Historic Preservation with Dr. Flavia Alaya

Speaker 2 (00:12.628)
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Welcome back to the Bridgerton Beacon. I have the privilege and honor on this chilly but sunny Sunday morning to have been invited into the beautiful home of Dr. Flavia Ayala and her husband Sandy Fadema. Dr. Alaya is a founder and acting director of Chaba.

the Center for Historic American Building Arts. And we're going to speak about how and why she founded Shaba and why historic preservation and specifically people centered historic preservation is so important to Bridgerton. Dr. Aliyah, welcome.

Thank you. Thank you very much for having me on.

Thank you for having me into your home. mentioned a couple of minutes ago that I grew up right around the corner from this beautiful home and it brings back a lot of memories to be back in this neighborhood. So thank you for having this time with me today. So you, as I mentioned, founder, acting director of Chaba and you landed in Bridgerton in 2006, PhD in literature and history, cultural.

Speaker 3 (01:51.502)
cultural studies and critical theory and analysis from Columbia University. You were inspired into housing and preservation activism on New York's West Side during the urban renewal phase. You were a founding faculty member at Ramapo College, still involved, I believe, in Patterson, New Jersey. And the list goes on and on. But you landed in Bridgeton in 2006.

and thereafter got involved and founded Chaba. Can you tell me how you came to come to our wonderful town of Bridgerton?

Well, it's a long story, but I'll try to abbreviate it because it's, you know, I left crumbs. So the transition from the West side to New Jersey was relatively easy. I was still teaching in New York, but it was cheaper to live in New Jersey than in New York. And I was beginning to raise a family. I was teaching at NYU uptown at the time. And so I started the family in Ridgefield, New Jersey. And then when

We were, my husband and I were able to afford to, we thought we were able to afford to buy a house and we continued to scope out Northern New Jersey for possibilities. And we would sort of look in the boonies, know, go up into Sussex County or into Northern Bergen County, Northern Perseia County. At every time we would travel that way, we would pass through Patterson.

And we both sort of looked at each other and said, God, this looks like it's an interesting place. So we decided to scope out what was available in Paterson at the time. And it was during the period of white flight. homes were very inexpensive actually, because a lot of people were leaving. And we managed to find a nice big old house on the East side in Paterson and raise the family there. So of course my husband was an historian. I'm a cultural historian. So the interest...

Speaker 2 (03:51.854)
in Patterson became the sort of launching pad for local history, what my late husband used to call scripting the landscape. And we would, we sort of interacted on that basis to find out what was the backstory of Patterson, which turns out to have been luminously interesting. I mean, I can't tell you and I'm still interested.

I'm still interested in Patterson history and I'm still working on Patterson history. In fact, I'm part of a National Council on Public History project on Patterson history. that happens to be African-American history, but it sort of integrates with the labor history of Patterson, which is a very strong focus of mine. I don't know whether you know that the 1913 silk strike is still considered that occurred in Patterson, is still considered one of the sort of landmark labor events in

American history. So that sort of historical background of Patterson sort of launched my public career as a public historian. I became the head of the Passaic County Historical Society. I launched several projects during that time that scripted the landscape, as I continue to put it, and reminded people of what was important to remember in the local history.

And my late husband, I say, who was a labor historian, used to remind us that all history is local, that it's happened somewhere. And so you can always trace it back to its roots in its local setting.

That's really what I was doing, was doing national history on a local basis. And I eventually became chair of the new historic preservation commission in Paterson when the labor history and that kind of industrial history of Paterson became sort of a national exercise in historicizing local communities. And I was part of a local history initiative. I became chair of the Paterson Historic Preservation Commission, as I said, and was

Speaker 2 (05:57.402)
a local activist. On the commission happened to be an architect who eventually was drawn to work here in Bridgerton. And once she, I'll make that a short story because it's a longer story, but she was drawn to Bridgerton by a historic preservation firm here in Bridgerton. I think that you know the, probably the...

Historic preservation was a big thing here in Richmond, the largest historic district in the state. And she, once she moved down here, kept in touch with me and said, you know, I think this is an interesting place. You're thinking about moving. My kids were all grown up. The house was too big. We were thinking of moving. And so Sandy and I, I was remarried by that time and Sandy and I scoped a place out and said, my God, this is perfect.

we're in right now.

Well, the town itself was perfect. You know, it was just the right mix of things for him and for me. And then when we chanced, at this house chanced to be available, we kind of moved on it as quickly as we could. So that's the back story.

That's Maria Moreno. She is still working as an architectural consultant and has worked for Penny Watson and Watson and Henry. So it was that firm, Watson and Henry, that used to be here, located here in Bridgeton. was a very famous firm. Actually, Michael, Henry and I were both representatives for New Jersey on the National Trust for Historic Preservation. And that's how we got to know each other well. so

Speaker 2 (07:34.892)
The impact of the relationship that we had with Michael extended to Maria and she, as I said, moved down to Bridgerton and told us that it was a place to look at when we were thinking about moving out of our big old house in Patterson. So that's, this seems like a big old house too, but it's smaller actually than the one we had. It was gigantic.

