Paper proposals for the nineteenth annual Legacies Dallas History Conference on January 27, 2018 are being accepted until July 31st. The conference theme will be "Dallas on the Move," saluting the importance of transportation to the development of the area. Papers might focus on pioneer transportation (wagon trails, stagecoach lines, river navigation), public transportation (streetcars, the Interurban, DART), railroads (lines, depots, employees), automobiles (road systems, auto-related businesses), aviation (air fields, airplane manufacturing), etc. Especially encouraged are papers focusing on little known or forgotten aspects of local transportation history and those that can be well illustrated with historic images. Proposals should be accompanied by sample images if possible. All papers must be based on original research and must not have been presented or published elsewhere.    

Those interested in presenting papers should submit a brief summary of their proposal to “Dallas History Conference, 1515 S. Harwood St., Dallas, TX 75215," or by email. Those selected will be notified by August 31, 2017. 

Jennifer Anderson joined the City of Dallas in 2014 as a Senior Planner in the Historic Preservation section of the Sustainable Development and Construction Department. She came from New Orleans but is no stranger to the Dallas area as she grew up in Rockwall and attended SMU where she received a Bachelor in Anthropology with an archaeology focus.

After graduation she took a job at a local Cultural Resources Management firm where she served as a field archaeologist. In 2008, with the downturn in the economy and less work for archaeologists she decided to return to school and went to the University of New Orleans for graduate work. While in school she served as an intern with the Preservation Resource Center for New Orleans, a preservation advocacy nonprofit similar to Preservation Dallas, and got more interested in historic buildings. Due to that interest Jennifer ended up graduating with a Master of Science in Urban Studies with an emphasis on historic preservation.

After graduate school Jennifer stayed in New Orleans and continued to work with the Preservation Resource Center serving as a historic preservation specialist and assistant to the director of the organization. While there she worked on advocacy issues, social media outreach and more.   

When the job came open at the City of Dallas she saw an opportunity to be closer to family. She especially liked the opportunity to be on the governmental side of preservation to help make a difference in increasing the public’s knowledge of historic preservation by working on educational outreach. Even though she was hired to do that she got a little bit of a delayed start due to staffing issues and having to work more on Certificate of Appropriateness reviews. Since then more staff has been hired and she has been able to return to working on educational outreach.

Her first efforts started with improving the web site and making it easier to find information, reworking it to have less jargon and to be more understandable for the general public. Her goal is to facilitate the transparency of the city’s review process. If anyone remembers the web site before Jennifer’s work it has been vastly improved. She has expanded the web site with more documents, photographs, an improved City of Dallas Landmark section with additional information about landmark properties, and a FAQ page about going through the review process for work in a Historic District. She also updated the maps of the city’s historic districts putting them in a searchable Google map and has plans to continue to improve the user interface and place information on the map about Certificate of Appropriateness applications which have been issued.

Jennifer is not just working on the web site though. She adds information regularly to the Historic Preservation section of the Sustainable Development Facebook page and has a preservation blog in the works. The blog will feature staff articles on preservation, styles of buildings, preservation review process, architects who practiced in Dallas, photos, and more. Plans are to launch the blog in 2018.

One of the big differences Jennifer sees between New Orleans and Dallas is that New Orleans tends to have more of a connection to its historic places and an appreciation for preservation. She hopes that with her work she can help bring more of that appreciation to Dallas and educate people about the great historic places we have here and help to be more proactive when issues arise. We certainly hope she can and we are happy that Jenifer is working hard to make the preservation process and information more accessible to everyone. 

I must also take this opportunity to thank Nicky DeFreece Emery, our now Past President, for all of her hard work in the past year and leadership of the organization. It was no easy task with so many issues to deal with like Fair Park, DART D2, the Noll-Struck House, Eagle Ford School, HB 3418 working its way through the state legislature, demolition of El Corazon, and more. She did an excellent job keeping the Board and organization on a steady course through all of that. I enjoyed working with her and her attention to detail on the issues, not to mention all of our breakfast taco meetings to discuss the various issues, planning for events, and more. Being the Preservation Dallas Board President is a big commitment that takes a lot of time and dedication and Nicky certainly came through, especially with keeping on top of issues and working with me closely on some of our more difficult issues. Thankfully Nicky still has another couple of years left on the board so she can continue to be involved!

While I'm passing out the thanks I must also say a big thank you to everyone who contributed to the Fiscal Year-End Campaign! It was a great way to close out the fiscal year and to get us ready for our new one. Contributors to the campaign included: Buddy Apple, Scott Chase, Evelyn Darden, Elaine Dunn, Don Kingston, Elaine Dilbeck MacIntire, Andrew J. McRoberts, David Millheiser, Arlis and Beverly Parkhurst, and Egelberto and Patricia Preziosi. 

I hope you you can join us for one of our fun and educational Summer Sizzler programs this summer as we have several left. We also have some great InTown Outings planned for the next few months and planning is underway for more events throughout the fall and spring. So stay tuned for more great programs and events!

Stay cool out there in this heat!