National Parks and Parklands about 1 person

Someone asked me yesterday if there were many National Parks devoted to one person. Well, I said, there are lots about individual presidents (Adams NHP would count as 2 or 3?) so we should exclude them.

Harriet Tubman
Booker T. Washington
Eleanor Roosevelt
Maggie L Walker
Frederick Law Olmsted
Thomas Edison
Edgar Allen Poe
Augustus Saint-Gaudens
Martin Luther King Jr.
Thaddeus Kościuszko
César E. Chávez
John Muir
Eugene O'Neill
Thomas Stone
Jean Lafitte
Frederick Douglass
George Rogers Clark
Clara Barton
Charles Pinckney
Carter G. Woodson *
Carl Sandburg *
Mary McLeod Bethune *

The NPS uses a short "nickname" for parks. All of these use the person's name as the nickname except for the three marked with asterisks. These each add a variation on house to the name, but I don't think it represents a major change in the way that the Park Service treats those sites. Similarity, I don't know why Edgar Allen Poe couldn't be the Edgar Allen Poe House.

Almost none of these are really just about one person. That person represents something else. Olmsted is about landscape architecture and parks and cities. Edison is about the ways that innovation transformed America.
 
Who else represents a truly American Experience? When you include arts, it opens up some interesting conversations. Who should get a single person National Park site?

Frank Lloyd Wright
Ed Orgeron
George Lucas
Elvis
Ernest Hemingway

Post needs a map

This post of 10 Cultural Landsmarks in Section would be great if only it had a map. And maybe came with a plane ticket.

Sad loss

Yesterday New Jersey lost a colonial-era house due to a fire. It isn't just a loss of a fire. As a farmhouse, we also lose the ensemble that forms an historic farm. It is a damaged cultural landscape. Sad.

Tree vs. Memorial

In Fundamentals we are talking about social and cultural landscape values. How do we decide when saving an old site is more important than progress? In Richmond, Virginia, a decision is being created pitting a memorial for Maggie Walker, the first African American woman to charter a bank in the United States, and an old oak tree.


 

The debate over the proposed memorial does not seem to ask whether the memorial is important. It simply focuses on questions about why the memorial and the tree cannot coexist. It is a large Southern live oak (one article described it as "towering") and the neighbors see it as a cultural treasure. It will be interesting to see whether the community gets drawn into a greater conflict.

Princeton Battlefield

The Cultural Landscape Foundation has weighed in on one of New Jersey's special landscapes: the Princeton Battlefield. While part of the site is a State Park, part of it is owned by the Institute for Advanced Studies (IAS).

TCLF is concerned about the current threat to the IAS portion of the site: "The current IAS proposal calls for construction of fifteen faculty housing units on the very spot where historians believe Washington’s charge struck the British lines." With municipal authorities having given the project permission to begin, the site was cleared in November and December, but legal appeals may still change the course of this plan.

Tuckerton

This is a great weekend for a trip down to Tuckerton. It might be the biggest weekend of the year for this little town.

Mark your calendars

Special Panel Discussion

The Pine Barrens: The Past, the Politics & the Future

SUNDAY, MARCH 3 - 2 p.m.

Princeton University - McCosh 50 Lecture Hall

Join us for a rare conversation with former Governors Brendan Byrne and James Florio,  "The Pine Barrens" author John McPhee, Michele S. Byers of New Jersey Conservation Foundation and Carleton Montgomery of the Pinelands Preservation Alliance. Panelists will discuss how the Pine Barrens were preserved and how to ensure their continued protection. Hosted by NJTV's Michael Aron. 

Free and open to the public. Reservations not required, but seating is limited. Click here for map of Princeton University and McCosh 50.

Jens Eschrich on Frankfurt Oder

LA Fall Lecture Series presents Jens Eschrich

Wednesday, 10/5 at 4:00 pm

Cook/Douglas Lecture Hall

3 College Farm Road

New Brunswick, NJ

Frankfurt Oder—Reconstruction of a City

The city of Frankfurt (Oder) was founded in the 13th century. During World War II, the historical centre was destroyed with the conquest by the Soviet Army. In the socialist society of the 1949 founded “German Democratic Republic”, the city was supposed to be developed as an industrial centre and a “Socialist City”. The city centre itself was totally restructured, only the main churches, the city hall and very few historical buildings of normal lodgement survived. Towards the end of the GDR in 1989, the city was one of the centres GDR of chip-technology with a population of about 88,000.

After 1989 and the reunifications of the two German states, the city had to find a new role in a changed society. Losing about 1.000 to 1.500 inhabitants every year, today the population down to 60,000 people, but it is projected that the shrinking process will continue.

The presentation provides an impression of the historical city as well as the socialist city. Three examples of reconstruction are presented: A church, the marketplace and a park. They illustrate a changed paradigm aspects of city development and reconstruction in the new political system and the transformed society after 1990.

Jens Eschrich, holds a degree  Art History, History and Sociology from the Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg. Since 1990, his work as an art historian focused different aspects of conservation of monuments in Berlin and Brandenburg. In 2000 he joined the Historic Preservation Office of the City of Frankfurt (Oder).

Happy St. Patrick's Day

To celebrate, we are thought we should look at Ireland's two Cultural icons on the UNESCO World Heritage Site list. Since I haven't been to either, I'll add them to my life list of places to go see.

First is Skellig Michael, a monastic complex on a pyramidal rocky island. It's rocky paths and ruins look like settings from any number of movies, making me wonder if it has influenced those as well.

(Photo by GDR from the Wiki Commons)

The second is the Archaeological Ensemble of the Bend of the Boyne which is a series of prehistoric sites which combine to form "Europe's largest and most important concentration of prehistoric megalithic art."  The sites have a variety of henges and tombs, feature solar alignments, and predate the pyramids.

