The International Society for Landscape, Place, & Materials Culture is pleased to announce the recipients of its 2019 Awards:
Henry H. Douglas Distinguished Service Award
The Douglas Award is named in memory of Henry H. Douglas, the founder of the Pioneer America Society, today the International Society for Landscape, Place, and Material Culture. It is given to an individual who has made significant contributions over the years to furthering the Society’s goals through service, teaching, publications, and/or the promotion of historic preservation.
This year’s Douglas Award recipient checks all of the boxes. She received her Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in Geography from Marshall University, Huntington, West Virginia. Her Ph.D in Geography is from the University of Tennessee, with her dissertation titled, The Development and Diffusion of the Tennessee Walking Horse: A Case Study in Equine Regional Specialization.
She has continued her interests in equine geographies with research on mules and on the historical geography of horse racing in Kentucky, especially the Kentucky Derby. Our recipient also has interests in sports geography, specifically baseball. She is writing a book on the life and times of Charles H. Weeghman--the man who built what we now know as Wrigley Field in Chicago. The book examines the roles that individual decision makers, like Weeghman, have had on shaping the cultural and economic landscape of Chicago. In addition to her Weeghman book project, her research on “Wrigleyville,” the neighborhood surrounding Wrigley Field appeared as a book chapter in Northsiders (McFarland, 2008). She has published journal articles on baseball players’ involvement in dog fighting during the early 1900s, and the role of weather in early 20th century spring training in the Baseball Research Journal.
And who could research baseball, without also researching beer. She has partnered with Thomas L. Bell on craft brewing presentations, and also on onion farming and the ugliness of Volvos.
Additionally, she has research interests in the historical geography of Bowling Green, Kentucky. She recently presented a paper on cultural connections between the area’s karst topography and the life of Henry C. Jamison, an African American “sink digger.” Mr. Jamison was a former slave who lived in Bowling Green’s Shake Rag neighborhood.
To sum it up, she has lectured, presented, published and taught extensively on cultural geography topics, on the geography of Kentucky and Tennessee, on craft brewing and baseball, on regional architecture, on cemeteries and on horses. Such an eclectic collection of interests!
On behalf of the committee, we are pleased to announce that this year’s Henry H. Douglas Distinguished Service Award is presented to Peggy Gripshover.
Fred B. Kniffen Book Award
The winner of the 2019 Fred B. Kniffen Book Award for best-authored book in the field of North American material culture is Zachary Violette's The Decorated Tenement: How Immigrant Builders and Architects Transformed the Slum in the Gilded Age, University of the Minnesota Press.
As the awards committee received our usual three to four boxes of books, this volume immediately went to our top three. And then by unanimous decision was chosen as the winner, beating out some tough competition!
The book is timely in its research and evaluation of immigrant communities and their impact on our society. The focus is on, as the title suggests, tenement buildings — specifically the more ornamental designs of Lower East Side Manhattan and the North and West Ends of Boston. These highly decorated buildings were often misunderstood by wealthy housing reformers, who saw them as a gaudy façade for what they assumed were awful living conditions. However, the architecture suggested a tighter community fabric and improved housing for these immigrant working families, as they were influenced by the Eastern European homelands of the immigrant designers.
Dr. Violette has a PhD in American and New England Studies from Boston University. He serves on the Board of the Vernacular Architecture From and is a lecturer at Parsons/The New School of Design in New York. This is his first book. However, he is currently researching a follow-up volume focused on the inner suburban apartment house in the early twentieth century.
ISLPMC Historic Preservation Award
From the award presentation:
Each year the International Society for Landscape, Place, and Material Culture (ISLPMC) recognizes the preservation, interpretation, instruction, celebration, or exhibition of American material culture. Eligible activities include, but are not limited to:
- Restoring, rehabilitating, or otherwise preserving an important building, site, or artifact(s) representing North American material culture;
- Providing longtime stewardship of a property or artifact;
- Funding projects which preserve North American material culture;
- Instructing others in the field of North American material culture/preservation;
- Providing leadership and service in support of material culture/preservation at the local, state, or national level; and
- Supporting activities (not including publications) that have substantially increased public understanding and awareness of material culture/preservation, such as educational programs, special events, exhibitions, or media productions.
Individuals, organizations, businesses, institutions, and public agencies are eligible for the HP Award. Nominations are accepted annually from the region or area where the Society’s Annual Meeting is being held. Typically, one award winner and one recipient of the certificate of merit are chosen by the HP Awards committee. Most often, we present the award to organizations and seldom to an individual as we are tonight. After he was selected, I got to thinking that it must have been awhile since the HP Award went to an individual, so I checked and it was way back in 2003! That year our organization gave the award to Dr. Karl Watson of the University of the West Indies when we met in Bridgetown, Barbados.
Before that, the only other time that we had given the award to an individual was in 2001 (which was the second year of the HP Award program), when it went to Nathalie Andrews, Director of the Portland Museum in Louisville, Kentucky. For the certificate of merit, we have given these to individuals on a few occasions since 2000.
Here's some ISLPMC trivia: back in 2000 when our organization met in Richmond, Virginia, a certificate of merit (which was called "Honorable Mention" in those days) went to Mr. Harrison Tyler "for the private purchase and restoration of Fort Pocahontas, Wilson's Wharf Civil War Battlefield, the best preserved site in Virginia associated with African-American Federal troops in combat."
