May is Preservation Month: This Place Matters!

May 1, 2011 May is Preservation Month: This Place Matters!

Posted at 09:43h in Blog by
HBI’s Jeffrey Gonyeau and Michael Tilford hang a banner on the Old Corner Bookstore in downtown Boston
Historic Boston, Inc. is celebrating Preservation Month 2011 by taking part in a campaign to show the world a few of the places that matter the most to our organization. To publicize Preservation Month and to draw attention to Boston?s significant historic resources, Historic Boston is adorning buildings in downtown Boston, Roxbury, Dorchester, Roslindale and Hyde Park with our banners.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation created Preservation Week in 1971 to spotlight grassroots preservation efforts in America. The event became so popular that it has grown into a month-long annual celebration observed nationwide.

To kick off our quick tour of HBI’s projects last Friday, we first hung the banner at our own building in downtown Boston, the Old Corner Bookstore (pictured above). 

Next, we traveled down Washington Street towards Chinatown to hang the banner from the stunning arched windows on the Hayden Building.  For more information on HBI’s current project at the Hayden Building, see this recent blog post.

This next photograph was taken of the This Place Matters banner affixed to the bracing outside of the Alvah Kittredge House in Roxbury’s Fort Hill/Highland Park neighborhood.  Pictured are Kate and Peter, HBI interns, alongside a few neighbors of the Kittredge House. ?To learn more about HBI’s involvement with the Kittredge House, see this recent blog post.
Our group then headed to Dorchester, where we adorned the ever-transforming facade of the Anna Clapp Harris Smith house with a banner. ?
We then traveled down the road to Fields Corner, also in Dorchester, where another banner was seen first at the nearly completed Golden Building.  The kids upstairs at Dorchester Youth Colloborative (DYC) are excited about the building’s new look, and were nice enough to pose in a few pictures with Senior Project Manager Jeffrey Gonyeau and DYC director Emmet Folgert.

 Next we traveled up Dorchester Avenue to the Lenox Building, where Jeff has been working with the owners to start a project similar to the work completed at Golden Building through HBI’s Historic Neighborhood Centers program. Work on the Lenox Building is scheduled to begin this week.

Meanwhile, across town, we had some help from our partners at Lee Kennedy at the Eustis Street Fire House (above) and from the Boston Redevelopment Authority (and their bucket truck), who put up the banner on the Roslindale Substation (below).

As you can see, it was an eventful day, and we are excited to have our banners up on buildings across the city. The campaign encourages everyone to think about the places in Boston that matter to you, too. So tell us, what historic buildings or places matter the most to YOU in Boston? Let us know in the comments below and join Historic Boston in proclaiming ?This Place Matters!” about the historic buildings and places in Boston that matter the most to you.