Participants in a local preservation trades training program recently received some hands-on instruction in window repair from the Fairmount Park Conservancy’s architectural conservation experts.
In April, the Conservancy’s conservation crew joined other tradespeople in the Philadelphia region in teaching the latest cohort of the Preservation Trades Center (PTC). The training center is a partnership between Eastern State Penitentiary, the City of Philadelphia’s Rebuild initiative, PowerCorpsPHL, and local unions, and offers full-time, paid training in carpentry and masonry to its participants.
The PTC is a hub for workforce development in the preservation trades. Trainees are paid $15 per hour on a full-time, six-week schedule to learn a skilled trade and make contacts that could provide them with long-term employment in construction in Philadelphia. The overarching goal is to connect the local construction industry with new talent from communities that are traditionally most underrepresented, including returning citizens, women, and people of color.
During the Conservancy’s two-day window workshop with the PTC carpentry trainees, students learned window terminology and lead-safe practices, along with how to fix some of the problems most commonly found in historic windows – broken glass, deteriorated glazing, and rotten or damaged wood.
The goal of preservation is to save as much of the original material as possible. Historic windows are often a valuable part of a building’s architecture and feature quality craftsmanship and design.
Liz Trumbull, the director of preservation, facilities and trades programs at Eastern State Penitentiary, said that incorporating historic preservation into the carpentry students’ training was a deliberate effort to preserve and sustain knowledge of historic trades in the area.
“As a nonprofit that operates at a National Historic Landmark, we feel an obligation to invest in the industry that serves the preservation of sites like ours,” Trumbull said. “The preservation trades are aging, lack diversity and don’t necessarily have the influx of young new talent. We want to help bring young people into the trades, and we also know that from a building and construction industry perspective there’s only going to be more rehabilitation work in the future.”
Trumbull said recruitment for next year’s carpentry and masonry academies will begin in December.
The mission of the PTC lines up with the Conservancy’s goals of offering hands-on preservation training in the Philadelphia area. The Conservancy has sponsored its own workshops for local homeowners, businesses, and other organizations since 2006.
The Conservancy regularly applies for grant funding to offer these workshops in historic neighborhoods around Philadelphia. Director of Conservation for the Conservancy Tom McPoyle said the information passed along at workshops like the PTC’s is relevant to anyone who has invested in one of Philadelphia’s older properties.
Often, he said, it is a matter of knowing when not to intervene that can make the most difference to the owner of a historic property.
“People may only hear about preservation in terms of painstaking restorations of showy mansions, field trips to 18th-century homesteads filled with antiques, or the city’s historical commission anointing buildings as ‘important’ to save – or not – as the case may be,” McPoyle said. “When direct, practical advice is shared with the public, preservation becomes relevant. The beautiful thing is, if we teach people which modern building materials can cause damage to older houses, this knowledge is now practical and necessary to keep their greatest investment from losing value.”
