Preservation of Historic Winchester – Page 23 – Improving tomorrow by preserving the area's past

Friday Roundup: RSVPs and Reading Links

PHW’s 56th Annual Meeting will be held on June 28th. The meeting will be held at the Hexagon House, 530 Amherst Street, beginning at 5:00 P.M. The Annual Business Meeting will consist of the Proposed Bylaws Amendment, President’s Annual Report, and Election of the 2020-2021 Board of Directors.

A full copy of the bylaws is available on PHW’s website.

Only PHW members with current dues who attend the meeting in person may vote on the actionable items. If you plan to attend the meeting, RSVP your name and number of attendees to 540-667-3577, phwinc.org@gmail.com, or on the Facebook event page. The meeting is capped at 50 guests.

The meeting will be held outside and no refreshments will be offered. Social distancing due to COVID-19 will be in effect. Wear face coverings and do not attend if you have been exposed or feel ill. Please bring your own seating. A livestream of the meeting will be hosted on Facebook. The link will be made available approximately one week before the event. The meeting will not be rescheduled for inclement weather.

For further reading and researching this week, we have a selection of links:

It seems many people are taking the pandemic time to research their homes and towns. Atlas Obscura has been providing a steady stream of informative articles on how to get started, including How to Dig into the History of Your City, Town, or Neighborhood.

If you are looking for early Winchester Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps to help with your research, you can find them at the Library of Congress. You can also look at other maps PHW and other local researchers use to date local buildings at Historic Map Works.

Do you like transcribing old documents or going on deep history searches? East End and Evergreen Cemeteries in Richmond are accepting remote volunteers to help make their documents more accessible and preserve Richmond’s African American history. Follow the links to register for Biography Writer, Cemetery Research, or Record Transcription.

If you are interested in similar efforts to document, preserve, and tell forgotten stories, you may also enjoy Architectural History Fieldwork Project Seeks to Find ‘Suppressed and Erased Histories’ and When Architecture and Racial Justice Intersect.

AmazonSmile customers can now support Preservation of Historic Winchester, Inc. in the Amazon shopping app on iOS and Android mobile phones! Simply follow these instructions to turn on AmazonSmile and start generating donations.

Open the Amazon Shopping app on your device
Go into the main menu of the Amazon Shopping app and tap into ‘Settings’
Tap ‘AmazonSmile’ and follow the on-screen instructions to complete the process

If you do not have the latest version of the Amazon Shopping app, update your app. Click here for instructions.

Friday Photos: Limestone Covers and Our Instagram

While we were doing some filing this week, we found the selection of images taken for the 275th Anniversary Edition of Winchester: Limestone, Sycamores & Architecture. If you would like to see behind the curtain, check out the album on Flickr and see 17 larger and untouched images that were considered and used for the book.

We are also happy to announce work on the Bough and Dough Shop for 2020 is progressing. In addition to the nuts and bolts changes to make the shop as safe as possible for visitors, we have been working behind the scenes with artists. You can also get more updates on our new Bough and Dough Shop Instagram. If you would like a sneak peek at our online ordering platform, visit our online store. You can use it now to order both the remaining limited quantity of the first edition and the 275th edition of the Limestone volume, as well as other books and prints. At least some portion of our Shop items will be added to the store for remote shopping from home this winter. If you want to use curbside pickup at the Hexagon House, remember to put in the promo code “Curbside” to get free shipping!

Friday Roundup: Annual Meeting Updates and Internet Reading

First, a quick update on PHW’s plans for the Annual Meeting in June. The expected date is June 28th, at our normal start time of 3 PM at the Hexagon House. The meeting will be a business-only event with a proposed bylaws amendment to allow for teleconferencing for meetings, clarify the mission statement, and minor consistency edits throughout. We will also elect the board of directors for the next year.

Because of the continuing restrictions on gatherings, the meeting will be held outdoors with spacing between people. No refreshments will be served. Only PHW members in physical attendance will be able to vote at the meeting for the bylaws amendment, but we plan to livestream the event on Facebook. More details and the proposed bylaws edits will be made available online in full and in a condensed version in your invitation. The Facebook livestream link will be made available approximately one week before the event.

