Material Matters w/ Jacqui Hogans

  From historic homes to modern architecture, brick is one of the most popular building materials around the world. How to allow the house to bridge the gap between the history of the site, the approachability of this kind of architecture in this kind of neighborhood, and the sort of nostalgia of materiality for the client's past, right?

And, and Brick really started to provide an answer for that. Hi, I'm Doug Patt and this is Design Vault.  There aren't many materials that easily blend with any style and context, but Brick does just that. I've seen some extraordinary work with Brick. So when Glen Gary approached me about hosting this podcast, I couldn't say no.

Typically, Tudor-style houses from outside are just stunningly gorgeous piece of structure. And when you go in, it's just sad. Yeah. Dark.  And that is not going to happen with my approach to design. I speak with industry leaders and share inspiring stories behind their work and ingenious design. You'll see brick that's fashioned into basket weave patterns, sawtooth patterns.

What's known in England is diapering. It doesn't sound like you knew them per se, right? They found you through relationships that you had with others. Well, wait, Doug, there's more. Okay.  We'll go behind the scenes to understand process and even the inspiration that sparked the design. You know, I think we were inspired by all the factory buildings in Dumbo.

I mean, that is the kind of period of significance that early American factory building. DesignVault by Glengarry. Visit Glengarry. com forward slash design dash vault or search for DesignVault wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe now to stretch your imagination. 

We talk about all these buildings, but it's only been very recently that you acknowledge who actually did the work or even with the land acknowledgments that you, when you go to events now they'll like we acknowledge that we're on. Lenape land or  Miwok land like San Francisco. So we're expanding. 

Welcome to Tangible Remnants. I'm Nakita Reed, and this is my show where I explore the interconnectedness of architecture, preservation, sustainability, race, and gender. I'm excited that you're here. So let's get into it.  Welcome back. This week's episode features an insightful conversation with Jackie Hogan's.

I learned a number of interesting things throughout this episode. Things I'd never thought of, like how salty is fog and how does that salt impact building materials? Right? Never thought about it. Super interesting. Jackie and I connected on LinkedIn and I love seeing her post various images of her on scaffolding and learning more about masonry through her masonry Monday tips. 

I was so excited to chat with her because I really wanted to highlight her story and how her work is another super impactful way that you can work with the built environment, help preserve history and literally save people's lives.  So let me share with you her bio to give you more context for our conversation. 

With nearly 20 years experience in historic restoration and building envelope space, Jackie knows facades. She cut her teeth working in New York City on projects ranging from the Guggenheim Museum and the American Museum of Natural History to inspection and repair of numerous office buildings and high-rise residential buildings. 

A decade ago, Jackie decided to head west to San Francisco, where she now serves as a project manager at McInnes Chen Associates,  consulting on remedial and historic repair programs in addition to consulting on new construction projects.  Jackie managed the mosaic restoration of Oakland's storied Paramount Theater, which won several awards, including the Governor's Historic Preservation Award and the California Preservation Design Award. 

Jackie manages and designs historic preservation projects and remedial facade repair projects, leading a team of architects, engineers, and technical staff. She has affectionately dubbed,  She also directs the inspection of historic buildings as part of San Francisco's new Facade Inspection and Maintenance Ordinance,  and  If that wasn't enough, she also heads up MCA's East Coast presence of her new home base in the New York City area. 

She has a special interest in historic brick and stone and shares her love of masonry each Monday on LinkedIn, hashtag masonry Mondays.  Jackie is a registered architect in both California and New York state and holds a Master of Science in Historic Preservation from Columbia University. She earned her BA in Architectural Studies from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

And when she's not hanging off buildings. She enjoys running on purpose. She's run three marathons. She's also really into indoor cycling, reading about historic architecture, traveling, and spending time with her family.  This conversation was such a good time and helped me understand more about the policy and facade inspections in place to help keep us all safe as we're walking around cities.

As you're listening, feel free to head over to the podcast Instagram page at tangible remnants to see some snapshots of Jackie's photos from her Masonry Monday post. Share this episode with a friend or someone in your life who could be interested in learning more about facade inspections in cities around the country.

All right. Here we go. Without further ado, please enjoy this conversation between me and Jackie Huggins. 