Here’s some more ISLPMC trivia: Harrison Tyler is the grandson of President John Tyler (as in, "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too)! Yes, you heard correctly. It’s totally unbelievable but it's true, one of our preservation certificates actually went to the grandson of the 10th US President. And so far as I know, Harrison is still alive at 91 years of age (at least he was last year).
For historic preservation professionals like me who work in governmental agencies at the local, state, and federal level, the continued conduct of preservation degree programs in higher education will assure that the preservation movement will have a future, so these programs serve a vital need. With some of these academic programs about to enter their fourth, fifth, and sometimes sixth decade of producing historic preservation graduates, I’m personally hopeful that the very important work we do in both the private and public sector will continue to have societal relevance.
Tonight, I’m very honored to be presenting the ISLPMC Historic Preservation Award to someone who has done much to prepare the new generation of historic preservation professionals — even though I didn’t study under him and took my master’s degree from a different regional university 555 miles south of Ypsilanti.
Dr. Ted J. Ligibel stands among the preeminent historic preservation professors in the United States during the last fifty years. In 1974, he began his preservation career working in Toledo, Ohio in 1974. Following seventeen years as a preservationist in a nonprofit organization and in government, he joined the Eastern Michigan University faculty in 1991. Eight years later, Dr. Ligibel became director of the university’s graduate Historic Preservation program, where he established an annual Historic Preservation Field School. To date over 400 graduate students have benefitted from this transformative hands-on experience. During the nineteen years he was director at EMU, the program grew in size and stature and remains among the largest such program in the United States.
Professor Ligibel has written numerous works on historic preservation including the 3rd edition of Historic Preservation: An Introduction to its History, Principles, and Practice (2018), the nation’s best-selling textbook on historic preservation, which he co-authored with architects Norman and Ilene Tyler. Dr. Ligibel advised the Clinton and Bush presidential administrations in the 1990s and 2000s and serves as Advisor Emeritus to the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Michigan Historic Preservation Network. He has also served as Chair of the National Council for Preservation Education (NCPE) and secured the intellectual heritage of NCPE by finding a permanent home for its papers at the EMU Archives. Ligibel is the immediate past chair of the Michigan Historic Preservation Review Board, which oversees all of the National Register of Historic Places nominations for the state of Michigan.
Ligibel has been instrumental in countless historic preservation efforts in Michigan and Ohio, such as the movement to save the landscape of the Fallen Timbers Battlefield near Perrysburg, Ohio from commercial development and its subsequent use as a historical parkland. More recently, his research and advocacy led to the 2013 designation of the River Raisin Battlefield as a National Park Service unit. He was awarded the 2018 Lifetime Achievement Award by the Michigan Historic Preservation Network, Professional Recognition status from the Association for Preservation Technology International in 2018, and the Teaching Excellence Award of Eastern Michigan University’s Alumni Association.
Through his devotion to preservation advocacy, teaching, and leadership, Dr. Ted Ligibel has had a profound positive impact on the cultural landscapes of Ohio and Michigan, and because of the dispersion of countless students, his lasting influence is felt across the United States and beyond.
It is with very great pleasure that I present this award to Ted Ligibel tonight.
R– Jeff Durbin, Chair ISLPMC Historic Preservation Award Committee
Fallen Timbers Battlefield and Fort Miamis National Historic Site in Ohio, an affiliated area of the National Park Service
ISLPMC Historic Preservation Certificate of Merit
From the award presentation:
I’m pleased to present this year’s Preservation Certificate of Merit to Preservation Detroit. If you were on either of the two walking tours yesterday, which were quite excellent, you met our tour guides from the organization, Micky Lyons and Dawn Bilobran. Founded in 1975 at Wayne State University, Preservation Detroit is the city’s oldest and largest organization dedicated to Historic Preservation. During the 1980s, Preservation Detroit partnered with Wayne State University to designate East Ferry Avenue as a historic district and through tours, lectures, and community outreach, the fledgling organization promoted the preservation of many nearby properties. They received the Preservation Honor Award of the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 1986, and incorporated officially as a tax exempt 501(c)(3) in the State of Michigan.
Preservation Detroit’s historic walking tours began in the 1980s and remain a major emphasis of the organization to the present. In partnership with Cityscape Detroit and other community partners, Preservation Detroit launched the Loft Forum series in the 1990s to educate developers about various incentives available for the rehabilitation of historic structures. After years of advocacy on the East Ferry Avenue corridor, rehabilitation began on The Inn on Ferry Street in early 2000 and it won a National Trust preservation award in 2002.
The Inn on Ferry Street
Preservation Detroit succeeded in listing all of “The Historic Buildings of Downtown Detroit” on the National Trust’s 11 Most Endangered Places roster in 2005, which drew national attention to at-risk buildings in downtown. In 2013-14, Preservation Detroit assisted the Michigan Historic Preservation Network and Detroit Land Bank on a project to identify historic resources that help define the identity of Detroit’s diverse neighborhoods. Over the past three years, Preservation Detroit has worked with MHPN and other partners to help establish the Cass Park Historic District and the Cass-Henry Historic District, saving an important, dense, walkable neighborhood near the city center from demolition.
Preservation Detroit conducts regular educational tours, lectures, and publications to promote awareness and the discussion of public history and historic preservation. The organization holds more than 130 tours each year, on subjects ranging from architectural history and sculpture to the history of bootlegging. They offer scholarships to historic preservation students and conduct advocacy events that take place year round, including preservation town halls, historic district community meetings, property cleanups, and more.
Receiving the certificate are Jolene Kijorski, Executive Vice President with Preservation Detroit, and Dawn Bilobran, who led the tour of downtown Detroit.