Spring Greening

Historic Green Day 7: Restoring a Dream

Historic Green's Volunteer Coordinator Laura Carrera (of UT-San Antonio) briefs a new group of volunteers on their projects for the day.

Volunteers from the Historic Preservation and Restoration Techology program at College of the Redwoods (Eureka, CA) work to re-paint and reconstruct the entire facade of a historic home at 1226 Gordon.

Historic Green Day 5: Wrapping Up the Week

Smitty begins his tour of the Lower Ninth Ward with volunteers.

PHOTO: Siri Colom

Watering a brand new rain garden on N. Rampart Street.

Contractor Ryan Haugaard (of Abacus Design Build in Manhattan, KS) describes his work to restore a two-story historic house at 616 Caffin over the last week.

PHOTO: Siri Colom

Curt Rohner and his crew rest up after finishing up a radiant barrier installation and repairs at 1224 Gordon - job well done!

Historic Green Day 4: Still More Projects!

PHOTOS (above): Siri Colom

Installing radiant barriers on St. Claude Avenue.

Tuck-pointing the brick work for a double shotgun on Tricou. Restoration from start to finish!

Historic Green Day 3: More Projects!

Working at the Delery Street playground.

Greening up a house on Tricou.



Volunteers from SUNY-Buffalo take a break from installing radiant barriers in the home of Don Edwards on St. Claude.

Attending the Holy Cross Neighborhood Assn. meeting at Greater Little Zion Baptist Church - a true exercise in democracy!

Historic Green in Eco-Structure Magazine

Check out Historic Green featured in Eco-Structure Magazine here.  Historic Green Chair and Co-founder Jeremy Knoll is interviewed about HG discussing why we exists and where we are going. 

Progress at 5200 Dauphine: Preserving Green

Some of you were present for the kick-off charrette hosted by the Preservation Resource Center during Historic Green's 2009 March event. We discussed an idea that was already a year and a half in the making.  The concept of blending sustainable design with the complete reconstruction of an historic building in an historic district is new and developing field in architecture. Partnerships had formed over the year since HG participated in the deconstruction of what was left of 5200 Dauphine. Those partnerships led to the decision that a reconstructed, sustainable and historically appropriate facility would be constructed to serve as the new home of the Center for Sustainable Engagement and the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association.

RENDERING: Ryan Schmidt, UTSA

Since our first charrette in March a design team composed of preservationists, community leaders, architects, contractors and engineers have been working to design the first LEED Platinum project that has the support of the USGBC, National Trust for Historic Preservation, Prince of Wales Foundation and numerous other groups. 

The design will incorporate salvaged materials from the deconstructed structure as well as materials from salvaged from throughout the area and beyond.  The building will be heated and cooled by a high efficiency Variable Refirgerant Volume system which has been minimized in scale due to the high performance envelope being developed to serve the building. 

Construction is slated to begin this winter with completion anticipated for this spring.

Scenes From a Green Rebuild

Thanks to Darryl Malek-Wiley for these excellent photos from across the Holy Cross Neighborhood!
429-31 St. Maurice Street
429-31 St. Maurice Street
5515 Dauphine Street
5515 Dauphine Street
Marquette University students at 5516 Dauphine Street
Redeemer Church volunters at 632 Tupelo

Updates from Dauphine Street

Last year we worked on three houses at 5200, 5116 and 5115 Dauphine Street. The work continued well after Historic Green was over so here are photo updates from Pam Bryan at the Preservation Resource Center (PRC) in New Orleans. PRC was our partner in the projects. 5200 Dauphine is slated to be the new home for the CSED, while 5115 Dauphine and 5116 Dauphine will be up for sale in the near future.
Above left is an interior of 5115, taken from the front shop looking towards the rear of the house. Above right is a view of the house from the corner of Dauphine and Lizardi streets. Below is a view of the rear of the house.

Above is the front of 5116. Below left is a picture of the interior looking through the front window. And below right is a picture of the new bracket common to this style of shotgun.
Below is the 5200 Dauphine site, which will feature the new home of the Center for Sustainable Engagement & Development (CSED).

Favorite Projects and Wrap-Up

I can’t believe that Historic Green 2008 is over! I’ve had 2 weeks to recover, and still can’t believe it!

Curt, Ryan, Dave, and I gave a quick slide-show to the Kansas City EGB last week. It is just amazing to see even a part of the full scope of what our volunteers accomplished. There are 2 moments in particular that I am most proud of:

1. The Bell. Thanks to Curt’s and Tristain’s tireless and sweaty efforts, the long forgotten bell at the Greater Little Zion Church now rings again! When we learned about the discovery of this bell (by the Alliance for Affordable Energy’s great Americorps volunteers) in January, it became increasingly important project to us to see accomplished. On our last Thursday night, Reverend Scie made the announcement to a packed audience of residents that every family returned to their home will be invited to ring the bell in celebration. It was so fulfilling to see something so symbolic and meaningful – just a simple sound – returned to the neighborhood as a result of the combined efforts of so many hands and minds.

2. Mr. Smith’s home. During the first week, Henry Smith pulled up to the Village as I was going to close the gate for the day. He asked if I could help him get his house painted, and I asked him to register with the Center for Sustainable Engagement & Development so he could get onto our list.

Sure enough, one week later, we were able to send him 6 volunteers. About an hour into the morning, another 14 volunteers showed up to help. I ran around and got more water, eye-protections, dust masks, scrapers, and ladders. So with 20 volunteers working on one historic home, they started asking me about the soft spots they were finding in the wood siding. “Should we really be refinishing these? They seem like they’re rotted,” one volunteer informed me. The next morning, 2 volunteers measured every piece of siding that needed to be removed. Once completed, I delivered one of them to the Dauphine project sites, where he cut recovered (deconstructed) siding from another historic structure, which volunteers then installed on Henry’s home and painted like new! This would not have been possible to accomplish without taking the large-scope of projects on as we did.

I can tell that our organizers and volunteers are ready to begin planning for 2009 right away! We’ve taken it easy for the past couple of weeks, allowing us time to recover and catch up at class and jobs. I’m both excited and a little overwhelmed with the idea of creating an even larger vision to take on moving forward. I really hope our core committee grows to a point where this feels more manageable – there were several times leading up to this year’s event that felt pretty lonely (and very overwhelming!) to our small band of coordinators. We muscled through and made miracles and magic happen – but miracles and magic are exhausting, and don’t come easy!

At Week's End

It's the end of a second full week at Historic Green. After cleaning up the 5116 Dauphine project site, Bill Dupont (left), Curt Rohner (front) and Jeremy Knoll (right) take a break on the front porch with UTSA students Matt, Chris, Brady and Allison.

Well done, everyone, well done!

PHOTO: Bill Dupont