Madison Advanced Internship Network

And just like that, the MAIN Program has ended for the summer. I had the most amazing time working in City Hall this summer and I learned to much. I couldn’t have imagined a better program in a cooler town, but the best part was the great group of interns! 

Summer fun under the yellow sun, Mikey and his new pals had a great run. Unfortunately, our time has come, our lovely internship is now done. For the past few weeks I and many of my coworkers have been able to keep our goal and stride of keeping the children at the Boy’s and Girl’s club challenged mentally and physically. We did so by planning field trips to the children’s museum, helping solve the situations that the children were involved in, and improving on the children’s weaknesses. Unfortunately, my time directing and aiding the children and my coworkers has come to an end. We have broke it to the children gently about my leave. However, I believe it will be a harder adjustment for me to leave than it will be for them. All in all, it was great having fun in the sun with the children and my Co-interns.

To wrap up my internship, a “Paint-Up/Fix-Up” day was scheduled with the volunteers of Madison Main Street’s design committee for Wednesday, July 29.  However, with the heat index predicted to be well over 100 degrees tomorrow, we were forced to cancel the project.  While it is disappointing to leave without completing this project, I value the experience of working with Whitney and Madison Main Street, as well as the volunteers that make up this great organization, who believe strongly in the importance of downtown and volunteer their time to effect change in their community.

At Historic Madison, we continue to work at completing the Urban Outbuilding Survey, which has been a great experience walking the alleys, meeting people, and seeing Madison from a very different perspective - the back side!  Today my co-workers at HMI honored Leah (another intern working for them) and me by taking us to lunch at my absolute favorite Madison restaurant, Key West Shrimp House.  A great meal and a great time!  This group has been so wonderful to work with, and have really made me feel like part of the “family” there.  

While I am more than anxious to get back to my family (who are busy showing hogs at the Elkhart County 4H Fair - second largest in the nation), I will certainly miss the people I have worked with and learned to know through my internship.  We plan to be back in Madison in October and December, and can now enjoy new-found friends as well as great architecture.  I am deeply grateful for this experience, and am anxious to see where the future takes me as I use the knowledge gained from this internship and pursue employment in the field of historic preservation.

Learning tuckpointing - even better the second time with power tools!  :)

Trading this beautiful view . . .

The MAIN interns are featured in the Madison Courier today! We had a great time at the interview making each other laugh but also think about the conclusion of the program. Here’s a picture of us (and Andrew Forrester)!

This past week was very busy, as Historic Madison’s property, the AME Church on Fifth Street was flooded in the basement and one foot into the sanctuary, and the basement of the Saddletree Factory flooded as well.  Lots of time was spent mopping, shoveling, moving art work, and dealing with contractors.  I was lucky, and got to man the office phones rather than shovel.  :)  Today the interns toured the church, which is drying nicely, with only lots of fans and a pile of debris in the back as a reminder of how quickly things change when you are by a creek in a rainy summer.  

Monday we toured the Schroeder Saddle Tree Factory.  There is a nice wooden chair in the front room which has been replicated by Don Weist, who has detailed the parts and procedures necessary to create it.  My project this week is to turn his instructions into a booklet to be sold at Saddletree.  Look for it in the near future.

Debris from the basement of AME Church.

This past week, I attended the Garden Club of Madison Monthly meeting. The ladies brought their favorite tea cups and we watched a movie about the White House gardens. What a treat! At the first intern preservation lecture series, Deb, Marcia, and Ethan presented about, second story downtown, parklets, and cultural landscapes. I was able to visit Louisville on Saturday! I saw the Louisville Slugger Museum, the art gallery at 21C, and crossed the pedestrian bridge over a very high Ohio River.

These past few weeks have flown by and have been extremely busy! This week has been really busy in City Hall with budget meetings and the recent flooding. It’s been amazing to see a community come together so quickly to help out the residents who have been flooded out of their homes. Luckily the cleanup effort is well underway and people have been able to return to their homes or have shelter somewhere in the community. There’s still some work to be done, but it’s coming along! 

This week, we had the chance to tour Dr. Hutching’s house in Madison, which was at one point the only hospital between Louisville and Cincinnati. Needless to say, he was very well known in the area! It was the first hospital in town and was extremely small - only 2 rooms on each floor. After he passed away, the house was locked for almost 70 years before someone went back inside, so everything in the house is original and was used by the Doctor - it’s amazing! Recently I’ve also been working on a rehabilitation project for a local resident, and got to go inside her home and assess what work will need to be done. 

With the window display project behind me, I branched out this week to walk through much more of Madison from a different vantage point - taking the alleys.  Historic Madison, Inc. partnered with the Mayor’s Eagles a couple years ago to do a survey of Urban Outbuildings.  You can read more about it if you check out their window display at 133 East Main.  Although many buildings were recorded in the original survey, there is still a large area left to do, so that is my “spare time” project.  Madison is noted for it’s amazing and varied architecture, but the focus tends to be on houses, churches, and commercial structures.  Unbeknownst to many is the large number of historic outbuildings that dot the alleys of town, including carriage houses, barns, sheds, chicken houses, and outhouses.  Some are abandoned and covered in vines, some are still in use, others have been creatively repurposed.  All are fascinating.  A geocache-type tour is being developed, but you can discover some of these amazing structures yourself if you take some time to walk the alleys and find what lies behind the big (and little) houses of historic Madison!

Hello tumblr!

It’s been a while. I’ve been mostly working on fundraising and odd jobs around City Hall. I’ve really enjoyed getting to know everyone better here. I feel like I discover something new about Madison every day. I’ve really loved the host dinners with Madison community members. I wish I had remembered to take pictures at last night’s host dinner at the Nyeberg’s. Kim and John seemed so excited to have us and I know that a lot of the interns had a lot of fun.

Also the American Queen steamboat is in town right now so I took a picture of it this morning!

Until next time!