And it was great for raising three kids. The two boys had the whole top floor and my daughter had a big old bedroom overlooking the city basically. There was a big parking lot next door so she had an expansive view of town. My god it was. And I still, know, like, you know, the times we spent there, was really, really...

Is it hard to leave that home?

Speaker 2 (08:23.246)
a very impressive marking part of my life. As I say, I still work on Patterson history because Patterson is sort of endlessly historically interesting. And that investment in Patterson has continued to pay off tenfold, a hundredfold. And my children still feel tremendously attached to it. They, of course, associate it with their late father, who was, as I said, also a labor historian and left his own mark.

on the universe of history in Paterson. So yeah, it's still like a our soul city, you might say.

But it sounds like you embrace where you are. so when you embrace within a very short period of time, were the founder or one of the founders, you can correct me, of Chava. So the Center for Historic American Building Arts.

That's exactly right.

Speaker 2 (09:17.954)
Right. I had always wanted to start an organization, an historic preservation organization in Paterson. I was on the Paterson Historic Preservation Commission, but it wasn't the same thing. That was sort of an official board. And I wanted to start a community-based organization. And that hadn't happened. 2001 happened, you know, all kinds of disruptions to our community life happened at the turn of the century, as you know.

Patterson was really a center for anti-Muslim activism at that time because of the 2001 events. So it was a very, very wrought time. And when we had already decided that we were going to move on because we had this big old house and it was not productive.

for us physically or financially to stay there. So when Michael Henry and Maria Moreno recommended that we look at Bridgestone, was like love at first sight. And we happened on this house during our just search through the community to see what it looked like. And this one happened to be for sale at the moment. that was like a, you know, like star.

moment, like it was planned for us to be here. As I said, I always had wanted to start a preservation organization and this city, which has the largest historic district in the state, seemed like the perfect place to start an historic preservation organization that was ground-based, that was community-based, not necessarily official. It so happened that because of my interest in historic preservation, the then mayor at the time appointed me to the Historic District Commission.

here in Bridgerton. And so I got my sea legs, you might say, working within the governmental structure, the Preservation Commission here in Bridgerton, or the District Commission as it's called, and so began to interact with officialdom and began to see that there was a very stressed relationship between the official city government and the historic district. I tried to manipulate my role on the historic district commission.

Speaker 2 (11:41.72)
to encourage the city to invest more in its historic district, to utilize statewide monies that were available for historic district and so on, to organize them into activism on their own, on the city zone. But they were very tentative about it. And I think it was probably when I was fired from the historic district commission because I was maybe too zealous. Mayor Kelly thought...

that I was not in line with his own perspective on the future of Bridgerton, that I decided that it was time to launch a community-based organization.

the worst time you've dealt with competing interests.

Yes. Yes, of course. It's so interesting because the Bridgerton has a presence as the largest historic district in the state. It has an official historic district commission. It has all the infrastructure that should support an historic district, but it was very, you might say, conflicted about the

community development as a historic district and saw community development as the enemy of historic district. I think there was a racial element there too, and I don't think that we can exclude that as a factor in historic districts. I had experienced it in Paterson as well. Until we generated support for Hinchliffe Stadium, which had been a black baseball site, the community there...

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didn't feel like they trusted historic preservation to be favorable to the history of the community as a mixed community. I was also a activist in the survival of an underground railroad site and worked with the black community there in Patterson to save that site. And now it is nationally registered, not just nationally registered, but it's on the National Underground Railroad Program.

under the head of the National Park Service. So I had all the right credentials for interacting with a community that was becoming very mixed. But I still, because I was new, I was not a familiar name or a familiar activist in the community. I think there was a level of mistrust in Bridgerton about that. So although I was appointed to the district commission, I was disappointed from the commission shortly after Mayor Kelly became mayor.

And because there was this tension between the officialdom and the historic preservation community, I thought that it was timely to start a nonprofit organization and to make sure that it was as reflective of the community in all of its aspects as possible. So that's where the Bridgerton Center for Historical Area and Building Arts comes in. I was already working with Maria Moreno, who is an architect. So the architectural aspect of the district.

was feature and we really focused on starting with the architecture and then moving into the community history.

You said something I want to ask you about and I didn't realize this that Bridgton has the largest historical district in the state of New Jersey. That's right. I did not know that. Yeah, I did not know that. So can you explain that to me? You're a member of the Historic Sites Council, correct? Can you talk a little bit about that and how when you say that Bridgton has the largest historic

Speaker 2 (14:58.957)
Is that a?

Speaker 2 (15:06.712)
That's correct.

Speaker 2 (15:14.52)
district in the state of.

