Landmark group invites residents for a chat about historic preservation

Landmark Columbus, a group working on education and advocacy projects to care for Columbus’ design heritage, is bringing in a group of speakers to talk about preserving architectural treasures.

Local residents are invited to attend Columbus Conversation at 11 a.m. Saturday at the First Christian Church chapel.

Speakers include representatives of Docomomo-US and Indiana Landmarks and local people who have worked on projects to preserve Columbus’ design legacy, said Richard McCoy, Landmark Columbus director.

Nonprofit Docomomo-US is an all-volunteer group of historians, architects, designers, students and preservationists dedicated to the documentation and conversation of buildings, sites and neighborhoods of the modern movement.

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Indiana Landmarks, also a nonprofit, is the nation’s largest state-based preservation organization, McCoy said. The organization defends architecturally unique and historically significant properties to rehabilitate and repurpose them.

The event will include presentations by Tricia Gilson, Columbus Indiana Architectural Archives, and Jeff Baker, who led the former Preserve to Enjoy group, which worked on Columbus historical preservation but disbanded in 2000.

McCoy said the idea is to have speakers from the international and national levels plus state and local levels talk about the challenges of creating a group to help care for the architectural and design heritage of a community.

The organization will then open up the meeting to a conversation with residents about what the organization can do in the future.

Since forming at the end of 2014, Landmark Columbus has organized a series of Chaotic Tuesday events at The Commons, inviting the public to watch as the electric but frequently frozen Chaos 1 sculpture at The Commons come to life for a series of Tuesday nights this summer. The sculpture, made in 1974 from Kroot Corp. scrap metal, moves through a series of pulleys and levers and balls that roll through the structure.

In August, the group organized volunteers to trim, rake and weed the landscape architecture surrounding North Christian Church at 850 Tipton Lane near U.S. 31.

Saturday’s casual event is meant to introduce Landmark Columbus to the community and to create a dialogue with those who might be interested in the preservation effort, McCoy said.

The group will soon launch a web page and an e-newsletter to communicate activities and plans, he said.

“One of the greatest challenges for Columbus is that the generation here has done a fantastic job of preserving the legacy,” McCoy said. “But we need to determine how the next generation will take the legacy forward.”

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What: Landmark Columbus presents Columbus Conversation

When: 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Saturday

Where: First Christian Church Chapel, 531 Fifth St.

How much: Free

Speakers:

  • Flora Chou and Theodore Prudon, Docomomo-US
  • Marsh Davis, Indiana Landmarks
  • Tricia Gilson, Columbus Indiana Architectural Archives
  • Jeff Baker, formerly of Preserve to Enjoy

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