Since February, Ziti goes to Medvet for rehab twice a week and once a month for acupuncture. She is also on supplements to promote bone, muscle, ligament, and nerve health as well as Assisi loop treatments three times a day to promote circulation. Ziti’s favorite therapy, however, continues to be hiking in a park or playing around in the backyard. In the last 3 months, Ziti has run around Walnut Woods Metro Park, experienced Totality during the Solar Eclipse, and hiked hilly trails at Mohican State Park.

     
Left: Ziti getting an Assisi Loop treatment and wondering why she has to wear a blinking light. Right: Ziti having fun at the Hobbit House at Groovy Plants Ranch.

     
Left: Ziti enjoying life on a trail in the woods. Right: Ziti wonders what her new friend on the patio is trying to say.

HDC’s initial involvement with public housing started in 1993, when a Black developer asked us to prepare HABS documentation of the 7 buildings that housed the offices and printing presses of the Afro-American newspaper in Baltimore, Maryland, from 1911 to 1993. The developer planned to demolish the buildings, all constructed before 1850, and construct low-income housing. The newspaper was founded in 1892 by John H. Murphy, a formerly enslaved man, and when he passed away in 1922 it was the largest Black newspaper company in the country with 138 employees and a circulation of 14,000. In the 1930s, the company acquired the largest printing press ever used by a Black newspaper and by 1943, the company had expanded into all 7 buildings and had a running circulation of 225,000 per week. The Afro-American continues to thrive today as Afro News The Black Media Authority.

     
Historic photographs of the Afro-American newspaper building exterior (left) and printing press (right).

In 2012, HDC was asked to coordinate the historic preservation issues surrounding a proposal by the Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority (CMHA) to demolish Poindexter Village, a 27-acrea site containing 35 brick masonry rowhouses constructed 1939-1940, one of the first public housing projects in the state. The complex was named after the Rev. James M. Poindexter, the pastor of Second Baptist Church from 1862 to 1898 and one of the city’s first black leaders. Prominent former residents of Poindexter Village include artist Aminah Robinson; Dr. Earl Sherard, a member of the Tuskegee Airmen during World War II and former chief of pediatric neurology at Nationwide Children’s Hospital; and Edward “Skip” Young, who played basketball for the Boston Celtics. The buildings contained a total of 426 units in 8 floor plan layouts (Types A through H) ranging from studio apartments to two-story townhomes. The buildings were constructed over unventilated crawl spaces, which created structural problems that became too expensive to repair. Today, only two buildings remain that the Ohio History Connection is working to convert into a museum.

View of buildings containing Type B Units fronting a common green. Photo by Jeff Bates.

In the summer of 2023 HDC joined a team formed by Atlas Environmental and Infrastructure as the historic preservation consultant for projects involving public housing. Atlas was awarded one of the contracts and HDC was tasked with preparing the Section 106 summary report for a proposed senior housing project in Dayton. Three vacant buildings would be impacted by the new building: the former St. Andrew’s Church, (constructed in 1923) and two single-family homes (constructed in 1907) that were later connected and used as a psychiatric hospital.

     
View of the two 1907 homes that became a psychiatric hospital in the 1940s: the north house at left and the south house at right. Photos by Atlas Environmental.

One of the best parts of our job is the partners we get to work with and learn from. HDC has been working with MKSK  for over a decade. Their team of planners, urban designers, and landscape architects has worked alongside ours to offer services outside our typical scope of work. However, in 2010, HDC was awarded the project to rehabilitate and design a new addition to Stewart Elementary School, which included designing a new drop off entry and transforming a newly acquired parking lot into playing fields. HDC partnered with Kinzelman Kline Goss (KKG), who merged with MSI in the middle of the project to become MKSK. HDC is currently working with MKSK on the design of the new West Case Park, which involves mothballing the historic OSU Sheep Farmhouse and preparing a HABS documentation report. When HDC worked on the historic Taylor Farm property in New Albany, MKSK was next door creating the new Taylor Farm Park, which would encompass the historic farmstead.

