Preservation at Work :: Fall Lecture Series

Municipal Rose Garden (photo: Daniella Thompson, 2004)

Our fall lecture series is a fundraiser to benefit the Kenney Cottage Restoration Fund.

Tickets: $15 per lecture; $40 for the series
All lectures will take place at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar Street, Berkeley, CA 94709.

Wednesday, 21 October 2009
7:30 pm
Gray Brechin :: A New Deal for the East Bay: Excavating the Buried Civilization of the Great Depression
New Deal public works agencies that put thousands of men and women to work transformed Berkeley and its sister cities within less than a decade, providing us with schools, parks and recreational facilities, and vital infrastructure from which we all continue to benefit. Gray Brechin will show what California's Living New Deal Project—partially supported by U.C. Berkeley Institute for Research on Labor and Employment—has discovered so far.

Dr. Gray Brechin is an historical geographer, a frequent radio and television guest, and a popular public speaker. He is currently a visiting scholar in the U.C. Berkeley Department of Geography and founder and project scholar of California’s Living New Deal Project.

Wednesday, 4 November 2009
7:30 pm
Jane Powell :: Smart Growth, Green Buildings & Other Oxymorons
The speaker takes aim at developers and local planning officials who’ve been propagating urban infill developments by spouting the smart-growth party line about how their developments are “smarter” than paving over farmland or will consist of buildings that are “greener” than the old bungalows or commercial buildings that are still standing in early-20th-century neighborhoods.

Labeled “the bad girl of bungalow writing,” Jane Powell is a restoration consultant, house restorer, lecturer, and author of six books, including Bungalow Kitchens, Bungalow Bathrooms, Bungalow Details: Exterior, Bungalow Details: Interior, Bungalow: The Ultimate Arts and Crafts Home, and Linoleum.

Wednesday, 18 November 2009
7:30 pm
Paul Groth :: Ordinary Storefronts of the Twentieth Century: Clues to the Local Histories of Shopping and Retailing
If we learn their historical vocabulary, store windows tell us much more than what is for sale inside a building. Using examples from the Bay Area and from elsewhere in the U.S., this lecture outlines changing forms used in the design and remodeling of everyday shop windows—and how these changes provide visual clues to the history of local retail investment, shopping culture, gender roles, and the vitality of neighborhood and downtown shopping districts.

Paul Groth is Professor of U.S. Built Environment History at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has served on the faculties of the geography, architecture, and American studies departments since 1983. His most recent book, Everyday America: Cultural Landscape Studies after J. B. Jackson (co-edited with Chris Wilson) was published in 2003 by the University of California Press.


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