Liz McEnaney and Naomi Hersson-Ringskog
2022 Richard L. Blinder Award
Building Shells: Building Community
The Building Shells: Building Community project builds on prior work as part of Beyond Preservation: Stabilizing Building Shells for Half-Point Use, which was supported with an earlier seed grant from the Fitch Foundation. Building Shells: Building Community is focused on reactivating vacant properties in Newburgh, New York, a post-industrial city four square miles in size and home to the second largest historic district in New York State with over 2,400 historic buildings. The city has over 500 vacant buildings, many categorized by NYS tax classification as “building shells,” that negatively impact the health and safety of residents and decrease the city’s tax base.
The Blinder Award supported a pilot project to reactivate a building shell for interim use, with and for the community. Project goals include: using art and design to transform the building shell and drive community engagement; defining the limits of intervention needed to temporarily reactivate building shells; initiating conversations about Newburgh’s preservation, history and culture; and demystify government processes that may have discouraged residents from getting involved in the past. The project will be documented and disseminated locally and throughout the NYS preservation community. It also has value in post-industrial cities across the United States, and the project’s framework and goals are aligned with the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s draft agenda Leading the Change Together: A National Impact Agenda for the Preservation Movement.
Image: Building shell in Newburgh, New York