       
Left: Stewart Elementary School Site Plan by MKSK showing the school at bottom with play areas along Stewart Avenue at the left and between Pearl Alley and High Street at the top. Right: 2021 Layout of Taylor Farm Park, with the historic farmstead at the lower left.

Ziti on one of the new grass trails in West Case Park.

HDC president Charissa Durst recently attended the rose window mural unveiling at Mount Zion Baptist Church on Juneteenth. HDC has been working with the Mount Zion Baptist Church Preservation Society (MZBCPS) to remove the stained-glass windows and put them safely into storage until they can be restored and reinstalled in the rehabilitated building. The window openings were filled with plywood “plugs” and painted the same color as the original window frames. The rose window opening, the largest and most prominent window, is on the front elevation facing Carpenter Street. MZBCPS was able to leverage grants to commission local artist Keith Wilde to create a mural to fill the space while the building awaits project funding.

Click here for The Athens News story and here for Charissa’s video of the unveiling.

On June 18, 2024, Charissa Durst was a guest on WOSU’s All Sides with Anna Staver on a segment titled “The Value of Historic Buildings.” Other guests included Thomas Palmer, Executive Director of Preservation Ohio, and Rebecca Kemper, CEO of Columbus Landmarks Foundation. Click here for the post on how Charissa and Rebecca previously met at a Metropolitan Club panel presentation.  The WOSU broadcast can be heard by clicking here.

When Ziti suddenly had trouble using her rear legs, an MRI revealed multiple areas of intervertebral disc disease (IVDD), a problem that often affects beagles. She had a 2.5 hour back surgery on January 22 and was not able to come home until January 25. Ziti started rehabilitation and acupuncture the following week and is now, after 9 weeks, able to walk, run, and climb logs normally. She does not currently have total control of her legs, but we are working on this and it should improve with time. Because of this condition, Ziti has retired from agility and FastCAT in order to avoid injury associated with jumping and chasing objects. So, Ziti will just have to go back to being a dog that goes to the park on weekends instead!

Meanwhile, here’s a collection of Ziti’s athletic career highlights:

     
Left: Ziti having a great time on a FastCAT run in Ohio. Right: Ziti and Charissa at the 2022 FastCAT Invitational in Orlando.

     
At left, Ziti taking a jump at an agility trial and at right, Ziti leaping into the table.

   
At left, Ziti powers through the weave poles and at right, posing with her ribbons after a perfect day on January 6, 2024.

     
At left, Ziti’s scar shows how extensive her surgery was and at right, Ziti gets some sun therapy after a morning rehab session.

HDC is working with Design Group to prepare an assessment and feasibility study of the Hayes Henderson House for the OSU Wexner Medical Center East Hospital. The Georgian Style brick house was constructed between 1856 and 1870 on what was a 66-acre farm in 1876. After Ohio governor Rutherford B. Hayes left office in 1873, he formed a partnership with other investors to acquire the property and subdivide it as the Hayes Addition. The project likely stalled after Hayes was elected president of the United States in 1876. The Hayes Addition was not officially platted until 1896, well after Hayes’ death in 1881. The plat left the house on a 1.5-acre site with the rest of the parcel divided into less than 0.10 acre lots. By 1922 two duplex houses had been built east of the house and all three buildings were apparently for rent.

1896 Plat of the Hayes Addition

In 1942, Leonard Pearl Henderson, a prominent Black lawyer for the city’s Probate Court, purchased the property and lived there with his wife, singer Mary Ferne Henderson, and young daughter LeNora Henderson. Leonard P. Henderson graduated from the OSU College of Law in 1916, just four years after Clarence A. Jones, the first Black graduate of the College of Law. The Hendersons made many improvements to the house through the 1950s, including the addition of the two sunrooms and raising the front porch to two stories. The family also hosted many Black entertainers and celebrities who traveled to Columbus, including singer Cab Calloway and basketball player Wilt Chamberlain. LeNora “Lee” Johnson, who became a New York model and designer, inherited the house in 1987, made many improvements, and opened the house as the first Black-owned bed and breakfast in the State of Ohio in 1995. Upon her retirement in 2017, the property was sold to Blueprint Community Development LLC before being acquired by The Ohio State University in 2021 with the intention of demolishing the buildings and constructing a new rehabilitation center. After public outcry at the demolition, OSU agreed to move the rehabilitation center to another site and find an alternate use for the historic house.