What does that really, what does that mean?

Okay, means, let's just go back for a minute to the Historic Sites Council. The Historic Sites Council is a statewide actual official board that reviews threats to registered historic properties, properties that are on the National Register. So.

I've had that official position since the turn of the century, basically, before I came to Bridgerton, already when I was in Patterson. And I've just succeeded in holding onto it because there is a tension between preservation and state government very often. State governments, especially progressive mayors and governors, want to develop. They want community development.

They want to see new building go on. They want to see investment. They think that historic preservation can be retrograde. It can hold investment back. So there is that tension always between what we do and what the civil society seems to think they want. One of the elements of my activism is that to demonstrate that development and historic preservation can go together. And the founding of Chaba is

Speaker 2 (16:39.394)
basically clarifying that connection between development and historic preservation. well before I came here, there had been an historic preservation movement, obviously, in the 1970s, that had defined, because of the Cape May, probably the Cape May thing had happened and bridged and said, we've got better stuff than Cape May, and why should we waste it?

So there was a big movement in the 1970s, long before I came to establish the historicity of Bridgerton. so they had the same historicized Cape May was invited to come to Bridgerton to declare an historic district in Bridgerton. And I often reflect on the history of that actual activity. The architect, the historic architect who was

The architectural historian, I should say, who did the survey, used to say, I went on until they told me to stop. And they finally, after naming 2,000 properties to the historic district, told them to stop.

So is it by property or is it by geographic space or is it?

Well, it's a little bit of both. Okay. You know, there are whole neighborhoods that are on the historic list. So this neighborhood, for example, the one we're in right now is essentially part of the historic district, but so is the downtown neighborhood. So is a section of the Pearl Street. So is the courthouse district. So there are, I think, five different sections of the very large historic district in Bridgerton, and they encompass these 2000 properties.

Speaker 3 (18:26.99)
Is there a website that someone can go to to see the list of

The Chava website actually has a map of the historic district on it. It doesn't, I think, I'm not sure that it has a link to the actual list of historic properties because the city has, of course, a list by address. It was on our old website. I don't know if it made it to our new website, but I hope so. In any case, I can send that to you.

Shaba, I think you have a new website. that a fairly new website? It's very, very, very nice.

Yes, we just updated our...

Thank you.

Speaker 3 (19:03.167)
that Chava is a laboratory for preservation, preservation for the people. Can you explain what that means, this idea of a people-centered preservation?

I love your asking that question. So glad you did. Because, you know, it's been my, a principle of my historic work that forgetting is more the practice of humankind than remembering. It's easier to forget because we move from generation to generation and not all of the information that is gathered by any particular generation is passed on to the next generation and

Of course, the next generation is very future oriented rather than past oriented and wants to often to forget. So forgetting is more of the practice of sort of humanism than remembering. So the practice of remembering is as important, if not more important, so that we know where we come from and what principles we have.

been saving and savoring for generations that are valuable to pass on from one generation to another. This is just sort of the basis of my outlook on intergenerational history that we need to remember rather than to forget. And often what we remember are things that are quite wonderful that we had allowed ourselves to forget. For example, the Underground Railroad work in Paterson.

had been largely forgotten, not by the black community, was fiercely convinced that it should be saved. But as the business community moved on and they became more futuristic and let's tear this down and let's build something new, those histories became sidelined. So that practice of forgetting happened here as well. It's part of the, you might say, the tension that I experienced between public civic government and historic preservation that

Speaker 2 (21:01.512)
I persist in remembering rather than forgetting, which is what community development really wants to do. Forget and build new and recreate rather than go back and reave the stories of the past. So as an historian, of course, as a cultural historian, I'm determined to not let that happen completely.

That is to say, I am also futuristic. I want some of the essential history of the past, and often that's people history, that's community activism, that's the efforts that people make that don't get registered in the next phase of government, let's say, that get forgotten. For example, we're working on the nail house right now. The nail house is the last remnant of an industrial cycle that bridged in, like Patterson, like other

industrial cities went through in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The city moved on from making nails and shaping iron goods. They developed a glass industry and that too evolved and left Bridgerton, a city much like Paterson that is post-industrial. Now the post-industrial aspect of Bridgerton is the of the wave of the future, right? But the industrial history of Bridgerton is the basis for the

post-industrial history, you can't have one without the other. And I love that nexus between those two things, those two phases of history, that in Bridgerton's case, they tore down all the buildings that were associated with the nail industry, except the nail house. And at the time the nail industry left, the city, which was pretty progressive at the time, decided they would not just buy the buildings that...

buy back the area that the nail industry had impacted, but all the upland watershed that the nail industry still owned.

