Preservation of Historic Winchester – Page 55 – Improving tomorrow by preserving the area's past

Coming Next Week: Preservation Issues and Pleasures at a Working Mid-18th Century Plantation Site in Clarke County

May 4: Handley Regional Library is celebrating National Preservation Month with an exciting presentation about a plantation in our district. The program, Preservation Issues and Pleasures at a Working Mid-18th Century Plantation Site in Clarke County, will take place on Wednesday, May 4, 2016 at 7:00 p.m. in the Handley Library Auditorium, 100 W. Piccadilly St. This presentation is being sponsored by Friends of Handley Regional Library and The Clermont Foundation and will be led by Robert Steig, CEO of The Clermont Foundation. There will be a reception following the presentation.

The Clermont Foundation funds and manages Clermont Farm, a 360-acre research and training site in history, historic preservation, and agriculture, owned by the Department of Historic Resources of the Commonwealth of Virginia. The farm and the foundation were a gift to the people of Virginia by Elizabeth Rust Williams in 2004.

Robert Steig as CEO of The Clermont Foundation, has been integral in the success of recent programs such as the rehabilitation of the farm’s slave quarters and a partnership to help kids raise pigs. Mr. Steig is also very active in the Berryville community, leading the fight to properly represent the first free African-American land owners on Josephine St.

For more information contact Barbara Dickinson at 540-662-9041 ext. 31 or reach her by email at friends@handleyregional.org.

Thanks for Your Support!

PHW is drawing closer to the end of our fiscal year on May 31. Our spring renewal letters are often a condensed Annual Report, so we wanted to take a moment and share this letter with all of our online readers, too. If you are a PHW member, thanks for supporting us with your dues! If you’re not, please consider joining or even making a one time donation to us via PayPal to help us continue our programs and activities as we prepare to enter our 52nd year.

Over the past year, PHW has continued our Lunch and Learn lecture programs, providing free, high quality history and preservation information to the community, with topics ranging from the history of railroads, Douglas School, and Winchester’s “Wild West” days, to the impacts of the new National Register Historic Districts, to introducing the National Park Service’s Training Center in Frederick, MD.

We also have plenty of fun while learning about history at PHW, as seen during our fall Memberfest. The 2015 theme was that of a speakeasy. Along with the fun of dressing as gangsters and flappers close to Halloween, we enjoyed the superb music of the Bob Larson Trio, homebrew beers, and tales of Winchester during its time as a dry town.

Thanks to the community’s interest and support, PHW was able to make the Holiday House Tour fundraiser a success not only for us, but also the Winchester Little Theatre. The sales generated from our Bough and Dough Shop put another $2,700 into the Winchester Little Theatre’s Restoration Campaign. As you may have seen, the beautiful new roof is now being installed on the old Pennsylvania Freight Station!

Last year, PHW dipped back into children’s education with the railroad program held in conjunction with the Friends of Handley Regional Library. This year, PHW is aiming to expand on that work and provide a fun, free, and educational activity booth at Kidzfest on May 14. We will provide coloring activity sheets covering a variety of architectural styles, suitable for the entire family to explore buildings, history, and color together.

PHW partnered with the City and the North End Citizens Association with the work at the National Avenue roundabout. PHW authored two industrial heritage signs and sold bricks to line the sidewalk as part of the beautification efforts. The proceeds from the brick sales raised $1,000 each for the local chapter of the Boys and Girls Club and the Timbrook House. Both organizations support the education of children in the community.

Lastly, mark your calendars for PHW’s 52nd Annual Meeting, which will be held Sunday afternoon on June 12th at the PHW headquarters in the Hexagon House, 530 Amherst Street. Yard games will return, along with our usual local preservation awards and election of PHW’s board of directors for the 2016-2017 year.

If you prefer to mail a check, click here for a copy of our membership application form to return with your dues.

However you chose to support PHW, know that we appreciate your support and enthusiasm!

Friday Photos: Blues House Showcase, 2000

We do love our houses here, but we needed a little break from scanning the 1976 survey this week. A jaunt to the photo closet yielded a thick volume of Blues House photos, rife with people celebrating in what has since transformed into Piccadilly’s Public House and Restaurant outdoor patio. The celebration of sounds and colors is a perfect little springtime pick me up. Enjoy the photos on Flickr, and be sure to check out winchesterblueshouse.com for information on the Blues House Festival in July 2016.

