Welcome to Historic Preservation
The Graduate Program in Historic Preservation is a collaborative effort between Clemson University and the College of Charleston. The program, which is based full time in Charleston, South Carolina, offers the Master of Science in Historic Preservation and the Certificate in Historic Preservation. Please visit us on Facebook and become a fan of the MSHP program.
Historic Preservation Newsletter
We are proud to present the 2012 issue of 292 Preservation Brief, the annual newsletter of the Historic Preservation department. In this issue:
- Charleston Burning
- Interview with Ashley Wilson
- Alumni News and Graduate Profiles
Read the 2012 Preservation Newsletter.
Read the 2011 Preservation Newsletter.
Recent News
Spring 2013
Vitruviana 2013 is set for April 11-13, 2013. Register here.
Amy Elizabeth Uebel, MSHP Class of 2013 To Present Research Paper
Amy Elizabeth Uebel, an MSHP student who will complete her degree in May 2013, will present a paper that draws on her thesis research at the 2013 Symposium for Students of Conservation and Preservation sponsored by UCLA and the Getty Conservation Institute. Ubel’s paper, “Understanding Architectural Metal Conservation,” will summarize the results of her study of antebellum iron objects at Fort Sumter. The abstract of her paper follows:
Iron is one of the most overlooked materials in architectural conservation. Its status as a functional construction material, rather than a decorative element, often makes iron the least understood material by architectural conservators. As historic metal becomes increasingly significant in the built environment, new approaches must develop in order to better predict and understand the corrosion process.
The behavior of corrosion has been extensively studied in the engineering and conservation communities, but the two fields have developed different approaches to iron conservation. Typically, engineers classify corrosion on a macroscopic scale, while conservators approach iron on a microscopic level. Both approaches are undeniably useful; conservators, engineers, and contractors must reach a middle ground in order to make better-informed decisions regarding the sustainability, longevity, and integrity of historic iron.
Famous for its role in the Civil War, Fort Sumter is now largely a ruin with few original iron artifacts intact. History has not been kind to the fort and the metal has experienced decades of exposure to the harsh marine climate—burial in sand, and multiple rebuilding campaigns. Three well understood causes of iron corrosion, the atmosphere, context, and the metal’s composition, were applied to the architectural iron at Fort Sumter to determine which aspect has the greatest impact.
The temperature, wind, and airborne chloride levels were tracked at Fort Sumter to determine the atmospheric corrosivity level. As surrounding materials affect the exposure of embedded metal, each material was compared to see how its composition affected the historic iron. Lastly, a selection of iron objects was chosen for further analysis using X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (XRF), Raman spectroscopy, and archival research. By studying these aspects of iron corrosion, the National Park Service will be able to form a better understanding of the corrosion of historic ironwork and implement appropriate, sensitive conservation treatments.
Second-Year Student Rebecca Quandt Wins Prize
Rebecca Quandt’s poster entitled “Documenting Ireland’s Elizabethan Landscape” won one of three prizes awarded by an interdisciplinary team of faculty judges in the College of Charleston’s annual Graduate Student Research Symposium. Quandt’s poster summarized field work that she and 6 of her classmates conducted in the summer of 2012 documenting the ruins of Molana Abbey in County Waterford, a 14th-century complex occupied in the last decades of the sixteenth century by Thomas Hariot, surveyor, scientist and protégé of Sir Walter Raleigh.
Fall 2012
First-year student featured in Drayton Hall Blog
Inspired by Authenticity at Drayton Hall: Intern Kendy Altizer
"After graduating from college with a dual degree in History and Anthropology, I spent a number of years working in Cultural Resource Management in a variety of capacities in several different states. My focus was prehistoric archaeology and I spent many a happy day out on survey in remote areas of the United States documenting prehistoric and historic resources. I eventually began spending more and more time in the office writing reports and learning the business side of Cultural Resource Management. While I enjoyed the consulting aspect of archaeology, I found myself wanting a different challenge but I wasn’t really sure what that challenge might entail..."