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with the rice way and the lakes and the trees and the walks in the woods and the river and so on, they would take that saved watershed, which had been the basis for the nail industry when it was a water-based, a water-power-based industry, they would rescue that saved watershed and turn it into a city park. To me, that is the narrative of modernism, basically, the post-industrial narrative, where you go from grunge

as I call it, from industrial grunge to green. And that is the aspect of the history of the nail house that we want to narrate, that we want to save, that we want to say is not just regressive, but progressive, that it represents a stage of not just Bridgerton history, but American history, but world history, actually, that is looking to the future as well as recognizing the importance of the past.

to that future. So that's what the nail house represents to us in Chava and why we are investing so much of our energy in rescuing it.

Well, and you, Chava, received an award in 2021, a statewide preservation award for preservation innovation due to your book, which I understand began as a crowdsourcing script, right? This little building is huge. The that you did. I mean, the Cumberland Nail and Iron Works, the nail house, as we all refer to it as, you're right, has such a national tie. Yes.

Irwin Smith, Fair Acute Machinery Company, all of that. I see on your website you touch upon a lot of that. Exactly. But I don't know that a lot of people now recognize the really national significance of this, but you touched on something that I wanted to ask you about, and that is, and I think I know the answer to your question, but do you think that people are more invested or vested in the present and the future when they remember and honor the past? I is that what this is all about?

Speaker 2 (25:06.03)
Ask that question again.

Do you think that people can be more invested in the here and now if they remember and honor the past?

That's a really interesting way to put it. I think the answer is yes, because particularly in relation to industrial history, because, you know, American hegemony, you might say, its prominence in the world, on the world stage, arises from its industrial past. There is no American century, you might say, 20th century, no American century without industrial history.

without the industry. And there still is a powerful basis in American strength from its industrial base. It's different now from what it used to be.

Grunge to green. That's interesting to me because there are a lot of lessons that we've learned from industrial revolution, and bad. Yes. But they've led us to where we are now.

Speaker 2 (26:02.392)
Exactly.

Speaker 2 (26:08.482)
Yes, and that ability of ours to transition into a new kind of industrial hegemony is going to be the touchstone of our success as a nation, I believe. So we can tell the entire story of America from the nail house, basically, if you want to know it. We can tell the local story. We can tell the wider local story. We can tell the regional story and we can tell the national story.

That's right. All history is local, eventually.

Local history is national history.

Speaker 3 (26:46.446)
Shaba has developed historic guidelines, translated them into Spanish, has a home fronts program. Can you describe, is this a boots on the ground program? Can you describe maybe more specifically what that all is about?

Well, we started out, because I was on the Historic District Commission to begin with, and we started out as an organization wanting very much to communicate to new communities who had moved into Bridgestone what historic preservation was about. And we felt it was essential to do that by making the text of the historic guidelines available to people who were Spanish-speaking. So that was the motivation for translating the guidelines.

I must say Maria Moreno is bilingual, of course, was very instrumental in that. She didn't do the translation herself. She had a colleague do it, but she did review it and made sure that it was accessible to the local community. So that was a really important phase of our evolution. The guidelines then, because they were the first...

in the state and I couldn't find another one in the country, received an historic preservation award because they were communicating to new communities what was the importance of historic preservation in old communities. And to me and to us, that represented a bridge. You know, I often encounter very negative attitudes towards new immigration in this community. I have over the course of my time here, you know, families that had

been here for generations, looked upon the new immigration and the transition to a multilingual community as a downslide into some kind of, I don't know, negative pit of importance in the community. So that was a really, you might say I personally suffered through that because I am just by nature, I feel as though I bridge cultural communities. My sister has just done her DNA.

Speaker 2 (28:51.328)
I know how I bridge communities, you know. I'm Jewish, I'm Muslim, I'm Spanish, I'm French, I'm Italian, I'm Sicilian as well as Northern Italian. So I mean, I've got it all, that whole Mediterranean basis in my bloodstream. And there isn't anything more historical than that, you know. That's where history begins. You know, I don't know if you've ever looked at a history of the world, you know, the...

development of of the physical world, the geological history of the world. The Mediterranean basin basin was there at the beginning as everything sort of evolved. Millions of years ago, the Mediterranean basin was the sort of the launching pad for the entire world history.

Maybe it explains a lot for where you're coming from.

Yeah, I think to some extent it does. But a lot of people, I live in a community of activists who come from many, many backgrounds and still they share the passion for narrating, for scripting the landscape, for telling the stories, for saving the physical elements that tell that story, so that we can see it, so we can feel it, so we can touch it. So that is what I think drives our

outreach into communities of all languages and cultures because we want them to feel like they are invested in the narratives that continue to support them. You asked me another question that had to do with translating the guidelines and so on. Maybe I missed something.

Speaker 3 (30:25.326)
Well, I guess my question goes to, there's certainly a financial reality to owning and maintaining a home. So the idea of not necessarily renovating, but preserving homes is costly and it's hard, right? So how do you, what are the specific guidelines? What is this program?

Exactly.

Speaker 2 (30:47.438)
So.