(Photo by Rodrigo y Pamela from Wikicommons)

Cool Class: See, note the cenotes

Mexico has an unfair proportion of the world's cenotes. Those are those giant cave/groundwater/hole things that people like jumping into. Now's your chance to see them, some ancient ruins, some incredible ecosystems and maybe a beach.

Rutgers Study Abroad is working with the LA Department to offer a 3-credit winter class on the Cultural and Ecological Landscapes of the Yucatan that will expand your multicultural studies while keeping you out of trouble during the break.

The ecology alone should be worth it, but the timeline of history there is amazing. But sign up now if you can, because when everyone gets back for the fall it may be too late.

The Fountains of Wayne question

The post in which we ask, Should we be saving cultural landscapes that are defined by kitschy stores that become emblematic of the larger community? or Is Roadside America more relevant than National Geographic?

HIstoric preservation video

Historic preservation can be hard. When I taught in Barcelona, I was consistently impressed with how well the Spaniards had done in holding together 2000 year old Roman ruins and how great the 500 year old churches and plazas looked. (It is worth noting that the banks in Spain are obligated to engaged in community outreach, and their work on everything from Gaudi's buildings to art exhibits makes a huge difference)

There has also been a movement to preserve more modern buildings and plazas, but with less public recognition of their importance or the difficulties involved. As a great example, Cincinnati's Union Terminal has a video of damage to this beautiful, historic art deco building. You can clearly see that, although it isn't as old as the Segovia aqueduct or Mt. Vernon, it is going to be an enormous task to save one America's top 50 buildings. (h/t Metafilter)

Lecture: On global grounds: Urban change and globalization

Dr. Julia Nevárez
Sociology and Anthropology Department at Kean University

On global grounds: Urban change and globalization

Urban development in contemporary cities is lead by globalization’s priorities. Patterns in the way cities develop show similarities and differences among locales. This presentation will explore some of the main conceptual and applied components of urban change as they help better understand contemporary urban form. Some of the specific changes produced by globalization in contemporary cities and human settlements are: gentrification, competition among cities to attract capital, changing patterns in the networks of social relations, juxtaposed modernism and postmodernism in developing cities, the crisis of public space, spectacular events as machines of urban growth, and postcolonial landscapes inserted in the competitive logic of capital, among others. Converging at different levels of development, cities face a constant impact of global forces that make incisions in the materiality of local environments. Conceptualized by some as in flux, the relationship between the local and the global might not be accurately described with the dichotomy global/local. Likewise, there is a political effect to the changes globalization has incited. Researchers interested in the urban condition will find in this presentation and the book in which it is based -- “On Global Grounds: Urban change and
Globalization”edited by Julia Nevárez and Gabriel Moser -- insights into how urban areas develop, how they are planned, designed, and represented within globalization.

Dr. Julia Nevárez obtained her Ph.D. in Environmental Psychology, currently Assistant Professor in the Sociology and Anthropology Department at Kean University, New Jersey and Past-Chair of the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA). Her interdisciplinary approach an research interests focus on urban issues, globalization, urban development, public space and techno culture.

Time: 4:00-5:15 PM

Location: <http://maps.rutgers.edu/building.aspx?1079> Cook Douglass Lecture Hall 110.

Fighting over a rock

Kentucky and Ohio are fighting over a rock that someone pulled out of the Ohio River, NPR reports. Kentucky says it was already registered antiquity. Steve Shaffer says he offered it to them before giving it to Portsmouth, OH. After the legal system sorts it out, the rock's rich cultural heritage will pivot on this new story as much as the possibility that Native Americans etched on it. It is a lot like that time when NY and NJ fought over a rundown little island on their border and now people visit to see this interstate (national, even) park.

Greetings From Asbury Park

The New Jersey Film Festival is screening the local documentary, Greetings From Asbury Park, on Friday September 19th at Rutgers' College Ave Campus. The screening will include an appearance by the filmmaker, Christina Eliopulos. NJN has info and a preview.

A nice day out

One of the larger municipalities in the Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed, Plainsboro, is holding an Art Day Festival and Flea Market this month. It is Saturday September 20th at the Plainsboro Library. It would be a great chance to get a peek at the people and cultural influences in this part of our study region.

Searching for the Jersey Devil

Getting serious about the search for the Jersey Devil, the NY Times Dan Berry heads out with what looks like a senior team of scientists (except for the senior and scientist parts).

A summertime soda map

Since we live in New Jersey, a great way to cool down on a summer day would be to sit in a hammock in the shade and sip a soda. But, in Ohio we'd have some pop. And in Louisiana we'd have a Coke for sure (even if it was an RC).

If you are going to try to blend in, you'd better check out the soda map first.

Using Google Maps Religously

It is still amazing to me to see the breadth and depth of Google Maps applications. This one goes more to breadth.

A Google Map has been posted showing the boundaries of the Highland Park and New Brunswick Eruv. As I understand it, the boundary represents the walkable limits of the area for sabbaths and holidays - walking further would be work, not rest. There is also a very thin wire that is strung around town that shows this boundary to those are observant enough to see it.

Yet another very interesting mash-up.

Jenna's Landscape Photos Day 5: Lighthouses

Last summer one of our students, Jenna Pauloski, spent some time taking landscape photos for our NJ LA project. Each day this week I'll try to post some examples of the photos from her Garden State Tour. Today is Lighthouse Day. Lighthouses represent an iconic form of cultural landscape that really speak to people of various backgrounds.

The Tuckerton Lighthouse


The Twin Lights of Navesink


Sandy Hook Lighthouse


Absecon Lighthouse


Barnetgat Lighthouse


Cape May Lighthouse


Maybe we should all celebrate the end of the week with a trip to the beach. Have a great weekend.