Blacklock House Documentation Project
First Year Students initiated at the beginning of the fall semester a thorough investigation of the Blacklock House, a National Historic Landmark on Bull Street that now houses the College of Charleston’s Office of Alumni Relations. Well-known for its ornamental plaster work, the Blacklock Houses remains largely undocumented despite significant restoration campaigns in the 1970s. During the Fall semester MSHP students will, working in teams, complete architectural documentation drawings of the house before they begin an analysis of historic paint and wallpaper finishes.
September 30-October 3, 2012 - APT
Faculty and staff of the MSHP Program played active roles in planning and hosting the annual meeting of the Association for Preservation Technology International which convened in Charleston September 30 to October 3, meeting for the first time in more than a decade with the Preservation Trades Network, a national organization of skilled people in all of the traditional building trades who preserve, maintain and restore historic buildings.
October 3, 2012 - Wood Identification
Chuck Gresham visits the MSHP Conservation Lab to demonstrate both visual and microscopic wood identification and wood technologies. Gresham, a faculty member at Clemson’s Baruch Institute of Coastal Ecology and Forest Science at Hobcaw Barony, spends half of the day in the lab and the other half on site, leading students through the process of wood identification.
November 6-8, 2012 - Experts in Residence
Two internationally-recognized scholars will serve as 2012 Experts-in-Residence. Dr. Susan Buck, an independent scholar and historic paint consultant, and Ed Chappell, director of the architectural research department at Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, will direct workshops and field studies designed to sharpen student analytical skills. Buck has recently completed analysis of the decorative painting in an eighteenth-century theater in the Forbidden City in Beijing and previously completed ground-breaking studies of historic houses in Virginia and South Carolina. Chappell has led Colonial Williamsburg Foundation's architectural research efforts for a quarter century, a period during which new meticulous scholarship guided the restorations of important buildings like the Courthouse of 1770 and reconstruction of Shields Tavern and R. Charlton’s Coffee House.
November 9-10, 2012 - Field Study in Savannah
Last Year News and Events
8/15/2012 - New Additions to Conservation Lab
A CRAIC 308 PV™ spectrophotometer is the newest addition to the architectural conservation lab at the Clemson/College of Charleston Graduate Program in Historic Preservation in Charleston. Attached to the top of the labs new Nikon 80-I, the spectrophotometer can capture images and collect a range of spectra from microscopic samples as small as 1 micron. CRAIC ColorPro Chromaticity software will allow the spectral data to be expressed in CIE L*A*B* for precise analysis of colors in architectural paint cross section samples.
5/14/2012 - Congratulations to our Fourteen New Graduates!
Congratulations to our graduates who completed and defended their theses and obtained a Master of Science in Historic Preservation! Students participated in the College of Charleston Graduate Commencement on Friday night, May 11th. The ceremony was followed by an awards reception at 12 Bull Street, where the Ann Pamela Cunningham and Best Thesis Awards were announced. Faculty and staff enjoyed meeting and mingling with the families of the MSHP students that they had grown to know and advise for two memorable years. On Saturday the 12th, faculty, staff, students and family traveled over the rivers to Fenwick Hall to celebrate once more plantation-style. Students enjoyed showing their families the site that they frequently visited and thoroughly documented while studying in Charleston. Guests enjoyed the Lowcountry weather, barbecue, good music, and exploring the grounds of Fenwick Hall.
