[NTA] FW: Education Howard University’s Founders Library named a national treasure

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Date: Wed, 2 Mar 2016 21:41:53 +0000

From: Amy T. Billingsley [mailto:amytate@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, March 02, 2016 11:02 AM
Subject: Education Howard University’s Founders Library named a national
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"A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is
like a tree without roots" -- Marcus Garvey

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[cid:B50BC9CF-51CE-421D-B126-B36487AB436F@hsd1.dc.comcast.net.]
The Founders Library at Howard University, on Feb. 29, 2016, in Washington,
D.C. The National Trust for Historic Preservation is joining Howard University
in an effort to find a preservation solution for the library. (Evelyn
Hockstein/For The Washington Post)
By Danielle
Douglas-Gabriel<http://www.washingtonpost.com/people/danielle-douglas> March 1
at 7:40 PM
The National Trust for Historic Preservation is partnering with Howard
University to breathe new life into the school’s iconic Founders Library.
The nonprofit organization on Monday named the library a national treasure, a
designation that ensures that the group will work to preserve the character of
the historic building. The trust is helping the university develop a renovation
strategy to repurpose underused spaces in the library and add research
technology.
“We strongly believe that older buildings should not be trapped in amber and
left to gather dust behind a velvet rope,” said Stephanie Meeks, president of
the trust. “Working with Howard, we’re going to make Founders a creative
learning space for the 21st century, while maintaining its distinctive
character and central place in the life of the university.”
The organization is assembling a team of preservation architects and business
leaders to secure the money to implement that vision, said Brent Leggs, senior
field officer at the trust. He envisions a two- or three-year timeline to
hammer out a plan and raise the money to bring it to fruition. Leggs said the
group is still determining the full scope and expense of the project, but he
expects the rehabilitation to cost at least a few million dollars.
The trust has a strong record of securing funding from corporate partners,
including American Express. The credit-card company has pledged $6 million to
restore landmarks in the national treasures program, which consists of more
than 60 sites across the country. Funding from the company helped restore Union
Station and the Decatur House, one of the oldest surviving homes in the
District.
[cid:3BD53511-940D-4808-AC78-D1D43B9C4400@hsd1.dc.comcast.net.]Wayne A.I.
Frederick, President of Howard University, at a news conference Feb. 29, in
Founders Library. (Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post)
Leggs anticipates that the trust will be able to bring American Express, which
typically confers grants of about $300,000, into the Founders restoration
project. The preservation group will assist the university in seeking federal
and new-market tax credits that could lower construction costs by 20 percent.
But the credit-card company has made no commitment of grant funding.
Howard will have to kick in funding for the project, which the university hopes
to secure through a fundraising campaign tied to its 150th anniversary next
year.
The project arrives as the university is trying to reverse years of financial
strain and bring in new revenue. Since the beginning of the year, Howard has
struck a $22 million deal with Jair Lynch Real Estate Partners to turn a
residence hall into luxury rental units and decided to participate in a federal
auction that could lead to the sale of the airwaves used to carry the signal
for its television station.
“We’re in the planning stages of a major capital campaign, and the preservation
of this building and making it more contemporary is a part of that campaign,”
said Howard President Wayne A.I. Frederick. “Buildings like these are
important. The history and legacy that they house are even more important.”
Perched atop a hill overlooking Howard’s campus, Founders opened in 1939 as the
largest and most extensive research facility at a historically black
university. The four-story Colonial Revival was designed by African American
architect Albert I. Cassell, who, Frederick said, was inspired by
Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence and the
Constitution were debated and adopted.
“Blacks in this country at that time, despite what the Constitution said, were
not operating under an equal system, so the building was designed with that in
mind,” Frederick said.
Congress appropriated $1 million for the construction of the library, which was
the most expensive building on a college campus at the time.
Although Founders has been primarily used as a library, it served as the home
of Howard’s law school from 1944 to 1955. During that time, Charles Hamilton
Houston and Thurgood Marshall used the site to craft the legal strategy at the
heart of the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case that desegregated
the nation’s public schools.
Founders houses the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, one of the world’s
largest repositories of historical records documenting the global black
experience. The center has first editions of preeminent African American books,
including titles by Zora Neale Hurston, and it is home to the papers of singer,
actor and activist Paul Robeson, as well as those of Harlem Renaissance-era
philosopher and critic Alain Locke.
For the most part, the grandeur of the library’s architecture, with its
sweeping views of the campus from the reading room, remains intact. Yet the
building is showing its age, with minor cracks in the walls and chipped paint.
University leaders have over the years weighed various options for modernizing
Founders. Before he retired as director of the research center last year,
Howard Dodson
Jr.<https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/howard-dodson-jr-has-returned-to-work-trying-to-make-howard-research-center-great-again/2013/05/26/72c170b0-c196-11e2-bfdb-3886a561c1ff_story.html?hpid=z10>
drafted plans to repurpose the stacks and upgrade the library system. Leggs
said the trust will build on those ideas as it moves forward with the
restoration plan.
Get updates on your area delivered via e-mail
[cid:9C1BC4E7-83E5-4F8D-B4B8-2D4945ED4B34@hsd1.dc.comcast.net.]<http://www.washingtonpost.com/people/danielle-douglas>
Danielle Douglas-Gabriel covers the economics of education, writing about the
financial lives of students from when they take out student debt through their
experiences in the job market. Before that, she wrote about the banking
industry.

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[NTA] FW: Education Howard University’s Founders Library named a national treasure

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