So I am super excited to have you on the show today, particularly because I found you online and was doing a little bit of a fangirling and stalking a little bit, particularly with your Masonry Mondays. And so I was really excited to be able to connect with you more. And I would love to hear more about your journey into the profession.

Okay. So I,  I guess my, initially my foray into this role is probably not completely surprising. I grew up, when I was growing up, my father renovated the house that he and his 12 siblings grew up in.  It was constructed in the early 1940s, kind of a typical Gulf Coast-style wood frame home. And so that was kind of one of the things that, you know, he'd bring us along on the, because he did it like nights and weekends.

So. Yeah, it was always.  There's always some sort of construction thing going on. So that was,  you know, the idea of not taking care of your family home. Never, it was never a thought, you know, his siblings and their kids. Now they've really, it's really considered like the families, the center of things in the family.

So that's, that's great. Um, he's done, you know, he's done a few different projects on it. He originally renovated it to rent out.  And then later on, just as like a place for family to come when they're in town. And  so that's kind of this backdrop. Then also I grew up just near Seaside, Florida,  the new, the new urbanist community, and  it's really purist in terms of new urbanism,  like it's very academic and it's changed a lot, but over the past 25 or about 25 years ago, it was really a destination for artists and architects and poets, particularly in the winter.

Because it's Florida and there's not a lot of demand, they would have these winter residences where architects or city planners would come in and talk about what they did. And I remember going to those a couple of times as a kid or teenager.  So I  attended those as a teenager and every time something about Seaside or the new urbanism,  if I ever had the opportunity to listen to a lecture or meet one of the people, I always did it.

So.  So were you thinking as you were growing up that you would be definitely like an architect or were you thinking more like in construction or builder or what was your mindset as you were going to school? I thought urban planning and historic preservation. I thought more like  preservation advocacy. 

And I went to college, I went to Brown and Brown is right in the middle of a historic district that came about specifically because Brown Expanded its footprint so much. And so stealthily during the forties and fifties,  yeah, I actually wrote my senior thesis about just their very discreet land grab, you know, they were just like very quietly picking up property from, you know, some of these. 

Georgian homes. And some of them were just like wood frame houses without any historic significance, but some of them actually were very significant.  And the Providence Preservation Society grew out of that pushback from the, against the university. And the College Hill Historic District was one of the first, you know, Kind of getting people to wake up in terms of town-gown relations and how, how interesting.

Yeah, it was super interesting. Like I ended up learning a lot about the way that universities build and develop and post-war post-war college development, which was super interesting because of the GI bill and. Right. And he was allowed to use it and all that sort of thing too. Right. Yeah. It was very interesting.

And like how the president of Brown at that time really wanted to reform the fraternities.  And I was reading some of the news articles and this is  45, 1945, 1946. It made Animal House seem like an episode of Puppet Pig. Wow. Yeah.  So that was amazing. It was just interesting to write this like, and also how Very long story short, the, this massive expansion was in part funded by John D.

Rockefeller who attended Brown and he brought on his architect who The restoration of historic Williamsburg. Uh, right. So these are all like reinforced concrete buildings with like this Georgian brick cladding that look like they're from like the 1820s were actually from 1946 and 1958. Man, theme parks were a thing.

Yeah. So, um, so yeah, that's kind of that background of how I started developing  Kind of like refining the interest in preservation. I took some great fieldwork classes and that was kind of where I decided, where I realized I liked to be out and about like doing fieldwork. Yeah. Cause that's one of the things that I've noticed about like your postings on LinkedIn and things like, I'm like, Jackie is always off a scaffolding somewhere and I love to see it.

Yeah. And I, I love being outside specifically for, for work.  It's great. Yeah.  And so then, where did you then go get licensed and all that? Oh yeah, so I  went to Rome as a junior, thinking that I was going to become like an architectural historian and kind of go from that. That aspect, but then we started going on like seeing all of the build the, you know, the works of our ancient and renaissance Rome and one of our studios was an industrial part of Rome and working on the preservation policy, more like preservation policy and planning.

And I was like, okay, well, this is kind of more my speed. So I changed courses immediately upon returning to the United States and started applying for programs in historic preservation. I ended up at Columbia, said I was going to be in New York for the two years for that program. Eleven years later, we moved to San Francisco and I became licensed in California.