Ann Pamela Cunningham Award - Brittany Lavelle
Best Thesis Award - Jamie Wiedman - presented by Robert Gurley from Preservation Society of Charleston
Party at Fenwick Hall
Master of Science in Historic Preservation, Class of 2012
Ireland Fieldwork: Documenting Molana Abbey
Graduate students in the historic preservation program will spend much of the month of June documenting Molana Abbey in County Cork, Ireland. Working with archaeologists from University College, Cork in Ireland and Mercer University in the US, the team of historic preservation students will produce architectural documentation drawings and a conditions assessment report that will support stabilization and repairs to be carried out by the Irish Ancient Monuments Commission. Starting June 16, 2012, students will spend two weeks completing a map of the site as well as plans and elevation drawings of the ruin in an effort to figure out how the abbey changed over the course of its one thousand year history. “Molana Abbey is in need of repair and the drawings we produce will help guide the work of the masons and conservators who will follow us,” said Carter L. Hudgins, director of the MSHP program. “This was a unique opportunity for us. It’s not often that students have a chance to work with sites with this much time depth and assume responsibility for documentation that will shape repairs that will assure the abbey survives for another thousand years.” Part of the attraction of this project lies in the abbey’s ownership for a brief period in the late 16th century by English polymath Thomas Hariot, one of Sir Walter Raleigh’s protégés and the “science officer” of the second failed effort to establish an English colony on Roanoke Island in what is now North Carolina. The changes Hariot made to the abbey fit into a broader study of how the English colonization Ireland in the 16th and 17th centuries acted as a kind of dress rehearsal for the seventeenth-century colonization of Virginia and New England. Molana Abbey is located on Ballynatray Estate on the banks of the Blackwater River and is linked to the beginnings of Christianity in Ireland. Founded in 501AD, the abbey became an important early center of religious learning. The earliest surviving portions of the abbey are said to date to the 11th century.
- For more information, contact Allisyn Miller, Administrative Coordinator at allisym@clemson.edu
- Follow the blog at http://blogs.cofc.edu/hspv/
APT Coming to Charleston, Sept 29 to Oct 4, 2012
The Association for Preservation Technology will hold its annual conference in Charleston between September 29 and October 4, 2012. For further information see the APT 2012 Conference website:
GIS Workshop, April 30-May 2, 2012
Deidre McCarthy, historian and technical services specialist with the Heritage Documentation Program of the National Park Service, will conduct a three-day GIS workshop for First-Year MSHP students April 30-May 2, 2012. This workshop will review geographic information system (GIS) concepts combining spatial technologies and database management systems in the area of historic preservation. Participants will learn how to use GIS applications for identification, evaluation, protection, and preservation of cultural resources. Students will review how GIS can provide a better basis for planning and decision-making for the nation's heritage by assisting with inventories, mapping historic districts and battlefields, and mitigating the impact of disasters on historic areas.
10/1/2011 - MSHP Program Welcomes First Experts-In-Residence
The Clemson University / College of Charleston Graduate Program in Historic Preservation initiated a new program during the fall semester when it welcomed its first Historic Preservation Experts-in-Residence. Carl Lounsbury, senior architectural historian with the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, and Willie Graham, Colonial Williamsburg’s Curator of Architecture, spent two days in October reviewing and commenting on research conducted by MSHP students at Fenwick Hall and conducting an on-site workshop for First-Year Students on the identification and interpretation of architectural change at the Aiken-Rhett House. In addition to shadowing and coaching MSHP students, Graham and Lounsbury also presented lectures, Graham on the evolution of timber framing in the Chesapeake and Lounsbury on regionalism in early American building.
Architectural conservator and paint analyst Susan Buck assumed her residency in early November. A conservator in private practice who specializes in the conservation and analysis of historic architectural wall finishes, Buck is an innovator in the application of paint analysis as an archaeological tool to identify and interpret changes over time to interior wall finishes. Her lecture summarized her recent work sponsored by the World Monuments Fund conserving the interior of an 18th-century theater in the Imperial City in Beijing. Following her lecture, Buck led MSHP Second-Year students in a conservation lab course through a workshop on historic methods of painting that began with hand grinding pigments.
9/13/2011 - Historic preservation graduate students win prestigious competition
Two historic South Carolina buildings are the subjects of architectural documentation drawings by Clemson University and College of Charleston students that won both first and second prizes in the Charles E. Peterson Prize competition.
The annual awards, co-sponsored by the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) of the National Park Service, the Athenaeum of Philadelphia and the American Institute of Architects, recognize the best set of measured drawings prepared to Historic American Buildings Survey standards and donated to HABS by students.