From Preservation Online, the online magazine of the National Trust for Historic Preservation

www.preservationonline.org

Our editors announce a new Web-only department to document both successes and slip-ups: images of the good, the bad, and the ugly. We invite you to send your before and after photos to us at preservation@nthp.org.

New Orleans

After Katrina, New Orleans resident Mildred Bennett returned to her birthplace in the Lower Ninth Ward and found mold, cracks, and debris in the shotgun house her ancestors built in 1884.

Bennett's family turned to the HOME AGAIN! Program. With the help of $40,000 from the National Trust, the Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans, Tulane architecture students, community organizations, and neighborhood volunteers, Bennett will move back into her house in May.

Two of the 10 HOME AGAIN! projects have been completed: Rosalee and June Davis moved back into their home in the St. Roch neighborhood, and Bennett's neighbor Audrey Smith is back in her house in the Holy Cross neighborhood.

To read more about the program, visit www.nationaltrust.org/hurricane.

New York

The sun now shines in Brooklyn's U.S. Post Office and Courthouse, an 1892 building with a 1933 addition. "The courtroom was like a pool hall in a bar. It was really disrespectful of its function," says Robert Kliment, whose New York City design firm of R.M. Kliment & Frances Halsband Architects oversaw the federally funded $130 million project.

Restored and painted in its original colors, the building, which has an additional 80,000 square feet, officially opened in October 2005. The project will be completed this spring when the U.S. attorney's offices are finished.

"The judges are delighted with it," Kliment says. "They are beside themselves with gratitude for restoring such a beautiful place."

Texas

In Fort Worth, Tex., a bank was restored last year as … a bank. Built in 1914, the Burk Burnett Building opened as the Worthington National Bank a year ago. In September 2006, Historic Fort Worth Inc. gave Greg Morse, bank president, a preservation award for the eight-month project: Morse tracked down a mural that had been stripped from the building and had it re-installed in the lobby.

"Mr. Morse only selects historic locations for his bank branches and restores each building with care," says spokeswoman Beth Hutson.

The National Trust's Southwest Office headquarters are in the Burk Burnett Building.

Maryland

Neglected for years, a c. 1874 Colonial revival house in Easton, Md., caught the eyes of Ron and Shelby Mitchell, who recently renovated it as an inn, with the help of the town's historic commission, the State of Maryland Historic Trust, and the Department of the Interior. The five-suite Inn at 202 Dover opened last fall. "We had one guest who felt so at home that
she came down for breakfast in the conservatory wearing herpajamas," says Shelby Mitchell, a D.C. lawyer-turned-innkeeper.

Oregon

A century of rain and snow had pounded on this 1870 house in Oregon's Rogue River Valley, abandoned since 1974. In fact, the oldest house in the valley was falling down when a group rehabbed it in 2001. Now the wood house, built in 1870, is at risk again: Although the Eagle Point Historical Society owns it, a California developer owns the land itself. "At this point, the 'Wood House' has no future," says the society's Skip Geear.

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