Coming This Weekend: Historic Garden Week in Winchester

This weekend is the Winchester and Clarke County Historic Garden Week tours hosted by Winchester-Clarke Garden Club and The Little Garden Club of Winchester. The tour features four outstanding estates and one historic church dating from 1782 to 1993:

Claytonville Farm, 574 Clay Hill Road, Millwood
Clay Hill 859 Clay Hill Road, Millwood
Milton Valley Farm 294 Milton Valley Farm, Berryville
Audley Farm, 752 Audley Lane, Berryville
Old Chapel and Burwell Cemetery, intersection of Rt. 255 and 340, Boyce

For more information, descriptions, and ticket sale information, visit vagardenweek.org.

Shopping for Apple Blossom Time

Apple Blossom is approaching, and in that spirit PHW has created a curated collection of apple blossom themed products on Zazzle with an eye toward finding note cards, postcards, stamps, and stickers related to Winchester’s springtime celebration. For full disclosure, if you shop through any links to Zazzle in this post, PHW will earn a small referral fee on anything you buy in that shopping session.

Don’t forget to visit the official website for the Shenandoah Apple Blossom Festival for their online store and information about the retail store location and other important updates regarding the Bloom.

Apple Blossom Time
by Preservation of Historic Winchester

Friday Photos: Simon Lauck House and Extras

PHW has added over 150 photos to Flickr, with the largest individual album being the Simon Lauck House, PHW’s first Revolving Fund property. Our original post when we shared these photos on Picasa can be found here. To quote from that post:

The plan at the time was to restore the building’s exterior to its appearance circa 1790 as a proof to Winchester that many of the “Victorian” houses in the Potato Hill area in fact contained a much older log nucleus. To achieve this, a substantial portion of the house was removed, reducing it from a duplex to a single residence and stripping most of the exterior away. PHW volunteers did a great deal of the hands-on work at the Simon Lauck house, as documented by Virginia Miller.

We have also been double checking (or finding unscanned photos still tucked in boxes) for some of the streets we previously thought were complete. This includes:

51 1976 Architectural Survey photos for West Boscawen Street
9 photos on Fairmont Avenue
27 photos from Braddock Street
As well as adding the existing 1976 photos of West Cork Street to the 1976 Survey album

All of the new photos can be found at the front of the Flickr photostream, or at the end of their respective albums. Happy viewing!

Coming This (and Next) Weekend: Kernstown Battlefield Park Day

WHAT: Park Day volunteer event at Kernstown Battlefield
WHEN: Saturday, April 16th & 23rd, 2016, beginning at 9:00 a.m.
WHERE: Meet at Kernstown Battlefield Park, 106 Battlepark Drive, Winchester, VA
MORE INFO: Dave Jenkins by phone at 540-247-3362 or by e-mail at djenkins0849@outlook.com
Meg Martin (Civil War Trust) 202-367-1861 x7231
Kernstown Battlefield Foundation by phone at (540) 869-2896 or (202) 302-9129

History buffs, community leaders and preservationists will team up with the Civil War Trust at more than 125 sites in 29 states to answer the call to service on Park Day. Celebrating its twentieth year, Park Day has attracted volunteers of all ages and abilities bound by their dedication to serving their communities at historic sites nationwide.

In Winchester, Kernstown Battlefield Park will host a Park Day event beginning at 9:00 a.m. on April 16 and 23. Needs range from painting, grounds maintenance, minor building repair to seeding of new grass around Park Buildings. A local historian may also be available to describe the park’s significance. For more information about Park Day at Kernstown Battlefield Park, please contact Dave Jenkins by phone at 540-247-3362 or by e-mail at djenkins0849@outlook.com.

The Civil War Trust is the largest and most effective nonprofit organization devoted to the preservation of America’s hallowed battlegrounds. For a complete list of participating Park Day sites around the country, visit Civilwar.org/parkday.

“Winchester – A Frontier Town…With a Dash of the Wild West” Presentation on YouTube

John Flood’s PHW Lunch and Learn Lecture from April 7 is now available to watch on YouTube. This recording contains most of the live presentation as it was performed last Thursday with two minor exceptions. We have removed the showing of Patsy Cline’s live “San Antonio Rose” video – John’s commentary during the showing was inaudible. To get the full experience, you may wish to pause our presentation at the Pasty Cline Intermission and watch the video at https://youtu.be/lk2AyjY7d1s. There was also an audience question taken during the switch between laptops for the Pasty Cline video. That question was moved to the Q&A session at the end of the video.

