Places Restored, Threatened, Saved, and Lost in Preservation Magazine's Summer 2024 Issue
In each Transitions section of Preservation magazine, we highlight places of local and national importance that have recently been restored, are currently threatened, have been saved from demolition or neglect, or have been lost. Here are five from Summer 2024.
photo by: Alan Blakely
A restored building in the Upper Post Flats project at Historic Fort Snelling.
Restored: Fort Snelling Upper Post Buildings
Late last year, Minneapolis-based architecture firm BKV Group and developer Dominium completed Upper Post Flats, a rehabilitation of 26 buildings at Historic Fort Snelling into a nearly 200-unit affordable housing complex. Located near St. Paul, Minnesota, the fort has been under redevelopment for years, including a 2022 conversion of an existing building into a museum and visitor center that explores the site’s complex history. (See the Fall 2022 issue of Preservation.) The federal government built Fort Snelling in the 1820s, but starting thousands of years earlier, Native Americans inhabited the land, which the Dakota people hold sacred and call Bdóte Mni Sota. The fort was a site of enslavement in its early decades, and following the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862, Dakota people were forcibly detained there. The Upper Post section was built later, between the 1870s and the 1940s.
Many of these buildings—which include barracks, a gymnasium, and a hospital—were vacant for decades after the fort was decommissioned in 1946. “Roof hatches had blown off; the water was coming in. The ceilings had fallen. Plaster was just peeling,” says John Stark, formerly with BKV Group. The team saved hundreds of original windows, doors, walls, and other features, while structures with severe damage were rebuilt to historical standards. The $160 million project—funded in part by Low-Income Housing Tax Credits, as well as state and federal historic tax credits—will give preference to military members, veterans, first responders, and their families.
Lost: Saturn IB Rocket at the Alabama Welcome Center
For decades, an Apollo-era rocket displayed outside a visitor center in Ardmore, Alabama, served as a landmark for travelers crossing into the state from Tennessee. But in September 2023, despite public opposition, the NASA-owned rocket was dismantled due to concerns about its structural integrity. NASA loaned the mid-1960s rocket to the U.S. Space & Rocket Center, a state-run museum in Huntsville, Alabama, which displayed it at Ardmore’s Alabama Welcome Center beginning in 1979. This particular rocket never made it off the launch pad, but others of the same model, known as the Saturn IB, were “workhorses” for the Apollo program, says NASA Chief Historian Brian Odom.
The Saturn IB’s materials made it perfect for space travel—but not for outdoor display. Odom says the rocket at Ardmore “was never intended to be out in public this long,” and that “leaving it [up] was not an option.” Some Alabama state legislators advocated for saving the rocket, but their efforts were unsuccessful. The rocket was ultimately removed, but the U.S. Space & Rocket Center is considering ways to display a handful of salvaged parts, including the launch escape system, rocket fins, and a panel with red “USA” lettering. “We felt that it was important to preserve some elements for both the community and the national historical record,” says Ed Stewart, the center’s curator. State leaders have also secured funding for the creation of a replica.
photo by: NASA
The Saturn IB rocket formerly on display at the Alabama Welcome Center.
photo by: Milwaukee Preservation Alliance
The Catherine Foley Tavern, now owned by the Milwaukee Preservation Alliance.
Saved: Catherine Foley Tavern
The Catherine Foley tavern always possessed a pioneering spirit, from its start in the late 1800s as a woman-owned tavern and rooming house to its 1970s manifestation as one of Milwaukee’s most prominent gay bars. Now, after sitting vacant for a decade, the building has been donated to the Milwaukee Preservation Alliance (MPA). The nonprofit plans to stabilize and restore the Vernacular-style structure located in Milwaukee’s historic Third Ward neighborhood. Currently named for its first owner, the Catherine Foley tavern was constructed in 1884 on a triangular lot and features a prominent rooftop turret, allowing it to conform to the property’s distinctive shape.
Foley built the business after her husband died, and it was one of the few structures in the neighborhood to survive an 1892 fire. Miller Brewing Company purchased the tavern in the mid-1890s and held onto it until Prohibition, after which it changed hands a few times before becoming the Wreck Room, Milwaukee’s first leather bar, in 1972. Most recently, the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design owned and used the building until it was damaged in a 2013 fire. Developers General Capital Group and Joseph Property Development acquired the property and ultimately considered demolition, but in early 2024, they announced their decision to donate it to MPA instead. Once restoration is complete, MPA plans to make part of the building its permanent home.
Threatened: Church of the Immaculate Conception
The fate of a former Catholic church in Burlington, Vermont—a rare example of Modernist architecture in the city—is now in the hands of the Vermont Supreme Court, the latest development in a yearslong fight to save it. The Church of the Immaculate Conception was designed by architect Edward Larrabee Barnes and built in 1977 to replace an 1860s Gothic Revival–style cathedral that had burned down a few years prior. Barnes’ design represented an about-face from the previous building, featuring a sleek, steeply pitched copper roof and glazed brick around the exterior base of the building, with half-circle windows punctuating the perimeter. “It has a very earthy feel ... [and is] anchored heavily in the landscape,” says Preservation Burlington board member Ron Wanamaker, who’s part of a group of citizens trying to save the building.
Landscape architect Dan Kiley designed the surrounding green space, a tree-filled buffer between downtown Burlington and the serene structure. In 2018, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington announced that the church, formerly known as the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, would no longer operate. It put the property on the market in 2019. The parish’s charitable trust was then granted a demolition permit in early 2023 by Burlington’s Development Review Board. A group of concerned citizens appealed the decision to Vermont’s environmental court, which ruled that the board’s decision could stand. The group then appealed that decision to the Vermont Supreme Court, where it awaits a verdict as of press time.
photo by: Judd Lamphere
The Church of the Immaculate Conception in Burlington, Vermont.
photo by: Sam Romey
Wolf Creek Boatworks is located on Prince of Wales Island in Alaska.
Threatened: Wolf Creek Boatworks
Tucked away in a remote inlet on Prince of Wales Island, Wolf Creek Boatworks was once part of a network of boat repair shops in Southeast Alaska. Today it’s the last one standing in the area, but it may not survive much longer. Built in 1939, the hydromechanically powered structure features pole framing, rough-cut lumber floors, and shingle siding. When Sam Romey purchased the shop in 1994, it was located on public land that he leased from the U.S. Forest Service. The building needed immediate intervention. “But the infrastructure was there,” says Romey, who took on the project with his father and son. “We bought it and then spent the next 30 years restoring it and taking care of it.”
For decades, Romey’s shop offered the only boat services for miles. But in 2021, part of the land that the shop sits on was transferred to the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority, a state corporation, and managed by the Trust Land Office (TLO), also a state entity. Romey no longer had a lease, and the shop’s condition declined: It desperately needs a new roof, Romey says, and the cedar pile foundation is deteriorating because of severe weather. He and Preservation Alaska’s Trish Neal are also concerned that TLO’s potential plan to commercially log trees on the land would expose the shop to Alaska’s harsh winds and damage it beyond repair. The situation has led Preservation Alaska to place Wolf Creek Boatworks on its annual Most Endangered list multiple times, including this year.
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