Save the Date: 2023 LPA Preservation Achievement Awards
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2023 LPA Preservation Achievement Awards
Thursday, May 25
Cider Gallery
810 Pennsylvania St. (map)
7–9 pm
We are so excited to honor our 2023 Preservation Achievement Award Winners:
Tom Harper
Tom is an original founder of Lawrence Modern, which began in 2002 as a social organization for folks interested in mid-century design and architecture. By 2007 Bill Steele and Dennis Domer had joined the leadership team and brought a greater preservation focus. Adding Tim Hossler a few years later, Lawrence Modern is still going strong, with more than 200 members who enjoy on-site events and knowledgeable speakers about modern structures.
Tom appreciates historic structures from earlier times as well. He and Terri Erickson-Harper own or co-own several Lawrence rental properties that have benefited from their excellent work and leadership, including two historic church buildings that have been converted to residential use. Tom served several years on the board of Depot Redux, which helped preserve the Lawrence Santa Fe depot. He also has helped prepare nominations to local, state and national registers of historic places. A personal favorite is his nomination of the Double Hyperbolic Parabaloid at 21st streets and Alabama, which in 2007 became the first midcentury property to be listed on the Register of Historic Kansas Places.
Tom’s advocacy has grown to speaking out about important issues involving demolitions of properties and redevelopment. Tom fought just as hard as LPA against the ill-advised and grossly sized HUB apartment proposal at 11th and Massachusetts Street in 2019. For the past 12 months, the focus of Tom’s activism has been the University of Kansas and its “summer of demolition” (Tom’s phrase). Using his popular Instagram platform, Tom focused daily attention on the demolition of the Facilities and Operations Building, even though KU had gotten far enough along in its approval process without public knowledge to make that effort a lost cause. Tom then called attention to Smith Hall—also on a demolition track but much earlier in the process—before it too would be lost. Along with LPA, Tom’s efforts have won a reprieve for Smith Hall that will bear watching as we move into the summer season.
Mike Goans
When Mike joined the LPA board in 2004, we stood to benefit from his in-the-field preservation and outreach experience. His restoration carpentry business specialized in historic houses, and he and his wife Ann already had completed several DIY rehabs of older properties. Mike took on the task of evaluating all demolition permit applications for possible LPA actions in Lawrence. He engaged many applicants over the years—most whom he was meeting for the first time—to listen to their reasoning, tour the structure if allowed and present potential preservation alternatives.
In 2010, after LPA had exhausted its budget saving the house at 1120 Rhode Island in collaboration with Tenants to Homeowners, Mike volunteered his management and carpentry skills to save the little barn in back, dedicating his work to Ann. In 2012 Mike led a six-month negotiation with Rod Ernst for the LPA purchase of Turnhalle, succeeding where others in previous decades had failed. Mike then volunteered to be the on-site LPA representative and Turnhalle advocate, helping LPA through the sometimes difficult process with existing tenants, potential buyers, and—when LPA undertook a $125,000 stabilization project that saved the building—architects and contractors as well.
Mike developed a window-repair educational program for the Kansas State Historical Society, spoke at two State Preservation Conferences as a window preservation expert and began the LPA Old House Warming program, scheduling many of those events with clients whose homes he had worked on. He and Ann were active In the Old West Lawrence (OWL) Neighborhood Association, including the huge task of working with property owners on the western edge of OWL to downzone the area to stop the rash of small older house demolitions there—affordable housing that’s in demand today.
Searching for La Yarda film project: Marlo Angell, Lourdes Kalusha & Pedro Romero
With the 15-minute film Searching for La Yarda, local filmmakers Lourdes Kalusha-Aguirre and Marlo Angell capture the story of La Yarda, the housing unit built in Lawrence by the Santa Fe Railroad in the 1920s for Mexican-American railroad workers and their families. When the Kaw River flooded in 1951, La Yarda was destroyed and never rebuilt. In the opening scene of the film, we watch members of the Romero family return to the site. The remnants of concrete foundations among the trees and underbrush evoked memories of growing up in a close-knit Mexican American community that took care of its own—often because others wouldn’t.
As the children of La Yarda grew to adulthood, they kept the community stories alive within their own families and the Lawrence congregation of St. John the Evangelist church. When Helen Krische, archivist for the Watkins Museum of History, recognized the importance of these stories, she began working to record them as oral histories. Over the years, through the continued efforts of Nora Murphy, Brenna Buchanan-Young, Jacinta Langford-Hoyt, Neill Esquibel-Kennedy and others, this work continued and even broadened to include architectural research of the structures and site.
Searching for La Yarda takes this recorded oral history into the realm of film, reaching new and broader audiences and adding the visual art and music of a variety of Mexican-American artists to bring the history of La Yarda to the screen.
Now, Angell is leading an effort to capture the stories of La Yarda in yet another way. Finding La Yarda, a digital storytelling and experiential art installation project in collaboration with Buchanan-Young, Peter Jasso, Ben Ahlvers, Blanca Herrada, Jonathan Christensen Caballero, Ann Dean and others, will continue these efforts to understand and appreciate La Yarda.
This event is open to the public.
We hope to welcome many LPA members and friends as we celebrate the incredible achievements of our 2023 award winners.