John Matteo, Preservation Engineering – A New Curriculum.

Samuel Gruber, Saving American Synagogues: Preservation materials pertaining to the history, architecture and religious significance of older American synagogues.

Samuel Gruber has received the 2006 Fitch Research Grant, given in memory of Richard Blinder. Gruber’s project will produce a preservation manual pertaining to the history, architecture and religious significance of older American synagogues. This manual will present various materials relevant to professional, community and congregation efforts to document, designate, protect and preserve historic American synagogues. Since 1995, Gruber has directed the Jewish Heritage Research Center in Syracuse, NY and has acted as Research Director for the United State Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad.

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.

Gregory 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.

Susannah C. Drake, Campus Landscapes of Beatrix Farrand.

Susannah C. Drake, Principal of dLandstudio in New York City, received a 2005 Fitch Research Grant for a graphic and narrative analysis of Beatrix Farrand’s planning and landscape design work at Princeton University, Yale University, and the University of Chicago.  

Alison Isenberg, Second-hand Cities, Antiques Districts, and Salvage Shops: Finding the Popular Past in a Modern Century.

Alison Isenberg, an Associate Professor of History at Rutgers University, received a 2005 Fitch Research Grant to study the role of antique dealers and the second-hand market in helping to create the preservation mindset of the later twentieth century. Her study will examine the people, markets, and business districts that dealt in old artifacts between the 1920s and 1970s, in the decades before historic preservation became mainstream.

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. This grant was made possible in part through the generous support of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.

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. This grant was made possible through the generous support of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.

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 is a professor at Bryn Mawr College. The project focuses on the street panorama, a dispersed and often rare species of image depicting key commercial parts of the 19th-century American downtown. These images record 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 is to locate these views, interpret them, and make them more widely accessible through publication.

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 is examining 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 James Marston Fitch Foundation Research Grant in 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.

Click here to read the abstract of Weyeneth's article in "The Public Historian."

A. Elizabeth Watson, Lasting Landscapes

A. Elizabeth Watson received the 2000 Kress Mid-career grant for a book on historic landscape preservation. This grant was made possible by a generous donation from the Kress Foundation.

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.

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 Space 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.

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, to be 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. This grant was made possible by a generous donation from the Kress Foundation.

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.

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.

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 20 th century. The brochure identifies the architectural artifacts of Central Avenue and their historical and cultural significance. The Trust also gave $500 for printing in 1998.

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 19 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.” This grant was made possible by a generous donation from the Kress Foundation.

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.

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.

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 Trust 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 award 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. This grant was made possible by a generous donation from the Kress Foundation.

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.

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).

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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.