Did some really cool work adjacent to California Historic Parks. Or sorry, California state parks.  They acquire a lot of property that has a lot of history. People feed it to the state or they end up acquiring it for whatever reason. And there's a lot of very rich history, like the Redwood State National Park.

There's a whole history. And, you know, I didn't know that they wait when they wait for, they wait for. a tree to fall to do repairs on buildings because that's the redwood. They don't want to actively cut a tree down. That makes sense. They just kind of wait for it to fall down because one falls down every so often, you know, young, right?

Right. And that's where they get the wood for the shingles, the shakes.  Wow. I mean, I like that that's that your conservation ethos and that, you know, like, we'll wait for it. It'll happen. Like that stewardship. That's it. That's great. That's interesting. Yeah. In California, I, you know, I'd been in New York working for 10 years before moving to California and in New York, we did a lot of facade restoration work and there's a lot of lip service to. 

Sustainability, you know, if you're not doing design, like they just didn't really care, um, you know, we all know that the greenest building is one that's already been built, but in California, it just seemed like it was much more like the sustainability was just much more part of the ethos. I mean, even in new construction, you know, they have very strict VOC standards and you know, it's just a much, the po the policy, California Environmental Quality Act or CEQA.

Is what drives most historic preservation in the state. So the environment and preservation really go hand in hand. Yeah, that's fantastic. And I think that California is definitely leading the way and a lot of the environmental items. And then I know from combining historic and sustainable, Maryland is also pretty much up there because Maryland also is 1 of the few states where, um, if you're going after historic tax credits, you can actually get an extra 5 percent if you're building is certified lead gold, or.

Another qualified rating system.  And so it's one of those few states where I'm excited where it's like, yes, look, we can work together. They're not two separate things. Like, right. And we shouldn't be at all. Exactly. Exactly. And so I would love to hear more though, about some of the facade experience. Cause I think that's something that's always so fascinating to me.

What happens with our buildings once they're up and how are they maintained? And sort of, what are some of the things that you're checking for when you're doing some of the facade maintenance work? Yeah. So we'll put buildings up and we don't necessarily pay attention to what happens to them unless they're the white house or,  you know, some huge, like a national level significance, sometimes local level significance.

I started working in facade,  facade inspections and restoration after grad school, living in New York.  We did, uh, I worked for a couple of firms that specialize almost either almost entirely on the facade ordinances or just it was kind of their way to subsidize some of their more fancy preservation projects.

So New York is the oldest and the most strict facade ordinance in the country. I know I haven't done an inspection there in some time, but I know now that you have to take, uh, the responsible professional has to take a selfie on site. And they actually do destructive testing during the inspection to make sure that it makes sure ties are anchored properly and they're in good condition.

While they're doing destructive testing on site, not even just like, Yeah, they have to do that. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. That's amazing. Okay. Cool. Cool. Yeah. And like the selfies and everything's kind of become a response to different tragedies, unfortunately. So I had all this background and, you know, we would do the inspection.

And in many, most cases, there's some repair that has to be done. And I would typically project manage a repair program or, or being, it's, you know, uh, working under a more senior architect, which is early in my career.  And, you know, you're looking for crack bricks, shifting bricks, open mortar joint, you know, being in New York, you're dealing with a lot of freeze ball.

Mm. Mm. Mm.  You're dealing with a lot of just the impact of water infiltration followed by freezing and that. You're dealing with a lot of that. You're dealing with obviously deferred maintenance, right? You know, but the New York to New York's benefit, their facade ordinance is every 5 years. So, you're getting a little bit more, you're getting some hands on the building and. 

Obviously, for some buildings, you're following New York City landmarks requirements. Others you're not necessarily, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're not doing the same things.  Gotcha. Because just because it's the law says you have to protect this building doesn't mean that other buildings don't deserve the same protection.

Right. And hang on, I want to pause for a second because I realize that some of our, when we, when you say freeze-thaw, some of the listeners may not know what that means, the impact of it. You know what I mean? So I'll let you elaborate.  So one of the big issues that we dealt with, you know, you deal with in the Northeast and some, you know, some parts of the rest of the country, but primarily the Northeast and Upper Midwest is freeze-thaw.