John Flood mentioned a number of websites during his presentation. The URLs are available in the presentation, but for ease of access we have replicated them here:
John Flood’s Facebook
Big Legends Facebook
Big Legends website
Focus on the Valley Photography Facebook
Focus on the Valley Photography website
Winchester Frontier Days Facebook
Wild West Magazine
Celebrating Patsy Cline
Winchester-Frederick County Historical Society (including the Stewart Bell, Jr. Archives at Handley Library)

We also utilized royalty-free music in preparing this video. If you are ever in need of music for a project, consider visiting incompetech.com to search the extensive selection of music in all manner of styles and genres. For this video specifically, we utilized:

Opening Jingle – Cowboy Sting Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Presentation Beginning Cue – Work is Work Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Patsy Cline Intermission – Drankin Song Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Credits Roll – Olde Timey Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Friday Photos: Student Survey of Winchester

This week, we continued transferring images from Picasa with the 100 photos from the Student Survey of Winchester. Judging by the dates stamped on the 35 mm slides, this survey/presentation was produced sometime after 1978 but before the construction of the Joint Judicial Center (circa 1984). The goal of the presentation seems to have been to improve the walking mall, entrance corridors, and vistas of Winchester. Most of the images are from Winchester, but a few examples of good ideas from other cities were included. See just how far we’ve come in our downtown since then!

Rouss City Hall, from East Lane (looking west across the modern location of the Joint Judicial Center).

National Preservation Month Activities

May is creeping ever closer, and that means National Preservation Month activities are in planning. Here is a selection of events we know about coming in May:

May 4: Handley Regional Library is celebrating with an exciting presentation about a plantation in our district. The program, Preservation Issues and Pleasures at a Working Mid-18th Century Plantation Site in Clarke County, will take place on May 4, 2016 at 7:00 p.m. in the Handley Library Auditorium, 100 W. Piccadilly St. This presentation is being sponsored by Friends of Handley Regional Library and The Clermont Foundation and will be led by Robert Steig, CEO of The Clermont Foundation. There will be a reception following the presentation.

For more information contact Barbara Dickinson at 540-662-9041 ext. 31 or reach her by email at friends@handleyregional.org.

May 14: Kidzfest returns to the downtown walking mall in Winchester in 2016. As you may remember, for the past two years PHW ran separate Preservation Month activities on the day of Kidzfest. This year, PHW has applied for a space at the event to provide a fun, free, and educational activity with an architectural slant. We will provide coloring activity sheets covering a variety of architectural styles, suitable for the entire family to explore buildings, history, and color together. Historic color information will be available if you want to try an accurate paint scheme, or you can let your imagination run wild and color a house however you would like. More details will be available closer to the event.

May 14: Fort Loudoun Day returns at the site of Washington’s Well at 419 N. Loudoun Street from 10:00 am – 3:00 pm. The French and Indian War Foundation commemorates this period in our country’s history each year at the site of the original Fort Loudoun. The event includes interpreters of the history of the era and gives visitors an opportunity to learn about the history of the frontier, the people who settled the Shenandoah Valley and the conditions in which they lived. Visit their website at FIWF.org to learn more.

Throughout the Month:
Experience Old Town Winchester with three Historical Springtime Scavenger Hunts. They start April 9, so you can get a jump on exploring Old Town!

Cemetery Tours are offered on a recurring basis by Northern Virginia Tours. The tours begin at Winchester National Cemetery and continue at Stonewall Cemetery. You have the option of touring one or both cemeteries. $8.00 per person for one tour, $15.00 for both tours.

A Savory Taste of Winchester: Culinary Food and Wine Tours are currently ongoing, but Preservation Month is the perfect excuse to visit popular Old Town restaurants. In between the tastings at six locations, learn about Old Town Winchester’s history dating back to the 1600s. Reservations are required by 8 p.m. the day prior to the tour.

Last but not least, PHW is accepting nominations for our local preservation awards. If you know of a person or project worthy of recognition, why not send in a nomination form? It is free and it helps to get the word out to the community about projects that are making a difference in our streetscapes and knowledge of architecture and history.