Unlike past years, we will be keeping an RSVP list for PHW members who wish to attend so we can prepare for the proper spacing. Please respond at phwinc.org@gmail.com or 540-667-3577 with the number of attendees. This information will be included in your invitation as well.

We will still accept award nominations for a later event or for the next year’s Annual Meeting. Thank you to everyone who has made suggestions so far. Please know that your projects have been filed and saved for later discussion.

For your reading pleasure this weekend, we have a selection of links:

The Farmer’s Apprentice: African American Indentures of Apprenticeship in Virginia features a Frederick County document. At the end of the entry are the links to the Virginia Untold: The African American Narrative database and the transcription project Making History at the Library of Virginia.

To match the story of the plank house we shared on Facebook earlier this week, The History Blog has posted another incredible find beneath the floorboards of a private home in Norway.

If you’ve seen some interesting signs while you are out exercising or getting supplies and you like taking photos, the Library of Virginia is collecting signs from the pandemic for their collections of ephemera. You can find more information at RichmondMag or BoomerMagazine.com or visit the Library of Virginia’s Tumblr. If you just want to see the images, the Tumblr is the place to go!

History is a strange and twisting tale, and April White at Atlas Obscura highlights How the Influenza Pandemic Popularized Lemons. Without giving too much away, the article follows the tale of changing marketing strategies and timing to world events in 1918 turned what was once considered a luxury into a household necessity.

Friday Roundup: Memorial Day Weekend

The PHW office will be closed Memorial Day. Stay safe and healthy as you enjoy your long weekend! For your reading pleasure, we have gathered links for you to enjoy:

Protecting Family and Heirlooms – If you started organizing photographs or sorting through other family memorabilia and are concerned on how to safely handle or sanitize them, this blog from the Library of Virginia may put some fears at ease and help keep your precious documents safe.

More Than Maintenance: Replacing the Glass at the Glass House – The National Trust offers a peek behind the curtain for a unique window replacement situation at the Phillip Johnson Glass House in Connecticut. This is an interesting look at how defining architectural features that wear out are replaced sensitively in respect to the building, its furnishings, and its function as an interpretive site for most of the year.

Atlas Obscura offers two articles, Fun Ways to Get Kids Into Photography and Dig This: An Online Field School for Junior Archaeologists to whet your children or grandchildren’s appetite for skills useful in historic preservation.

You may also want to check out Use Online Time with Family to Record Family Stories from West Virginia Public Radio. Be sure to scroll to the bottom for additional links to help you get started with question suggestions.

One of the things I have enjoyed is looking through some long forgotten boxes and finding treasures inside. If you like that thrill as well, you might enjoy the story On the Hunt for National Treasures With America’s Archive Detective following the discovery of missing items and the effort to recover them with Mitch Yockelson. (Sometimes, though, the items are just misfiled!)

If you’re looking for a longer read, Public Domain Review recently highlighted a book Old English Customs Extant at the Present Time (1896). In addition to the highlighted summary of what to expect from the Review, you can enjoy the entire book for free online and see what other traditions you may not have heard of before.

Clowser House Painting — Larry Webb shared ten more photos of the exterior painting progress at the Clowser House. You can drive by to see the exterior yourself at 152 Tomahawk Trail in the Shawneeland subdivision off Back Mountain Road in Frederick County. You can see the other photos at our Flickr.

Friday Roundup: Midway Through May

In celebration of National Preservation Month, we are making some of our past activity sheets available digitally. Click this thumbnail for a full sized file. If you create a masterpiece from the Hottle House in Winchester, let us know. We’d love to see your work!

As we reach the midpoint of May, PHW is still in a holding pattern to see how we may be able to conduct the Annual Meeting in June (originally planned for June 14). We plan to make a decision on how to conduct the meeting by the end of the month. Stay tuned for details!