Where it refers to water entering the building during times of,  you know, moderate weather, freezing during cold periods. And as the water enters the masonry or concrete. It's going to expand and that can, that can accelerate the deterioration of the building fabric. So cracked bricks, cracked mortar joints, spalls and concrete, you'll see that a lot.

Yep. For a lot of the masonry weathering issues, sometimes if you just see, if it looks like there were a face of a brick has popped off or there's something almost, it's always going to come down to, Oh, probably freeze fall. That was one of the issues. So now, you know, tip of the day.  Okay. Sorry, continue. 

Oh, yeah. So we're looking, you know, we're looking for those, that deterioration. You know, one of the interesting things too, is like pulling out, you know, once you're on the building because the, uh, the ASTM standard for Facade ordinances,  it defines a detailed inspection as being six feet or less from the face of the building.

Oh, okay.  So, but when you're that close, you see a lot of things up, you see a lot of things intimately, but it's not until you maybe cross the street to look at the building or look at your markups.  You know, you look at your drawing markups that you start seeing a pattern, right? Right. You start seeing a system.

You start seeing the cracks are worse along the line adjacent to the elevator bay, or you start seeing all this stuff. So a lot of it is. And then once we've prepared the report, sharing it with the building owner and users,  and obviously planning for any necessary repair program, because that's, you know, that's It's expensive, and it's not just the actual repair, it's mobilization, it's sidewalk protection, which is necessary, you know, you want to protect the sidewalk during this work.

Hazardous materials abatement is always an issue.  Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, because I think that's also something that, I know sometimes people complain about, like, oh, the scaffolding around the city, there's so much construction, but a lot of times that scaffolding is there to protect people walking on the sidewalk from things that may or may not be falling off the building, or any of, you know, And you have that health, safety and welfare stuff that needs to happen, right?

And one of the relatively recently, an architect was, was killed in New York when a piece of terracotta, I think it was terracotta from a building in Midtown fell and hit her thing was this building had a sidewalk shed in New York. Once you're building, once you haven't done your inspections, as opposed to the city requires you to install a sidewalk protection. 

A lot of times building owners will do that because it's. 500 a linear foot for a building. If you just have one face of the building,  that's much less expensive than doing the repair. And they can just kick that down the road. I believe that New York's ordinance has been updated to prevent that from happening.

Well, that's good. What are some differences that you're seeing as you've been in San Francisco now or California doing similar maintenance work there?  Yeah. So in San Francisco began in 2014 task force architects and engineers  Came together to institute a facade ordinance for San Francisco.  When I learn more about the unknown ladies of architecture, then I recommend you listen to she builds podcasts where we tell the stories of remarkable women who have shaped the design and construction industries. 

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San Francisco's ordinance was the first in the country. It's the first one west of the Mississippi.  Most of the major cities on the east coast have them. Chicago, New York, obviously Philadelphia, Boston. But San Francisco is the first on the west of the Mississippi. And one thing I'm particularly proud of is that it was the, it was instituted.

Not in response to a tragedy. That's awesome. Yeah. At the city planning department and the mayor at the time, the late Ed Lee did everyone came together really to get this happening one, because, you know, San Francisco's as a whole, the building fabric, the built fabric is Newer than New York because a lot of things were reconstructed after 1906, the 1906 earthquake and fires.

But a lot of it is also in preparation for the next inevitable seismic event. So this was good discussion, rumblings among architects and engineers in the city, like, Hey, we've got to get something on the, on the book. And so it finally came into law. It was passed in 2016.  And it, the first round of reports was due in 2021. 

So, whereas New York does theirs just by block and lot, and it's a certain block number, certain lot numbers.  San Francisco's is theirs is divided by year of construction.  So the first round was really buildings that predated 1910.  So those were buildings that had predated the 1906 earthquake and fires, along with some that were constructed very quickly afterward. 

The first two rounds, it was,  we're only, we've only looked at buildings that were built before 1925.  So as a result, you know, we have a newer building, a relatively newer building. Building age. We're not dealing with freestyle, right? That's true. California. On the other hand, we're also not dealing with some of the issue that you may get from like sustained hot weather because San Francisco, you know, there's some areas this kind of kind of microclimates, but it doesn't get incredibly hot. 