Speaker 2 (30:53.998)
the world to achieve.

and help people maintain that integrity.

Right. That's why we translated the guidelines and why we have a short form of the guidelines that is both languages that we actually distribute free of charge and have asked the city to distribute to people who come in for approvals for their changes to homes. I don't know how activist the city government is in offering that opportunity to people who want to get approvals for their rehabs, but we make it available and we make our

services available to people who are homeowners free of charge and to people who are in businesses for a small fee.

Is that like a consulting? So in other words, you know, what, what can we do that will still maintain that integrity?

Speaker 2 (31:45.006)
Exactly right. I wish we had more people coming to us for that. We make it available. We have made the paperwork, the paper analysis of what we do, short form, as accessible as possible in two languages available in the city. But we very seldom get people who turn to us and say, what can we do? But we do get them. Occasionally we get them. I would say...

Maybe several times a year, somebody will turn to us and phone us and say, this is what we want to do. Can you help us get that approval? So it does work, but it's not simply not sufficiently fostered by the city itself to make it work better. I wish it were. I wish I could say that the people in the city government are

you know, more forthcoming about what's going on, that the district commission would invite us to help out applicants who might need help. I, you know, I wish that were, they were more activist in that regard, but they are not. We do have considerable support from the business administrator, Kevin Robago. I'd like to give him a shout out because he is, he's very interested in what we do. He thinks that we are.

helpful, he does promote our services when the opportunity presents itself to him. But he's not down in the nitty gritty of everyday encounters with people who want to make changes to their buildings. So he can't always interact, interface with so directly as we would need to. And we are not getting the reverberation, the recommendation that often would serve us as well as people who are.

who are now new homeowners or old homeowners who want to change their buildings into something that's more productive or more financially useful. So we're here, we're not as often tapped as we should be.

Speaker 3 (33:46.604)
Having grown up in a Victorian house, I know how hard it can be to have.

relevant to people who are in city government. I think that's the real challenge. They see history as irrelevant. The past is the past and now is now. But we have seen so many

really rich opportunities that have come through preservation. I have to resort to the Patterson experience because I think that it represents a futuristic outlook very often that is an example, an exemplar to the other communities. Hinschliffe Stadium, which you may know as a stadium that was owned by the school system in Patterson, a

original history as a black baseball stadium. It was the only place in the New York area that after the Yankees, the black Yankees were evicted from Yankee Stadium, hosted black baseball in the 1930s and 40s and into the 50s. And it became a school stadium and began to degenerate as the school's budgets came.

came apart. But I was on the Historic Preservation Commission at the time that a movement began to rescue it. And now it's a jewel of the community. The school system still owns it and conducts their services there and so on. But it has a baseball team. It has other activities that are sports related in it.

Speaker 2 (35:34.656)
It has a museum, is a mecca for people who are interested in sports history, especially black baseball history, which is very, very current. And of course, it's the pride of the local community. So this can happen.

Well, lesson is not to forget about what it was.

To forget and also to realize in more senses than one, not just to recognize, but to make real how history can be a driver of community development. That is the essence of the mission that I have in Chaba, that we have in Chaba, to encourage people to see that community development can begin at the roots of the historical communities that we own. And we should not.

lose them if they can still tell a story to the community of the present and the future. And Bridgerton has that possibility. It has that possibility in more ways than many communities in this state and many communities in the country.

Yeah, I've always said that Bridgton is a microcosm for the country.

Speaker 2 (36:44.322)
Yes, it is. And its multicultural aspect is that microcosm. It retains that microcosm even now. But it's many layered narrative about how the landscape is transformed into industry and then re-transformed back into, you know, like green space. That's the grunge to green story that's so important in America.

Speaking for just a few minutes specifically about Bridgton's architectural range, as Chava notes on its website, it's encyclopedic.

.

to Castle, High Victorian, to Classical Revival, to Modernist. That's a quote from the website. And that's so true. There are so many different gems throughout the town from noted architects from many, many, know, decades. Can you describe for me some of your favorite properties in town that have been preserved?

Well, it is a challenge. There's no question that it's a challenge and it's a challenge to convey to people that encyclopedic range, because there are people who love Victorian architecture and just think that, well, that's all we should preserve. And there are people who are futuristic and like the modern or modernist and say, well, Richard doesn't have enough that I'm.

Speaker 2 (38:04.814)
find myself often in this sort of double-speak thing. This world that I exist in because I want to preserve the oldest house, the oldest buildings and the newest if possible. Those that at least make the standard of the National Register that are at least 50 years old.

Some of my favorites are the modernist ones. And they have been so mistreated in Bridgerton because they are modernist, because people think, no, this is a Victorian city. And so we can't, you know, just spoil the picture of Bridgerton by saving these, you know, like modernist, like intruders to the Victorian district. But they are not intrusions to me. They are representatives of the sort of cultural awareness that people have in Bridgerton.

So there is a modernist house just down the street, which is often called the Frank Lloyd Wright House. Frank Lloyd Wright had nothing to do with it, but the architect who architected it obviously had been trained in that school, that Prairie Architecture School, and it's a wonderful example.

I've been in that home. A friend all through school, Randy Fishman, doctor and Mrs. Fishman. Yes, yes, So I've been in that house many years.

Yes, I know. I've talked to Dr. Fishman about it. It so galls me that the people who moved into it, they may love the house, but they didn't realize that the landscaping is as important to the house as the house, because the Prairie School is nature and culture together. And so those trees that obscured the house from the street, because

Speaker 2 (39:48.106)
After all, the architect knew this was a Victorian neighborhood and he deliberately obscured this modernist house in order not to obstruct the perspective on the Victorian neighborhood that the trees were protecting that house from an architectural being an architectural distraction, sore thumb, so to speak, even though it was a beautiful house in its own architectural way. So when they took down the trees, I wept.

They served a purpose.

Yeah, they served an architectural purpose and the historic district commission should have not let them do that. There's another modernist building. I had a tangle with the head of the district commission about it on the corner of names beginning to escape me. This is my problem as I age. The corner next to the hospital, Irving Avenue and Mannheim Avenue. was designed by a modernist Philadelphia architect. was a 19...

probably, the late 1960s, early 1970s building. Another sort of modernist gem. I saw that they were renovating it and I had a conversation with the head of the, now head of the Historic District Commission about it. Well, it's not included in the historic district literature and blah, blah, blah. He went on, you might want to cut that out, but so how can we protect it? Blah, blah, blah. I said, just make sure that they don't.

destroy it. That's all I'm asking.

Speaker 3 (41:22.03)
Well, you're so passionate about this.

about architecture, but I'm also passionate about recognizing that Bridgerton went through a transitional phase that said we are interested in architecture, not necessarily in history, but we are interested in architecture as well as in history. Let's put it that way.

And they're tied together.

And they, of course, are tied together by the built environment. But that was a phase of the cultural self-recognition of Bridgerton that, even if it doesn't meet the standards of the National Register, should be recognized. It's Bridgerton history. It's local concern about architecture. It's the passion for architecture that is being represented in those buildings.

And I think they are just as important as the Victorian buildings in this community. And I don't care if they don't meet some obligatory standard for the hearings that have to be held. You still hold them in your mind and your heart, and you try to effect some kind of dialogue about preserving them to the people who are renovating them.

Speaker 2 (42:41.836)
Interested in historic preservation, that's what you do. Even, you you don't always stay within the lines. You don't always color within the lines. You exceed the color within the lines objective sometimes. And I guess that's what makes me a preservationist with a difference. Why I irritate people, because I often want to color outside the lines.

That's okay. That's okay. That's how change gets made.

Yeah, and I am interested, of course, in change. Cultural change is my business. So I'm interested in how people interact with their own environments and experience them. Why I want to so much to take young people from the high school, you know, have tours, have them participate in activities that are related to the cultural environment. So it's very important. That's why I thought it was important to tell the story in Spanish as well as English. The book. Yeah.

and the guidelines.

Yes, and basically to honor the culture that is the culture of the future here, which is a bilingual culture as well as the culture of past.

Speaker 3 (43:48.298)
It's interesting to me that you and Sandy had an experience just outside this home. Right. With can you explain what happens with. Well, because to me that's. You know firsthand.

yes.

yeah, I'd love to.

Speaker 2 (44:03.886)
Yes, the two walls on either side of Commerce Street, just beyond the bridge, are the investment of the city, perhaps, from what I've gathered in the historicity of the landscape, they were investment in city in supporting the union effort in the Civil War. That was when

Oberlin Smith actually moved out of the Cumberland Ale and Ironworks and started his own business because he was, the first thing he made were tin lunch pails for the army, for the Union army. But the city needed to get where it was going fast and where it was going was Greenwich. Way to Greenwich from the nail industry, from the nail mill, was circuitous.

You know, it had to go up Atlantic Street and down Broad and then out to Greenwich, you know, by a circuitous route. They found that the Commerce Street route, which they had always wanted to develop anyway, would have made much more sense and made the progress of the trucks and so on faster. So my guess, because I have not found the actual documents to support it, my guess is that during the Civil War, they were able to bypass all protests.

by people here in Cohancey, because this is the section called Cohancey Township, to outvote all of those interests to preserve the distance between the Bridgerton city, multicultural, smoky, industrial city, and this well-heeled landscape on the cliff, that they were able to plow through that, literally, as well as figuratively, plow through the objections of the Cohancey Township and build the

the road through the bluff. They took out, I think, if I remember correctly, more than 25,000 cubic feet of earth out of that space and plowed a road through and, of course, had to build some kind of bulwark against the degradation of those properties that were confronting the road by building these walls.

