possible by a generous donation from the Kress Foundation.

Dr. William Chapman

Preservation in the Caribbean: Colonial Inheritance, Tourism Pressures, and Technical Treatments

Dr. William Chapman, Director of the Pacific Preservation Consortium at the University of Hawaii, received a special 1992 Kress Mid-career grant for travel and research for a book on preservation planning in the Caribbean. His research focuses on the economic pressures, tourism, technical treatments, ambivalence toward a Colonial heritage, and other issues common to the region.

Dr. Elena Charola

Hydrophobization Agents and Treatments: a Practial Overview

Dr. Elena Charola, professor and consultant to the World Monuments Fund for the conservation of Easter Island, received a special 1992 award for a comprehensive study of water repellent treatments for porous building materials. Dr. Charola produced a report entitled “Hydrophobization Agents and Treatments: a Practical Overview,” a systematic study designed for use by the preservation practitioner.

1991

Dr. Andrew Gulliford

Management of Tribal Cultural Resources from the Perspective of Native Americans: Museums, Language, Customs, Interpretation of History

Dr. Andrew Gulliford, Director of the Public History and Historic Preservation at Middle Tennessee State University, received the 1991 grant for research on Tribal history preservation. The issues include the establishment of tribal museums, the preservation of language and customs, the re-orientation of interpretation at historic sites, and the identification of opportunities for appropriate cultural tourism. His research has produced three articles on the subject geared to professionals in the field: “Native Americans and Museums: Curation and Repatriation of Sacred Tribal Objects” (The Public Historian, v. 14, #3, Summer, 1992); “Tribal Preservation and Cultural Management” (Historic Preservation Forum, v. 6, #6), and “Bones of Contention: The Repatriation of Native American Human Remains” (The Public Historian, v. 18, #4, Fall, 1996).

1990

Barbara Paca, St. Clair Wright, Dr. Anne Yentsch

New Techniques in Recovery and Reconstruction of Four 18th Century Ornamental American Gardens

The team of Barbara Paca, St. Clair Wright and Dr. Anne Yentsch, received the 1990 grant for a new approach to the examination of historic gardens. The team used a technique called geometrical analysis and applied it to archaeological investigation to successfully determine the plans of Long Hall Garden in Maryland, Belmont Mansion in Philadelphia, Morven in Princeton and Drayton Hall in South Carolina. The technique targets and streamlines archaeological investigation and recovery. The grant was awarded to the team to refine this technique.