Okay, so we're not seeing, you know, very rarely see, like, severe UV damage.  Window paint. We'll see it, but it's not nearly as severe as it would be,  say, in Phoenix or even in New York or someplace where there's a lot more, but at the same time, San Francisco's fog, if you're on the, you know,  the fog is famous, the fog is salty.

So, we, I've noticed one difference between New York and San Francisco is that some sheet metals will degrade much faster in the Bay Area. They do in New York City. Fascinating. I had never thought about how salty fog is  . Yeah. Right. That's super interesting And yeah. Salty. Yeah. So I, yeah. Interacting with the metals and all that.

Oh my gosh, that's so cool. Yeah. I, uh, worked on one project and it wasn't a facade in ordinance project, it was just a historic repair, and they had gilded some, uh, gold leaf element. Mm-Hmm. , and they were just in such bad condition. I actually ended up calling the Gilder Yeah. The, the finishes company, and it's like, Hey, you know, this looks really bad.

I've always thought the service life of Gold Leaf would be like 30 years. This is 15. What's going on? Like San Francisco. Dang.  Yeah. And so that's one of the things that I love about the field because there are so many different things to think about and so many different facets where you can totally get excited about or my case turned out on or like, I feel like the idea of like, okay, well, how is this weather going to impact this building material in this location?

And like, I'm still blown away. I'd never thought about how salty fog is and how that would impact building materials. That makes a lot of sense.  Yeah, that's, that's one of the big things, like I said, we don't really see pretty small. Right.  A lot of metal, especially sheet metal, like cornices and stuff, you really have to keep those painted because if not, they're really gonna,  the decoration is gonna go much faster.

Trying to think if there are any other big building differences. Right now, again, because these are kind of the older buildings in the city, we're dealing with much lower heights.  And then we would, during a typical round of inspections in New York, where you have buildings all over the city and all five boroughs, you're dealing with six-story buildings and you're dealing with 30-story buildings.

And it doesn't matter when they were constructed, but with San Francisco, you're really able to zero in on very specific building typologies.  And one thing that's been interesting for me is I keep on coming across the same architects, the same developers, the same builders, it's like, yeah. I think at one point in San Francisco in the 19 teens, there must have been one structural engineer because he was on every team.

Oh, that's hilarious. It's like, I'm here.  Yeah. And you know, San Francisco is also much smaller than New York. So you really get to.  Drill down on, you know, you have a much smaller set of buildings, but it's been so far. I think the ordinance, you know, we've only had 2 rounds of report submissions, 2021 and just at the end of 2023.

And, but so far, you know, we haven't had a lot of pushback from owners. They're just. You want to make sure they get it done because in the cost of the inspection and the. You have to hire a consultant like us, or to hire a contractor for mobilization.  It's still far less than litigation, increased insurance premiums, anything like that as a result of the tragedy.

So, yeah, that's a very good point.  Having worked on both, you know, New York's facade ordinances over 40 years old.  Wow. And San Francisco's is just about, it's barely.  It's only been in play really for two years, but it's been in the works for a little bit longer.  Just know how everyone's still learning.

Everyone is still learning. Exactly. I'm glad that there's hopefully there'll be some of that knowledge sharing from seeing what other cities have done and seeing how things will keep evolving. So that's, that's super important. And I think that's something I've been curious about, particularly as Climate keeps evolving and will keep evolving and how they're going to be a number of things that work in New York currently, which may actually not work in New York in the future, but may work in another city.

So it's like, I think there's going to be a need to be a transfer of knowledge as things get weirder around the world. Yeah. Yeah. That's something that I worked in New York right after Hurricane Sandy.  And there were facade failures that were, did not make the news. Uh, you know, we all know about some of them and the facades were coming off, but there were a lot that just didn't make the news.

And there was a lot of scrambling by building owners and obviously their insurance companies. About how to fix it to make sure it didn't happen again, because this is going to keep on happening. Yeah, exactly. And it's also been super interesting to see the number of policies and legislation that's actually being pushed through by insurance companies to help protect.

Yes, it's trying to protect their investment, but also like it's actually changing How some things are happening because it's like, well, listen, we know this is going to be a problem. And if X, Y, and Z isn't done, then hey, your building's not going to be able to get insurance because we know what's happening.

