FLAVIA ALAYA, PhD--artist, author, professor--Guggenheim, Dodge, and Kress Foundation Fellow--habitual cultural kickstarter with a zealous sense of place--was Inspired into housing and preservation activism on New York’s West Side during its embattled urban renewal phase, then locked onto the backstory of industrial Paterson after moving to New Jersey. ‘Scripting the landscape” of this gritty industrial, immigrant city shaped her public history career. Past chair of both the Paterson and Bridgeton Historic Commissions, longtime member of the New Jersey Historic Sites Council, she moved to Bridgeton in 2006 and two years later co-founded the Center for Historic American Building Arts to help create a laboratory for preservation as an engine of economic redevelopment. www.flaviaalaya.com

MARIA CERDA-MORENO, RA., a preservationist since her earliest architectural training in her native Chile, has studied at the University of Los Andes School of Architecture in Venezuela (focussing on vernacular construction) and in England. In the US she has been active in preservation organizations, architect for Paterson’s Historic Commission, and New Jersey Advisor to the National Trust. In 2006 she joined Bridgeton’s stellar preservation firm of Watson & Henry Associates. A CHABA cofounder, she has helped build common ground with Bridgeton’s Spanish-speaking community, translating the Historic District Design Guidelines and designing Spanish-language workshops in our HomeFronts series. She is currently in independent practice as 14 West Architecture in Bridgeton. queni.architect@gmail.com

ROBERT C. PRESTON CLA, PP, CPSI, is an accomplished landscape architect and professional planner with a Penn State degree in landscape architecture. In 1979, excited by the challenge of revitalization in Atlantic City, where major change and community consensus-building confronted rigorous budgetary and construction constraints, he launched his own consulting firm, Forrest Associates Limited, working on large private and public projects in recreation, housing and transit throughout the Mid-Atlantic region. Boldness, community sensitivity and a sense of public service define his career, which now includes many non-profit boards and the New Jersey Historic Sites Council. He continues consulting and teaching while serving as Chief Landscape Architect of Atlantic City's Division of Planning. A CHABA boardmember since 2012, Robert travels to Bridgeton from Atlantic City to share his expertise and wisdom. rcpreston@gmail.com

THE [chaba] BACKSTORY

CHABA was incorporated in 2009 and became an official 501c3 non-profit in 2011.

We were first inspired by an effort to fend off demolition of the infamous “Bertini Building,” a key contributing structure in the Northgate region of the Historic Distric and an unwelcome  icon of the “failure “of historic

preservation  in Bridgeton.

But even as the economic downturn dashed hopes for a new project of adaptive reuse of the Bertini,* it highlighted CHABA’s larger mission

to the entire district.

*demolished, Summer 2017

We thought a living community

could be  both historic and futuristic,

so we reached out to likeminded activists and  discovered a common vision for sustainable preservation, and a shared willingness to model integrated, people-centered, hands-on ideas for preserving a past and present laboratory of the American dream.

OUR MISSION

Given the size of its district and the variety of its housing and building stock, Bridgeton enlarges everything we do.  Even as we mean to make this city a better place to live,

we also mean to use the cachet of this distinctiveness and the challenge of this size as opportunities to amplify our work. We aim to make Bridgeton a case study of what conviction, spirit and imagination can do to “model innovative preservation as an engine of sustainable housing improvement, jobs creation, quality of life,

& economic reinvestment in the

largest historic district in the state.”

OUR VISION

Simply as a time-capsule of past American struggles for upward mobility, Bridgeton is an exciting place to do public history. But it is also exciting as a place where, as they say,  

“la lucha continua”--a laboratory of the future of homeownership, that great American pathway to the pursuit of happiness.

This same struggle almost literally to gain ground was and remains a part of the visual, environmental fabric of this city. Virtually every historic American vernacular tradition in architecture still stands here, ready to teach us about the past, but also about this thing called “sustainability”--the now and future of that past.  And oral history is still accessible to tell the stories the houses themselves can’t tell.

We learn as we go. The promise of this project is that it is organic and incremental. Each new educational phase is the byproduct of cautious progress: from saving a window to saving a structure, from one building to many, from salvage to advanced carpentry,  from shop program to seminar, from individual story to family story to community story.

We will explore funding opportunities with major foundations and agencies that see the potential for simultaneously (or separately) addressing the needs of our kids and families as well as meeting present and future jobs, housing, and historic preservation goals through our variety of projects. We also hope to be able to sell some of our services to build our financial and “maker” capacity, while we work to create a revolving fund and to design and publicize small pilot/ demonstration projects that bring public and private resources together.

Measuring our success locally and against other urban projects, we hope to amplify the solutions that have traction here and in other communities; bring in experts to see what we are doing and advise us on doing it better; and build an accountable program to which larger  funders may securely commit resources.

...Board Meetings are typically held the third Thursday of the month

6 PM at the Sheppard House

THIS MONTH: a Special Retreat (by Invitation)

MARGARET ”MAGGIE” DE MARCO, a Vineland native, came to Bridgeton in 1973, joining the struggle over city direction that, among other things, created the historic district. An engineer by training (Catholic U, 1964), her early work as a VISTA volunteer in Arizona suggests the spirit of service that has defined her career. Bridgeton’s Neighborhood Preservation Coordinator from 1983, she was also its Assistant Director of Community Development, then Executive Director of the non-profit Bridgeton Housing Development Corporation, administering a Federal HOPE 3 grant that rehabbed 20 City-owned houses for resale to city residents. She retired in 2008 from the NJ Division of Taxation. A member of the CHABA Board from 2011 to 2014 and Treasurer for two years, Maggie recently resigned to take on other tasks. She remains attached to our workshops program and brings her familiarity with Bridgeton neighborhoods and the culture of local homeownership.  mdemarcobrnj@juno.com  (Maggie has retired from the Board ; she continues to project-manage our Nail House work and helps coordinate our HomeFronts educational program.)

CHABA’s OBIE SCHOLARS: