Without skilled workers who know exactly how to reset a stone or repair a window, historic preservation can’t happen. The tradespeople on a project are the ones who translate a detailed plan into a finished product, using their hard-won know-how to maintain beauty and preserve history. The National Trust recognized this when it created HOPE (Hands-On Preservation Experience) Crew in 2014. Over 10 years, HOPE Crew has trained more than 860 paid participants who are taught by experts in their fields. From its first project rehabilitating stables in Shenandoah National Park to recent work at Threatt Filling Station in Luther, Oklahoma, the program has provided opportunities for people to see what it’s like to work on a job site alongside preservation professionals—no experience required. “It’s meant to spark that interest in the trades,” says the National Trust’s Milan Jordan, director of the HOPE Crew program. “We’re hoping someone will see themselves in that part of the preservation movement.”

HOPE Crew also runs volunteer projects focused on engaging communities with large-scale projects such as vegetation removal and exterior painting, as well as initiatives that connect college and graduate students with design and research projects. But the program’s main goal is to provide exposure to and training in the preservation trades. While each HOPE Crew project is different, Jordan says one constant is the “element of an elder and a youth. It’s that model of imparting knowledge down to the next generation. HOPE Crew is a vessel for that.” The three HOPE Crew projects we profile below show this model in action.

Estate Little Princess, St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands

Underwater isn’t the only place to see coral on St. Croix. Blocks cut from chunks of dried coral once served as a building material for structures on the island, now part of the United States Virgin Islands. Many of these historic coral-stone buildings remain, including structures at Estate Little Princess, where African laborers enslaved by Danish landowners grew sugarcane and produced rum.

The Nature Conservancy now owns the estate’s remaining 25 acres, using the site for its Virgin Islands Coral Innovation Hub, where scientists cultivate coral and restore dying coral reefs. The nonprofit also gives tours and hosts archaeologists and other researchers—so it needs the 200-to-300-year-old structures at Estate Little Princess to be stable. When Hurricane Maria hit the Caribbean in 2017, its winds tore the roofs from some of the site’s buildings, and rain eroded the masonry on others. “We are still restoring,” says Celeste Jarvis, director of The Nature Conservancy’s Virgin Islands Program. “The mortar is turning into dust and sand.” She noticed one building, a former hospital for enslaved Africans, that particularly needed help. (This building is shown at top, with HOPE Crew participants Alfredo Carmona Jr. at left and Jomahal Sanes at right.)

That’s where HOPE Crew came in. Jarvis and Frandelle Gerard, executive director of the cultural and environmental preservation organization Crucian Heritage and Nature Tourism (CHANT), invited the program to St. Croix to repair the hospital building’s coral-stone walls. Gerard rounded up five young men, two of whom had joined previous CHANT trades training programs, to participate. Molly Baker, HOPE Crew manager at the National Trust, asked restoration artist and craftsman David Gibney to lead the two-week project.

Starting in April of 2022, the crewmembers began work on the west wall, where the deterioration was concentrated. Cement repairs done in the mid-20th century had damaged about half a dozen coral stones beyond repair. “They had a pile of [coral] stone on the property that people had salvaged over the years, so we used those to replace the failing stones,” Gibney says. The team learned how to remove the added cement and old mortar, repoint much of the wall using a traditional natural hydraulic lime mortar, and install the in-kind replacements. They also removed a rotted wood lintel, replaced it with steel and wood, and relaid the stone above it. The group worked so efficiently that they had time to repoint problem areas on the other three exterior walls, as well.

“We got to learn about the history of the place, about the different tools of stonemasonry, the different textures and types of stone,” says participant Jomahal Sanes, who had led woodworking programs for CHANT in the past and helped manage the Estate Little Princess HOPE Crew project. “Just being able to work on it was an exciting moment for me.”

Gerard says four of the participants are currently working in the construction trades on the island. She also notes that the hospital’s ongoing preservation highlights the lives of the Africans who quarried the coral stone, constructed the estate’s buildings, and cultivated the land all those years ago. “It speaks to the resilience of the enslaved people, who under circumstances we can’t even imagine created a structure that still stands today,” she says. –Meghan Drueding

Odd Fellows Building, Astoria, Oregon

By the time Ariana Makau began leading a July 2021 HOPE Crew project at the Odd Fellows Building in Astoria, Oregon, the former fraternal lodge had already received much-needed TLC. The group of women who purchased it in 2018 had hired professionals to stabilize the structure, paint the exterior, and restore the majority of the windows. (A $150,000 grant from the National Trust and American Express helped make this work possible, as did a paint donation from Benjamin Moore as part of the National Trust’s Where Women Made History initiative.)

But one sticking point remained: the transom windows on the ground floor. There hadn’t been enough grant money to restore those, and the putty that kept them in place had deteriorated since the building’s construction in 1923. “The winds are so strong in Astoria that the glass was moving without anyone touching it,” says Makau, a historic-window preservation expert and the owner of Nzilani Glass in Oakland, California.

In partnership with Where Women Made History and funded by the TAWANI Foundation, HOPE Crew embarked on a demonstration project, led by Makau and intended to promote gender equity in the trades. HOPE Crew program director Milan Jordan and manager Molly Baker lined up a team of five participants—the majority of them women—from regional groups such as Tongue Point Job Corps Center and Oregon Tradeswomen. “We could show [women] that there’s a place for them in the field,” Baker says. “I wish I had that when I was younger and was finding my way to the preservation trades.”

Makau made sure the two-week process included an initial assessment of the windows. “What we did in the first couple days was just put on our ‘preservation goggles’ and look at the building really closely with a ladder and then with scaffolding,” she says. “And I think that’s good training for any job, but really good training for preservation, where sometimes people are so excited that they don’t think about the project management part of it. We could gather all the information together and talk [as a group] about what we think the plan should be.” Once that was set, the team removed the old putty and replaced it with new putty, repaired the wood window frames, and replicated missing molding. As part of the HOPE Crew project, Makau also ran a weekend workshop for locals on how to restore windows safely.

Since then, the Odd Fellows building has continued to house local nonprofits and businesses, many of which have been tenants for several years or more. The transom windows restored by the HOPE Crew keep the Sea Gypsy Gift Shop and the Ten Fifteen Theater dry while letting in light. “Knowing their spaces are secure and watertight is a huge relief for them and for us as landlords,” says Andrea Mazzarella, who co-owns the building with Nancy Mazzarella-Tisch and Jessamyn West. “The energy efficiency has been improved, so there’s a decreased expense burden on both tenants. The space feels cared for and the community sees it’s cared for. It’s a good feeling.” –Meghan Drueding

Mount Zion and Female Union Band Society Cemeteries, Washington, D.C.

When Corey Shaw Jr. joined a HOPE Crew project in 2021 to locate graves at the Mount Zion and Female Union Band Society cemeteries in Washington, D.C., he was studying political science at the University of the District of Columbia (UDC). Shaw figured the project would be a prime chance to examine his studies “from a different lens,” he says, but he didn’t anticipate how the experience would affect him personally and professionally.

The cemeteries’ history began in 1808, when the Montgomery Street Methodist Church in the Georgetown neighborhood purchased land to use as a burial ground. The segregated church included both Black and white members; at one point, free and enslaved Black people made up nearly half the congregation. Spurred by their unequal treatment, some Black members formed their own congregation in 1816. Known today as the Mount Zion United Methodist Church, it’s one of Washington’s oldest Black congregations.

HOPE Crew participants also helped clear overgrown vegetation at the deteriorating site. The project helped clarify the locations of graves and the fact that the site encompasses two different cemeteries, which will help guide future restoration efforts.