Like regardless of left, right, center, wherever you are, like right. The insurance companies are like, we know this is going to be a problem and this is going to cost us more and more money. So these are the protections that need to go into place. Yeah, and then you'll definitely, on top of that, you'll also see on a very macro level, I'll use my home state of Florida, on the macro level, you know, you see, like, publicly, you see where there's a very pro-development, anti-regulation ethos, but then if you drill down to like, say, the Florida legislature, or You individual towns,  that surfside tragedy really shook up a lot of people because, you know, originally where people were like, Oh, maybe it's all these different things, but it really scared a lot of condo associations.

The state of Florida did not, at the time of the surfside collapse, require a, a reserve for a condo to have a reserve.  Whereas again, California,  that's one of the things that my firm will work on with condo owners, homeowners associations is your roof. Is looking like it's going to in the start, you know, approaching the service, like, got to, got to prepare for that.

This is about what we anticipated to be. You have to save this kind of money. So the state requires it.  Florida's, you know, but you can see that these individual towns are requiring.  Earlier recertification inspections.  They're really scared, you know,  the historic. Historic buildings in Miami and Tampa and. 

Particularly like the, like Collins Avenue and Miami beach and South beach.  There's a lot more scrutiny of those. And then new.  I heard in over the holidays that insurance premiums have skyrocketed in the state of Florida for condos. So it's on this very macro level, there's a sense of defiance, but on the streets, it's completely different.

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the time is flying by. This is so great, but I'm also doing to make sure we have some time. So I know we've been talking a lot about. The tangible historic fabric and, you know, the bricks and mortar literally, but I know we also, in our pre-call chat, we talked a little bit about some of the things that you're working on and hearing about with Cesar Chavez and in California and a lot of sites that are important to his legacy and how kind of those are weeding together.

So I'd love to hear a little bit more about that as well. Yeah. So at my previous company, we worked with some people who were connected tangentially to Cesar Chavez.  And they had wanted to include some of the sites related to him on either the National Register or as National Historic Landmarks. And they're trying really hard, but you know, there's so much emphasis on, on integrity. 

You know, there's, and a lot of, yeah, architectural integrity and. Those spaces didn't have it. They were ephemeral spaces to begin with,  you know, there would be a church, it would be a church, but it would also be a community center and also would like housemen at night. Right. So it had all of these,  you know, if you're looking for like the character-defining features of a church.

So it's like, well, what, where was he in this space? And there was this search for like a silver bullet. Like, like someone was going to come with a picture of Cesar Chavez sitting like At one of the chairs that was still in the storage area that was,  that wasn't going to happen and I see that, that experience really stuck with me because a lot of sites  don't get the recognition because they don't fit this, this idea of integrity or right.

Yeah, that's a good point. And I know particularly for a lot of,  even thinking about like a lot of civil rights sites where, yes, there are, you know, the, where the person's with the house, the person was born in or lived in, or they're the last house they lived in before they died. But then there's so many spaces that served as. 

communal spaces or gathering spaces that weren't just for that reason. So even thinking of like  a lot of the, like the I am a man signs that were made for the March on Washington, those were made in a church somewhere in DC, but that church is, has other types of significance attached to it, not just for that site.

And so there's a number of sites like that. So that's a really good, really good point. And I'm curious how the field is going to keep evolving to keep having those stories told and those different sites and kind of weaving the web of how they were all connected. Right. And like, it also comes down to this, this picture of who does history belong to.

Yeah. We always say that history belongs, you know, the victors write the history,  but there's a whole other, there's a lot more. Like I remember during our historic preservation planning studio and grad school, we,  we did parts of the South Bronx,  but for all of the discussion of specific buildings, again, you know, integrity is completely different because, you know, we have industrial sites and you have, Things that meant different things to different people. 

There wasn't a lot of discussion about cultural preservation. I know you're in the South Bronx, you're at the home, like, the birth of, like, hip hop. And there's just a lot that,  you know, and all the different immigrant communities that came in. Yeah, we would talk about that from a historic viewpoint. But not really like a cultural viewpoint or, you know, cultural preservation.

How do you preserve, like what's culturally important and like, you know, not every church has a steeple and, uh, a bell. Exactly. Exactly. Sometimes it is the started out as the living room or the back room of someone's business or house or something like that, then involved in something else. So, yeah. I totally get that.

