#landmarkpreservation

Brownstone Construction and Restoration Brooklyn, Queens, NY

Our myMETRO Researcher Teams are hard at work this summer, gathering data and working toward deliverables of lasting value. Here's what our Landmark Preservation Team has been up to since our last check in:

After meeting with the Embankment Preservation Coalition group, our team decided to do an annotated bibliography focused on landmark preservation and adaptive reuse.  Since the project is focused on understanding the landscape and providing valuable resources, we decided to identify both specific resources about the Jersey City Embankment and general resources about landmark preservation.  

We met to discuss the best way to organize the work and divided it so that each member of the team could concentrate on different aspects of the project. Using a shared document, each team member documented his/her findings at the same time, which allowed everyone to stay abreast of our progress.  

Thus far, our main obstacle has to do with the allocation of research time. We've identified many resources, but it takes time to analyze and curate those resources. Our goal is to make sure that we provide resources that preservationist will value. We were very successful in finding a group to work with, which has been beneficial throughout the project.  

At this stage of the project, we are working on a categorization scheme that will organize the bibliography in an easy to use format.

Team Members: Steve Essig, Catey Farley, Rini Hughes, Robin Naughton

We’re in the second year of the myMETRO Researchers project, where teams of researchers unite to investigate topics relevant to the information field. We’re happy to report that we have a great bunch this year! And they’re willing to share their findings/experience as they go along. 

Our Landmark Preservation team is in the thick of their research on the political aspects of identifying and designating landmark status to and buildings and other spaces. They're taking their research to Jersey City, where a conversation regarding the preservation status of the Harsimus Stem Embankment, an elevated railroad structure, is currently under way.

In their own words:

Our group chose landmark preservation as a general topic for our research. We discovered a shared interest in adaptive reuse through our discussion of projects like the High Line and the Paramount Theatre.  Robin, one of our team members, mentioned the Embankment Preservation Coalition of Jersey City. The coalition is comprised of a group of volunteers that helped secure landmark status to an elevated railway line with the hope of developing it into a public space. We knew we wanted to work directly with an institution on our topic, so Robin offered to contact the Coalition to see if they would be interested in our assistance. 

We met with two members of the Embankment Preservation Coalition for some background on the research they’ve done over the years. When we asked if there were any particular issues on which they needed assistance, they provided a wish list of projects big and small.  After discussing the options, our group chose to work toward creating an annotated bibliography and we began posting resources to a shared website.

Team Members: Steve Essig, Catey Farley, Rini Hughes, Robin Naughton