One thing we did learn is that our bylaws do not allow for organization business to be conducted by means other than face to face meetings. To ease some of this uncertainty in the future, a bylaws edit is being discussed by the board of directors. It has been ten years since the last edit, so a few other changes and clarifications have also been proposed. As with the last time the bylaws were updated, digital and print versions showing the changes will be provided to the membership prior to the meeting if a bylaws change is to be considered.

Along with the Annual Meeting, we traditionally hold our preservation awards in June. If you have a person or project to nominate for a 2020 award, use our form. The awards are not a necessary part of the Annual Meeting, but it is always good to recognize preservation success stories and outstanding leadership that has happened in our community.

Although the state may be slowly reopening, PHW recognizes most of our members and clients likely fall into some of the high risk categories. We ask that you continue to contact us by email for most questions, as we can fulfill most of your needs for information through that method without requiring face to face interaction. If you would like to pick up a copy of the Limestone book or do other interactions that must be done in person, please email phwinc.org@gmail.com or leave a message at 540-667-3577, as we will continue to be open by appointment only. This state of operation will continue until ShenArts, our upstairs neighbor in the Hexagon House, is also ready to reopen their office on the second floor.

To end on a happier note, we are in the works planning for our Bough and Dough Shop. While we may not know exactly what our operation guidelines will be, we are currently working to create a curbside pickup ordering process for at least some of the goods we typically sell. That also means we are accepting applications for new artists. If you or someone you know creates unique items you’d want to see in our shop, download the informational packet and see if we’re a good fit!

Experience National Travel and Tourism Week from Home

The National Trust for Historic Preservation has launched a Virtual Preservation Month to help you explore and celebrate historic places from home. Be sure to check back every day in May to see the new tours, videos, and activities as they are added.

For other tours, workshops, and virtual exhibits you may want to enjoy this weekend or beyond, check out:

The Museum of the Shenandoah Valley’s upcoming virtual tours and programs, including the online Heritage Plant Sale.

The Virginia Museum of History and Culture’s page of Virginia History At Home. You might especially enjoy exploring the archive of Banner Lectures.

The Cranford Historic Preservation Advisory Board’s Historic Cranford, NJ audio tour. Be sure to check out the fantastic tile sign posts in stop #20!

The Preservation Society of Newport County’s Virtual Exhibitions and Mansions of Newport, RI. The Tiffany Glass exhibit may be of interest to many of our readers.

The Delaware Digital History Museum website launched by the Delaware Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs. The Virtual Tours section may be of the most interest to our readers to explore architectural features and historic sites.

The National Museum of Industrial History has made many programs available virtually. Follow their programming on their Facebook page, or visit their website for more information.

Last, don’t forget you can download several tours and activities from PHW’s website to better explore our local history and architecture!

You can revisit some of PHW’s visual history operating a cultural center in our Flickr album Kurtz Cultural Center.

Apple Blossom Articles

To tide you through a weekend without a celebration, we have uncovered and OCR corrected a number of historic articles on past Apple Blossom celebrations on the Virginia Chronicle website. Don’t forget you can watch last year’s Grand Feature parade on thebloom.com from 1-3 PM on Saturday to recreate some of the spring festivities in your home. Stay safe and enjoy a healthy Bloom!

Rappahannock Record, March 29, 1928: “Apple Blossom Festival“

Highland Recorder, March 25, 1932: “Apple Blossom Queen of Family of Washington“

Highland Recorder, May 13, 1932: “The Apple Blossom Festival in Retrospect“

Highland Recorder, April 16, 1937: “Apple Blossom Festival“

Highland Recorder, April 12, 1946: “19th Apple Blossom Queen“

Highland Recorder, April 18, 1947: “Apple Blossom Queen“

Southside Sentinel, February 19, 1970: “Winchester to Present 43rd Festival“

Celebrate National Preservation Month in May

As hard as it is to believe, May is almost upon us. The month is special to preservationists, as we take time to celebrate National Preservation Month. If this is the first you’ve heard of it, last year the National Trust for Historic Preservation wrote a brief history of the event, which started as a week-long celebration in 1972 and has since expanded into a full month. Many organizations, like PHW, time their awards and recognition of endangered and preserved properties to coincide with the national event.