These aren't always, you know, handsome masonry Georgian buildings. Exactly. Exactly. Cause a lot of people  also had to deal with kind of the leftover spaces and making the leftover spaces work for what their needs were.  And I'd like to, um, you know, it's different from my professional role right now, but  I think it's really important to amplify the voices related to those spaces. 

One thing that I haven't focused on as much in my, in my own work, primarily because for the past 10 years, I've worked on the West Coast where, you know, we're not dealing with slavery or the civil rights movement. But with my mainstream Monday posts, I really like to talk about what's happening throughout the country and as I can throughout the world.

And one thing I've, my posts for tomorrow, I indicate that, you know, there's this wonderful brick building in Washington, DC.  And it was built with slave labor.  Yeah. That's one thing, you know, we talk about all these buildings, but it's only been very recently that you acknowledge who actually did the work or even with the land acknowledgments that you, when you go to events now, they'll be like, we acknowledge that we're on Lenape land or we're on Miwok land, like San Francisco.

So we're expanding. When I started working, it felt like it was, there was a very specific path that you took if you wanted to be in the space. And I've seen it diversify, not just, you know, obviously more women, more people of color. I've seen more, more disciplines. You might have a structural engineer too here, but there are a lot more now. 

Right. And it's like there's also a focus on materials a little bit more so and like the different subsets and facets of it. Yeah. So I agree. It seems like More space is being created in the field for more people to get into different niches. Yeah, absolutely. But I don't know how that happened, which is, I don't know if I just wasn't listening or I wasn't paying attention to my first, I went to my first professional conference It's 2006 in this field, and it's completely different.

We know what it is now,  you know, the same organizations and yeah,  like it's completely different.  I hadn't thought about that, but yeah, you're right. It is very, it was the same organization on that, but it's definitely is more inclusive.  Yeah. Yeah. No, it's great. Like, I think everyone deserves a space at the table or at least the opportunity to get a space at the table and whether or not they take it, it's up to them, obviously, but right.

And so I wonder if maybe there's just, there was a window where there was an opportunity for more space and more people just took it, you know, to be in like, it was, could have been just, uh, yeah, took it or like. I don't know if mentorship opportunities became stronger. Maybe because I know there's still the, even within like preservation trades, there's still a gap that is trying to improve, but with, you know, with a lot of the, a worry about brain drain as more of the artisans are aging out of the profession.

Yeah. That's one of the things that really, really sticks with me as I get, get further along. And I remember hearing very early in my career. That the average age of a roofer was 53. It's got to be much older now.  And what's wild is that at first, like, Oh, average, it's not that bad. There's a, wait a minute.

If the average is 50, that means there's some real old roofers.  Really old. Yeah. Wow. Okay. But like, yeah, with the individual trades, like I know that they're in New York, there was been, there's been a really strong push to get young people into the preservation trades. It's like. Bricklayers and specialty masonry and even building cleaning.

Yeah. Yeah. It's been a real push. Like I know that there was at one point, I don't know if it still exists, but there was a public school that had that. That is one of their goals, you know, church groups. That's awesome. So there's a lot of passion behind it, but it's very lucrative. And you can, one of my colleagues was very involved with this and he was like, When you see some of these kids,  these young people that they. 

Like this pride in having done something, like, you know,  carved like a piece of sandstone or it's really important to have that experience.  Thank you so much for listening. Links to amazing resources can be found in the episode's show notes. Special thanks to Sarah Gilberg for allowing me to use snippets of her song Fireflies from her debut album, Other People's Secrets, which by the way is available wherever music is sold.

If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe to the show.  And now that Tangible Remnants is part of the Gable Media Network, you can listen and subscribe to all network partner content at gablemedia. com. That's G A B L media dot com.  Until next time, remember that historic preservation is a present conversation with our past about our future.

We don't inherit the earth from our parents, but we borrow it from our children. So let's make sure we're telling our inclusive history.  I saw the first fireflies of sun and right then  I thought of you.  Oh, I could see us catching them and setting them free.  Honey, that's what you do. 

That's what you do to me. 

Hey, designers and curious minds ever wondered about the stories hiding within your buildings walls. I'm Carrie Seaborn, structural engineer and host of Unstruck the podcast that decodes and simplifies major concepts of structural design behind the math and physics. Structural engineering simply predicts building behavior.

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