Architects Without Borders

Rebuild a historic home in New Orleans in October: Seattle developer Kevin Daniels, board member of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, will be taking a group of architects and developers to New Orleans October 6-10 to rebuild a historic home. Informational meeting September 23, 5:30, First United Methodist Church. If you would like to participate, contact Kevin Daniels for dates and more information.

The trip is planned for the first full week in October - the 6th through the 10th. We will have a short orientation meeting on Sunday the 5th at a local hotel to coordinate transportation and inform all participants of the specifics of our assignments. We are hoping to work on two homes within the Holy Cross neighborhood as a follow up to the last trip in January.

Air Travel: All major carriers fly to NOLA from Seattle but I believe the quickest trip is through DFW on American (about 6 hours). Our Sunday evening meeting will be at 8:00 so you have all day to arrive and get settled. I am on AA Flight # 1050/2102 and will arrive around 5:30. I am leaving on Saturday the 11th at 8:20 AM. As noted below, I have a van and can bring people to and from the airport if you arrive or leave near my flight times.

Lodging: The Preservation Resource Center http://www.prcno.org/ (PRC) has reserved 10 rooms at the Hampton Inn Convention Center at $99.00 per night. If you are interested let me know and I’ll get the booking information to you. Last time we stayed at the historic Queen & Crescent for less. Just be sure to ask for the new tower. Feel free to stay anywhere downtown as we will arrange a shuttle service during the week as noted below. If you have friends or relatives, please feel free to stay with them and just get to the work site by 9:00 each morning (don’t miss the initial orientation meeting so you know where to go). If you are staying downtown there are lots of nearby eateries and entertainment options.

Transportation: You are on your own from the airport but I’m sure we can get some taxi pools going. I have rented a 12 person van to shuttle us around during the week. We’ll probably also need to rent a suburban/expedition so as to transport people and materials. More on that to come later.

Food: We’ll get lunch delivered to the site each day. Breakfast and dinner will not be included. In January we all went together to dinner but made up the plans as we went. There will be no set plans. NOLA has spectacular food and drink that we will all want to sample.

Project: We’ll find out more about the project(s) as we draw closer. But you can count on lots of handy work (painting, minor carpentry, etc…). There is no required skill level, however we could use a few with stronger construction skills to lead the rest of us. PRC will be providing a contractor to oversee us in order to meet their permit requirements. However we saw the contractor only the first day of the January visit. Given we proved ourselves on the first tour, I doubt we will need assistance from an outside contractor visit, but PRC will be onsite most of the day to supervise.

Meeting: We’ll have a voluntary meeting in mid September to go over specifics in detail and share the slide shows again. It will be a great chance to meet your fellow team members prior to leaving. I will need firm commitments from those going on the trip 30 days in advance so I can finalize the projects with the PRC. So lets plan on finalizing our NOLA commitments by September 5th. Team Our team is comprised of about 15 board and staff members from the Washington Trust for Historic Properties and Historic Seattle. In addition we have an equal number expressing interest from the AWB & AIA. If everyone decides to go we would have enough to work on three projects. Again, thank you all for your interest in this endeavor. I guarantee it will truly be worth your effort.