While it may be harder to get out and enjoy the fruits of historic preservation this year, you can explore the 31 ways the National Trust invited anyone to celebrate last year. Many are still doable, even with social distancing. If you take the list as a challenge, let us know about your adventures on our Facebook page!

Although it may be late notice, if you have wanted a Winchester historic building plaque, May is traditionally the time those applications are reviewed by the Board of Architectural Review. You can find the guidelines and form online at the City’s website. If you need some help locating history on your building, feel free to contact the PHW office at phwinc.org@gmail.com and we can email copies of digital material to you for your application (or just for your records).

If you have been out and about walking during quarantine, you might have the perfect eyes on the street to nominate projects for a 2020 PHW preservation award. You can find the form online at the PHW website. You can find the list of past people and projects that received recognition on our award page. If you can think of a person or project worthy of recognition this year, let us know as many details as you can and the PHW committee will do the rest!

Friday Photos: Bough and Dough Shop, Clowser House Painting, and Baker Street Mural

Happy Friday! While uncertainty abounds for our Holiday House Tour and Bough and Dough Shop for 2020, we wanted to share images of the 2019 shop to potential and returning vendors. We will be contacting past vendors soon with our tentative plans to host the Shop in 2020. If you are interested in joining the Shop as a new artist, please reach out to us at PHW at phwinc.org@gmail.com for an artist packet. You can find a selection of 113 images of the shop setup in 2019 at our Flickr album.

The Very Merry Mittens display in the Bough and Dough Shop, 2019.

Larry Webb also shared images of work taking place at the Clowser House in Shawneeland recently. The pictures show the beginning the exterior painting by removing the old shutters. A new front door and new shutters for all the windows will be installed once the house is painted. George Sobien, the Property and Preservation Committee Chairman, is pictured performing the work. View the nine images at the end of the Clowser House album at Flickr.

Painting at the Clowser House, April 2020.

Last, in preservation news, the public hearing for additional demolition requests around the former Winchester Towers site and the former Glaize Lumber yard and Baker warehouses was approved at Thursday’s Board of Architectural Review. In a glimmer of hope, however, a portion of the wall with the ghost signs for Baker and Co. Wholesale Groceries may be incorporated into the final project. No details on exactly how the former advertising may be incorporated were available at the meeting yesterday, but we hope to see them in future BAR applications. If you like the look of ghost signs and wish to learn and see more, visit the American Ghosts website, which has catalogued and photographed unusual and iconic signs around America. The Baker Street wall is included in the database.

This portion of the wall on Baker Street may be preserved and incorporated elsewhere in the project for the former Winchester Towers site.

Friday Roundup: History and Preservation News

The new state historical highway marker for Spottswood Poles, announced in March, has been installed in the 500 block of North Kent Street near where he lived. Poles was an outstanding player who was born before a time when his achievements could be more widely remembered. You can read a brief article on his career and life at the Society for American Baseball Research and check the Winchester Star article for more details on the new marker.

If you are feeling a bit disconnected from our local tourist spots, local 360 degree tours may help fill in the gap. The Winchester-Frederick County Visitors Center has been posting videos on their Facebook page of local tourism spots like Bell Grove Plantation and Blandy Experimental Farm. If you’re feeling a bit shut in, you might enjoy a walk along rows of blooming peaches taken about two weeks ago:

Same video as a moment ago, just in full beautiful HD this time :)
Posted by Winchester-Frederick County Convention & Visitors Bureau on Friday, March 27, 2020

The Shenandoahvalleytv Youtube channel also offers looks at Apple Blossom time, Belle Grove Plantation, Patsy Cline exhibits, and many other events, museums, and activities in our area. Check out their quick (one minute and change) video on Route 11 potato chips if you aren’t feeling too fried!

Are you looking for more interesting images of Winchester’s past? we found a collection of images primarily of a horse and pony show, listed as happening in Winchester, that were taken for a Life magazine article by Edward Clark in Google Arts and Culture section. While we have not found the accompanying article, we’d be interested in sharing it in the future to put more context to the images – if you have any leads on the story this may have appeared in, please let us know!