Speaker 2 (46:19.018)
Yeah, my not my doorstep. So they built a sandstone wall here first, which was easy enough to build. And then as time went on, they built a granite wall on the other side. And that was it made financial good sense at the time. But the 150 year old wall began to deteriorate with the roots leaking rain through the wall and through the mortar and so on. And one morning a city official came to our door.

and said, you better clean up the road, the sidewalk in front of your property because we're going to start finding you. And we walked outside our door and found this pile of earth like 20 feet deep in front of our property.

scary because we are concerned about it ultimately potentially affecting the structural integrity of the home or the land that this house is

Sure, was distance enough from the house not to be, not to immediately affect us. But of course, the property is a beautiful property and it was obviously impacting a very, not just beautiful piece of earth, but a very historic piece of it. And we wanted to rebuild. There was no question about it, but it was going to be very, very expensive. And I'm sorry that we don't have the book to show you the engineer who helped us, who was God's sin.

to us

Speaker 3 (47:51.214)
It's okay.

That my brain is losing names. It was always a problem with my memory to remember names, but now it's getting worse. It's Jeff. Jeff. Jeff. What is his last name? my god. Sandy's gonna be so embarrassed and Jeff is gonna be like...

think about it and it'll come back to you, right?

Speaker 1 (48:11.906)
How could you f-

Ultimately you were able to

Yes. God damn it. Excuse me. Let me think for a minute.

Speaker 2 (48:22.06)
Why I'm blanking on his last name, I just can't believe. But he is, he's an engineer. He happened to be selling his house on Lake Street at the time and still here preparing his house for sale. And thank God, because he's now moved to Philadelphia. The collapse had happened before he moved. After he moved out, we would not have had his support. So he was the linchpin.

support for us there, it saved us a lot of engineering study money because the city needed to see that we were going to build it, rebuild it in a way that was safe. so we had to build concrete and steel back to the new wall and then refill the area that had collapsed and rebuild the wall to matching the original.

How's that take?

It took from 20, 22, about three years. Three, almost four.

I riding up and down and seeing the scaffolding and the work that was being done, but that gave you kind of a first-hand experience. mean, you'd lived in older homes your whole life. Yeah. It you a first experience of what it takes to be able to keep that restored.

Speaker 2 (49:38.966)
Yes, and of course we had always considered it an important feature of the house, that wall, of the... Not just the historical significance, but of course the landscape significance of it. the property that we're in right now is related to the shepherd house. The family of the shepherds also lived here. Granddaughter of the builder of the shepherd house lived here and raised her family. And when the

historical significance.

Speaker 2 (50:09.102)
the shepherd house became a school. The two of the teachers at the shepherd house, the girls school that became Ivy Hall lived here. So there was often a lot of activity on this property that was related to the very important history of the shepherd house as Ivy Hall. Girls used to probably recreate.

on this property, as well as on the property of the shepherd house itself, was much more ample. And they could dance and sing and play games up here the way they could not down. If only the walls could talk. If only walls could talk. But they do, you know, you find as we uncovered the, you know, as we rebuilt the the earthworks that supported that wall, we found objects in it that were related to the historic story of Bridgeton, both the iron mill

and the Shepard House history as a school. There are artifacts actually that contain some of that history. I have to add this element to that story. It was not just the engineer who helped us. It was the Mexican community that did because they brought with them to Bridgeton their skill sets as builders. They knew how to do concrete. They knew how to do stonework.

They knew how to use those old stones and place them into the wall and cement them into the wall in a way that was correct and that would last. If it had not been for the Mexican community, that wall would not exist. So I want that to be an important part of the conversation that you communicate through this narrative that we are now bonded inextricably to the Mexican community by that wall.

That's amazing.

Speaker 2 (52:01.132)
Yes, and they are also across the street, I might add, because that wall began to collapse, that granite wall began to collapse, and now they're refurbishing it. And if it were not also for the skill sets of the builder community in Bridgerton and in this area, who are largely immigrants, we would not be able to do that.

They are now part of the history of war.

They are indeed part of the history of the wall. Thank you.

just speak for a couple of minutes before we end this conversation and I could speak with you all afternoon. But this idea of life of academia versus a life of action, right? So you are an academic, you have been for decades, and I think a lot of people think it's one or the other. you seem to live in both worlds, life of academia, life of action.

Can you speak to that?

