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Acknowledging Historic Black Landscapes

For more than 20 years, EKLA PLLC has helped large and small organizations preserve historic landscapes and develop cultural sites. Principal Elizabeth Kennedy will share her work with interpreting historic cultural landscapes and creating strong, effective design and management solutions that are sensitive to time and place.

Dr. Andrea Roberts will provide an overview of the Texas Freedom Colony Atlas & Study. The project is dedicated to diversifying planning and placemaking history while bringing attention to black settlement descendants’ current community development and historic preservation issues. The Atlas may be used as an approach to identifying historic Black landscapes to record for HALS.

New York City Parks is the custodian of over 30,000 acres of parkland, including properties with a history of enslavement, such as the Hendrick I Lott House, Brooklyn and the Olmsted-Beil House in Staten Island. Joseph Disponzio, will discuss his work in documenting these historic Black landscapes in the writing of cultural landscape reports for these properties.

The National Park Service Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS) mission is to document historic landscapes in the United States and its territories. Chris Stevens will explain how folks may enter the 2021 HALS Challenge competition by preparing a HALS short format historical report about a historic Black landscape and how these reports will be made publicly accessible and preserved for perpetuity by the Library of Congress.

Presenters:

Elizabeth J. Kennedy, ASLA, NYCOBA-NOMA
Principal, EKLA PLLC

Andrea Roberts, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Landscape Architecture & Urban Planning, College of Architecture, Texas A&M University

Joseph Disponzio, Ph.D.
Preservation Landscape Architect, New York City Department of Parks & Recreation

Christopher Stevens, ASLA
Acting Chief, Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS), National Park Service

Feb 24, 2021 12:00 PM in Eastern Time (US and Canada)