2024 Webinars & Virtual Presentations
Port Henry’s 20th Century African American Community
A Conversation with Dr. Alice Green
February 27, 2024
Dr. Alice P. Green’s recent book, Outsider: Stories of Growing Up Black in the Adirondacks, details her experiences as her family grappled with poverty, race, and acceptance in the mid-20th century Champlain Valley. In this webinar, Dr. Green discusses her book and shares her experiences growing up in the Essex County hamlet of Witherbee after her father started working at Republic Steel’s Witherbee-Sherman iron ore mines. While her family was one of only two Black families in Witherbee, the nearby community of Port Henry had a thriving Black community centered on Elizabeth Street. She discusses growing up and spending time in Port Henry and the surrounding area during the mid-to-late twentieth century.
Secondhand Stories: Exploring Architectural Salvage
March 26, 2024
Are you restoring a period home, redecorating a room, or building a new house? Architectural salvage warehouses offer a fantastic array of extraordinary everyday items, from vintage doorknobs and escutcheons to fireplace mantels, appliances, doors, sinks, stained glass windows, and eclectic one-of-a-kind treasures. Salvaged materials are often taken from demolished or modernized residential and commercial buildings. Architectural salvage warehouses can be invaluable for historic property owners and green-minded individuals to source hard-to-find, period-appropriate parts. Besides being a great way to bring pieces with character and history into your home, shopping salvage means that rather than seeing quality items tossed into landfills, they can be recycled and repurposed elsewhere.
In this webinar, we explored the world of architectural salvage with Pam Howard, executive director of Historic Albany Foundation, and Susan Holland, executive director of Historic Ithaca. We discussed their organizations’ long history with architectural salvage and stories of running their warehouses.