1995-01-22: This Old House: Historic Preservation in Virginia (part 1)

Vol. III, No. IV

Transcription:

UVA WITH GOOD REASON
Volume II, Number

Richard Guy Wilson,
Richard Couture, LC

This Old House:Historic Preservation in Virginia
Greeting
From private homes to mini-marts, Virginia's famous Colonial
architecture has influenced builders across the nation.
Next on
With Good Reason --what makes Virginia architecture unique. I'm
Laura Womack.
Music
Background
When we think of Virginia architecture, elegant Colonial homes with their graceful white columns come to mind. Or the sprawling
plantation houses with their huge lawns that line the James River East of Richmond. The state's architectural legacy is it's luxurious country estates built for the wealthy of yesteryear.
But what of Virginia's urban architecture? Or dwellings for the more modest? And haven't we built anything worth remembering in the last century? Today we're talking about Virginia's
architectural history and efforts to preserve some mementos of
that past. We'll be joined in a moment by an architectural
historian and a chronicler of the preservation movement.

Right now Carolyn Elliott reports on these on-going efforts to
decide which buildings shouldn't be paved over --literally.
(Sound of a car driving down a gravel road comes up)
Beckett
This is the hamlet of Evergreen, which was established about
1855, it's just a nice farming, very rural area and, in
fact, up in front of us is a nice two-story log house. This
house here is about 1825e
Over to the right we discovered what we think is an india nmound, which is unusual and you can see it, it's right over the flood plain where that tree is.
Elliott
It's a clear, breezy fall day, in the rural hill country of
Southwest Virginia, as Ann Beckett winds her car down route 655.Residents here --who are mostly farmers --want this 2.1 mile
stretch of gravel road paved and widened. But the graters can'tstart their engines, until Beckett has finished her job. She is an architectural historian for the College of William and Mary who was hired by the Highway Department to survey this area for
historic houses the new road may affect.
Beckett First I just drive up and down the road to see what's here. Get a brief overview of the houses and I have to determine which of the houses are fifty years of age or older. That's the first thing I have to do to determine their historic significance. And then usually, I'll park the car and get a little bit closer to each one of them and knock on the door talk to the people and survey it and fill out a form and get some photographs.
Elliott
So you know everybody in the neighborhood by the time you're done?
Beckett Yes I do and their dogs too.
Elliott
This stretch of remote road turns out to be architecturally and
archaeologically rich. Beckett and an archeologist from William and Mary first surveyed the area last summer. Two structures the log house and the indian mound --merit further research.
(Car door slams. Cows moo.)
Elliott
So, this is just feed storage and tool storage?
Panel
Yeah.
Elliott
This is a nice house.
Panel
It was done a little bit better than what the first ones coming through really.
Elliott
Yeah, it's two-story and
Beckett
Yeah, I think that would be real unusual in a log house that you would have the paneled wainscoting and this and you have the nice --the trim over the panel doors and those are just unusual features.
Elliott
The log house is one of four buildings on D.C. Panel's farm that date back to the nineteenth century. The new road won't affect the buildings but it will cut into Panel's property.
(Sounds of milling around the building up)
Beckett
So I have to photograph all the houses, inside and out, every room. Any details, fireplaces, mantels, trim doors and then we are going to make a site plan of this whole
farmstead.
Elliott
The farmstead includes some rare buildings like a stone
springhouse.
Door opens. Bring up running water.
Beckett
It probably dates to the German phase, which would be 1790's
or somewhere in there. And it's been running continuously.
(drinks water)
Beckett
Whew, You're next.
Elliott
Did you know that when you got a new road it was going to include all these people to coming and spending all this time on your property to see if these buildings
were historic?
Panel
I had no idea. But that's alright maybe that's one of the
advantages of the road coming through.
Elliott
When Beckett finishes her job, a historian will research the
site. The final report will include archeological drawings and a
history of the farmstead and the area. The bid for Beckett's
additional research on the Panel house and for her partners
archeological work on the indian mound is around $20,000. The
initial survey on the road ran about $8000.
A few miles from Beckett's road, Mac Mcilhany, is doing a similar
survey for another highway job.
Mcilhany
The bridge is on route 11, which crosses Reed Creek here in
Wythe County, was built in 1931. It's what you call an underdeck truss bridge. And we're planning on replacing the bridge right now and before we can do that we wanted to find out if the bridge were historically significant. And that's
the reason we had the phase two study done to find out you know, is it a rare survivor of this type of bridge? Is it the only one of it's type or is it architecturally
significant? Results of the survey so far are that the bridge is not considered significant.
Elliott
The bid VDOT employs five archeologist and five architectural
historians, like Mcilhany, full time. In the past five years on the job, Mcilhany has uncovered indian
campgrounds, pieced together life in a mining camp and traced the origins of old bridges. When the workload gets too heavy forMcilhany and his assistant, he contracts out jobs to organizations like William and Mary.
The Virginia Department of Highways surveys more than 1,000 road projects like these every year. Under the Historic Preservation
Act, passed by Congress in 1966, VDOT is required to run a cultural survey on federal highway projects. Five years ago, the State of Virginia enacted similar guidelines for state road
projects.
Tony Opperman is preservation program manager for the Virginia Department of Transportation.
Opperman
Well, for state-funded projects, many of those also have federal permits attached to them. So, if we were to wait until we knew what permit action was going to happen, we'd be acting very late so it's much more practical for us to deal with state-funded projects in a manner that's entirely comparable with the way we deal with federal projects. From
a more philosophical standpoint, what we are attempting to
do is to balance two different values of the Commonwealth of Virginia --one value being for transportation, and the other value that I think everybody will recognize is historic preservation.
Elliott
Opperman says the Highway Department moves roads to avoid
historically significant structures when they can.
Opperman
Well, I think a good example of this was an incident that
happened earlier this year in the Western part of the state. In which, at a very late point in the development of a project, we discovered the presence of a native American burial cave. And --as I said --this was at the last minute but we took actions to shift the alignment of the road to avoid the cave and we also took and action to protect the remains inside the cave by erecting a particular type of
protective gate called a bat-gate and the bat gate keeps people out and allows the cave to continue to be used as bat habitat. These actions were very economical on the part of the Commonwealth of Virginia and resulted in the long-term preservation of probably one of the most important small native american sites in the western part of the state.
Elliott
David Dutton is director of project review for the Virginia
Department of Historic Resources.
Dutton
Now that we have a system in place
Elliott
But even after all of this is done the property still doesn't
automatically go on the historic register.
Dutton
One thing we do encourage...
Elliott
Reporting from Southwest Virginia, With Good Reason, this is
Carolyn Elliott.