Leonard Pearl Henderson

HDC is currently working to provide recommendations and cost estimates to rehabilitate the house into four possible uses: a learning/activity center focused on youth, health provider/researcher-in-residence housing, non-profit/social service hub office, or small business use.

Southwest corner of the Hayes Henderson house in February 2024.

Interior of the Baker Brothers Wholesale Grocery building in Zanesville, Ohio, which was listed in the National Register in March 2023.

We have all seen markers on historic properties, indicating that this building is listed in the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). What you may not know is what goes into getting those properties listed and what the advantages or seeming disadvantages might be to doing so. As a historic architecture firm, we have worked with countless clients to document and nominate their properties for the NRHP. Here is a list of some of the most common advantages, concerns and commonly asked questions we have observed in our line for work.

• Your property is eligible for the 20% state historic tax credit and the 20% federal historic tax credit, which can make the difference in being able to fund a historic building renovation. Many owners who have a project ready to go run into a delay if their property is not actually listed, as simply being eligible or in the process of being listed in not sufficient.

• If there is a federally funded road project in your area, adverse impacts to your historic property must be considered. This is true for any building that is eligible, but listed buildings receive special consideration.

• Being listed does not mean you cannot do what you want to your property. If the project does not use federal funding either directly or indirectly through the state, nor does it require federal permits, then you can do whatever you want, up to and including demolition. However, local preservation ordinances are often stricter and require design review and approval before a project can proceed.

• As a historic building, your renovation project may be eligible for more lenient building permit reviews. In many jurisdictions, a listed historic building allows alternative compliance methods to comply with the spirit of the building code, which can be more cost effective than following the letter of the building code.

• Historic buildings are often eligible for private grant funding. If your building is listed due to national significance and not just local or regional significance, it may be eligible for additional grant funding from private organizations.

Many states even have grant programs to pay for the research and preparation work. Here in Ohio the grants are through the Ohio Department of Development in the amount of $4,000 for an individual building and $12,000 for a district, with the main restriction being that the owner of the property cannot also be the entity being paid to do the work. So go ahead and get your historic building or district listed!

Map of downtown Zanesville’s historic district showing building status, one of three maps prepared by HDC for the district nomination, which was listed in the NRHP on February 15, 2024.

HDC was commissioned by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources to design a new storage facility in Fernwood State Forest in Jefferson County. The new building will sit next to the existing pre-fabricated metal storage building that features three bays with overhead doors. The pre-fabricated new building will have four bays with overhead doors, one of which will also have an overhead door on the back, which will allow ODNR to pull trucks and trailers into the building to load and unload equipment out of the weather. The project also features a rainwater harvesting system to be used to wash vehicles. The project is projected to bid this spring with construction completed this year. Although this is not a typical HDC project, ODNR is a fantastic client and Ziti loves going to their project locations!

Proposed front elevation (with Ziti) of the Fernwood State Forest Storage Building in Jefferson County, Ohio.

The Mount Zion Baptist Church Preservation Society recently received a grant to continue with planning studies, which included geotechnical investigations and schematic design drawings. HDC worked with Karpinski Engineering to size the ductwork to make sure they would fit in the ceiling plenum and to locate the interior and exterior equipment. During the design process, it was discovered that the basement ceiling is not sagging but rather it simply follows the bowl shape of the floor above. The designers and builders of the church did not waste any space, which made it a challenge to locate mechanical equipment! The project also received coverage in the Columbus Dispatch in honor of Black History Month, detailing what this property teaches about the past and how we can honor its history moving forward.  Click here to read the article.

Southwest corner of the Mount Zion Baptist Church in January 2024, after removal of the stained glass windows to secure storage for protection.