Speaker 2 (53:00.6)
That's question. I really appreciate that question. There is a bridge between them. In fact, I often find myself resorting to the historians who were also activists. I am now reading, for example, the work of B.E.B. Du Bois on the history of the Reconstruction. It's, first of all, course, very illuminating about how the book I'm reading is called Black Reconstruction in America. So it's...

integrates the history of Reconstruction more widely and concentrates on how African Americans were brought into the American cultural landscape through Reconstruction. B.B. Du Bois, of course, was also an activist, brilliant historian, very, very credentialed historian, but also was active in the political world. And so was my late husband, Henry J. Brown, a labor historian.

who was also very active in the civil rights movement, and then of course became an activist in the Patterson community before he died. I am sort of attracted to historians who feel a responsibility to carry their wisdom and their knowledge into the real world. I guess my own historical background and my interest in how it impacts immediate, know, lived culture.

was one of the things that attracted me to Harry Brown in the first place, because that was his schtick. And that's why we were such a great team in Patterson until he died. In some ways, my relationship with my present husband, Sandy Fetima, Edward Fetima, is based on that same kind of intersection. He is very interested in the...

texture of culture, the texture history of things, how material culture, you might say, he's not an anthropologist, he has no degree, but he knows how material culture tells the story of the past. So that is a common ground we have. And of course his work, which is to buy and sell and trade objects in material culture is a very present.

Speaker 2 (55:17.654)
activity that goes on in our household. So I feel as though I have been always attracted to that world, that history that lives in things, that lives in the landscape, that lives in the texture of our environment, that lives immediately in our present. I can't escape it. It's just been part of the, you might say the...

landscape of my own life. I was once asked by a community group what attracted me in the first place to historic preservation. And I thought back to my early, my girlhood. I grew up in New Rochelle, New York, which is an historic city in itself. The founders were escapees from the prejudices against activists and sort of Protestant activists in the world. And they had churches in New Rochelle.

It was sort of this French community that founded Neuerschel from La Rochelle in France. And they had a cemetery where they buried people from the 17th century and 18th. State put the road 95 throughway through Neuerschel. They didn't care. They plowed it right through that cemetery. There was no historic preservation movement at the time to protest.

I bet that bothered you as a little c-

my god, I was a teenager. I was a teenager and it bothered me. So it must have been something in my makeup that just resisted that kind of violation of the historic landscape. So it wasn't long before I found places to exercise that same intersection of the historic landscape with present activism. And I've just followed it at that path my whole life.

Speaker 3 (57:10.926)
So do you think that that idea of a life of action, action activism, is that the secret to a meaningful life?

that's an interesting question.

putting your words into action.

Well, I don't think it's the only secret to a meaningful life, but it is certainly a secret to mine. If it's a secret, it's important in my life. And it probably would be interesting, you know, that you've raised that question of culture as medicine, so to speak, culture as the cure for what ails you. Yeah, I think it is a way for academics like me, intellectuals like me, to feel as though my life is relevant to the present.

Why not? mean, you don't have to be an academic or a cultural historian to do what I do. Not all of the participants in our Chava are academics or historians, but it certainly helps. And it helps in terms of leadership, I suppose, because I have this, it's not just my interest in Bridgerton, it's not just my interest in Patterson or my...

Speaker 2 (58:23.724)
sort of local community service desire to serve the community that drives me. It is a much bigger, more comprehensive sort of motivation, sort of inner that defines my personality, that defines my objective in life to connect the real and the existent with what we remember or what we forget. I think that's probably one of the driving forces in my intellectual life is I think I've mentioned that

forgetting is more of a human activity than remembering and I am sort of anti-forgetting and that's my academic life and that's my activist life at the same time. Has that answered your question?

does. It does. if this conversation strikes a chord with anyone who is listening, what would you suggest that they do?

Call me.

Thank

Speaker 2 (59:30.656)
I would love to enlarge our board. I would love to enlarge the skill set. We have people who are invested in practical work of rebuilding. Maggie DiMarco, for example, is a skilled carpenter. Alan Meyer is also has, you know, really good with his hands. He's a builder as well as an engineer. They're both actually degree engineers, but they like.

hands-on kind of activities. We consist of people who are intellectuals, who are activists, who are interested in carpentry, who are interested in preservation, both in historic and a physical activity. It is a wonderful field if you bridge that kind of the intellectual and the physical and the practical.

Well, you have a new website as we mentioned and I will link it to this interview, but it is centerjbarts.org. And so I would invite all of our listeners to go onto the website and read more about everything.

By the way, the HAB part is like a marker. There is a program at the national parks level, which is called HABS, which is Historic American Buildings. I see. And that is why I preserved those initials in the center of the name. I see. Because I wanted to, for people to realize that it's Habitat.

that is being acknowledged in the HAB part and the Center on Arts part, so just sort of tags along with the Habitat part. Habitat is the most crucial element of the work we do. It is the part of it that recognizes the humanity and the humanism of the work we do.

Speaker 3 (01:01:21.494)
The Bridgerton Beacon would love to continue to shine a spotlight on all that you and everyone that's working with Chava has done and continue to do, really to help honor the past so that we can appreciate the present and the future, as you've said. Help script that landscape and help focus on why local history really is national history.

and international. It is human history, local history is human history, that's really important. Thank you very, very much for allowing me to this time to speak my truth, so to speak.

Thank you very much and I hope we can speak again very soon.

Thank you.