University of Florida marks 40 years of Preservation Institute: Nantucket

February 2, 2012

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — What do Gainesville, Fla., and Nantucket, Mass., have in common? The University of Florida.

UF has spent four decades helping document and preserve Nantucket, one of America’s most revered historic communities.

This year marks the 40th anniversary for Preservation Institute: Nantucket, the oldest university-run historic preservation field school in the nation, located on an island 30 miles off the coast of Cape Cod. With its creation, Preservation Institute: Nantucket, or PI:N, filled a gap in opportunities for students to receive hands-on course work in the field and was part of a larger national movement toward historic preservation in the decades to follow.

“Preservation Institute: Nantucket was established at a time when there was a pronounced need for hands-on learning in historic preservation,” said Marty Hylton, director of both PI:N and the College of Design, Construction and Planning’s historic preservation program. “The program played a vital role in helping educate a generation of preservationists and preservation-minded professionals working in allied disciplines.”

Preservation Institute: Nantucket, a hands-on, interdisciplinary program, provides experience in historic preservation from an international perspective while documenting, researching and helping conserve the island’s remarkable heritage. Guest lecturers from public agencies and private organizations introduce topics impacting international cultural heritage conservation.

“The historic preservation field casts a wide net, and PI:N exposes students to many different areas through its activities and guest speakers,” said Chris Berger, 2009 PI:N graduate and architectural historian for Archaeological Consultants Inc., in Sarasota, Fla. “I met so many preservation professionals while at PI:N, from the executive director of an international organization to the director of a local group, from a timber framer to a materials conservator.”

The program was officially established and named at the end of the 1972 season — the first year that the University of Florida offered coursework for credit. For four decades, PI:N has been instrumental in supporting efforts to document and conserve Nantucket’s historic built environment.

“Nantucket is the flagship for historic districts in the U.S.,” said Mark Voigt, administrator for the Nantucket Historic District Commission and a 1987 PI:N graduate. “It’s not the largest, or even the most diverse, but it has a high concentration of pre-civil war and pre-revolutionary war buildings that are still intact. PI:N introduced me to these wonderful historic resources which cemented my desire to work with historic buildings. Without the PI:N program, my understanding of the intricacies of historic buildings would have been woefully incomplete.”

Professor Emeritus F. Blair Reeves, with the help of Turpin Bannister, first president and editor of the Society of Architectural Historians, established historic preservation courses at the University of Florida. Under Reeves’ direction, UF students first worked on Nantucket as part of the Historic American Building Survey (HABS) program. Intellectual and financial support for the early formation of the Preservation Institute: Nantucket came from Walter Beinecke Jr., whose vision and company, Sherburne Associates, played a major role in preserving and shaping the future of Nantucket.

“PI:N is an icon in the world of preservation,” Voigt said. “There are other programs out there that should be commended for what they do, but no program offers what this program does: Nantucket! It’s an original.”

More than 576 participants from institutions all across the nation have attended the Preservation Institute: Nantucket since 1972. Initial participants were primarily architecture and design students. Today, the program reflects the increasingly multifaceted nature of historic preservation with students representing a variety of disciplines including anthropology, archaeology, architecture, building construction, history, interior design, landscape architecture, material science, museum studies, tourism and urban planning.

“PI:N has played a key role in the education of a number of this country’s preservation professionals,” Berger said. “As the preservation movement continues to grow, it’s important that quality programs such as PI:N continue to nurture tomorrow’s preservation leaders.”

The University of Florida and the College of Design, Construction and Planning have a variety of events to celebrate the milestone, including a “40 Years of PI:N Exhibition,” a gala dinner with tribute to Reeves and Beinecke, and a variety of alumni events. More information about PI:N’s 40th anniversary and a complete event list can be found at http://dcp.ufl.edu/historic-preservation/pin/40th. For more information about the program, please visit http://dcp.ufl.edu/historic-preservation.