The Foundation for Historical Louisiana will present its first Bricks & Mortar Award at the organization's 28th annual Preservation Awards Banquet on July 22.
Five individuals also will be honored as preservationists at the event, which will be held at the LSU Faculty Club. In addition, the organization will announce its Volunteer of the Year.
Tickets are $50 for foundation members and $60 for nonmembers. A reserved sponsor table for eight is $500. The cocktail hour begins at 6 p.m., followed by dinner at 7 p.m. Deadline for reservations is noon Monday. For more information, call the foundation at (225) 387-2464, Ext. 10.
The foundation will recognize with its first Bricks and Mortar Award the firm of ABMB Engineers. The company is being honored for its adaptive restoration of The Jackson Building on Main Street.
To be honored with the Preservation Awards and "making the past known and useful to the present" are Kathe Hambrick, Robert and Susan Judice, Nick Spitzer and John W. Wilbert Jr.
ABMB Engineers
The Jackson Building, constructed in 1888, is the home of ABMB Engineers. The company remodeled the building for its headquarters between May 2003 and February 2004. Both federal and the new state historic rehabilitation tax credits were used to make the restoration, which was extensive, work as a business proposition, said ABMB's Michael McGaugh.
"Without these tax credits, the restoration would not have been financially feasible," said McGaugh. "These tax credits are an example of a public-private partnership that has worked to benefit the revival of downtown Baton Rouge."
Major Andrew Jackson built the store to sell "hardware, farming implements, buggies, plantation supplies and groceries," according to an advertisement in the 1904 Elks Souvenir publication.
"His (Jackson's) present building is one of the most substantial and businesslike in Baton Rouge," the publication states. "It is constructed of cemented block brick, two stories high, with 90 feet front and has an 18-foot ceiling, with iron columns and a large elevator."
Kathe Hambrick
Hambrick is the founder and director of the River Road African American Museum, which opened in 1994 at Tezcuco Plantation in Darrow. After a fire at the plantation in 2002, the museum moved in 2003 to Brazier House in Donaldsonville.
A $2-million campaign to raise money for an expanded museum in the old True Friends Hall on Donaldsonville's Lessard Street is now being conducted.
The mission of the museum is to collect, interpret and preserve art, artifacts and buildings "for the purpose of promoting education about the history and culture of African Americans in the United States and Louisiana, with emphasis on the River Road communities between Baton Rouge and New Orleans."
"Like many people who visit the River Road, I thought the only buildings associated with our (African-American) history were slave cabins and plantation houses," Hambrick said. "After hundreds of oral interviews, dozens of trips through the sugarcane fields, attending seminars, workshops, archaeological digs, conferences and funerals, I realized that somebody needed to save the buildings that were left and their story."
To date, five old buildings, including the Do Right Benevolent Society Hall and the Central Agricultural Schoolhouse, have been saved by the museum.
Robert and Susan Judice
While both are active in a number of historical and preservation groups, in citing the Judices for the award, the judges noted, in particular, their "rescue, restoration and stewardship of L'Hermitage."
The plantation home, located in Darrow, was built in 1814. Its first occupants were newlyweds Louise Elizabeth Aglae duBourg de St. Colomb and Michel Douradou Bringier, whose father, E.M.P. Bringier, presented the couple with L'Hermitage. The home, among the earliest known Greek revival homes in Louisiana, is named after the home of Andrew Jackson, who visited following the Battle of New Orleans.
As their family grew, the couple made changes to the home, including an elaborate colonnade of 24 completely surrounding Doric Tuscan columns.
The Judices bought L'Hermitage, which had been abandoned for a number of years, in 1959 and began its restoration.
No outbuildings remained, so others from neighboring plantations have been moved in for a caretaker's house and guest house.
In 1973, the house was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Susan Judice is a member of the Louisiana Landmarks Society, Friends of the Cabildo and the Louisiana State Museum. She was named Preservationist of the Year in 1993 by the Louisiana Preservation Alliance.
Dr. Robert Judice also is a member of the Louisiana Landmarks Society, the Friends of the Anglo-American Museum at LSU and the Louisiana Museum Foundation. He also received the LPA's preservationist award in 1993.
Nick Spitzer
Spitzer is a folklorist nationally known for his work with community-based cultures of the Gulf South, American music traditions, documentary media and cultural policy.
He is a professor of folklore and cultural conservation at the University of New Orleans and 2004 Mellon professor in the humanities at Tulane University.
Spitzer, who created the Louisiana Folklife Program in 1978 and served as the first state folklorist for seven years, hosts and produces "American Routes," a weekly two-hour radio program. Broadcast from the New Orleans French Quarter, the program is devoted to vernacular music, musicians and cultures and is distributed to more than 220 stations by Public Radio International.
Spitzer, who has contributed to numerous recordings, programs, exhibits and books, is currently working on a book, "Monde Creole," about music, festivals and life in rural African-French communities in Louisiana.
"I am especially pleased that I have been able to do the work with living vernacular cultures, communities and artists who embody the diversity of history and Old Worlds that contribute to Louisiana's current landscape -- the British Isles, Mediterranean Europe, West Africa, the Caribbean, Native America and, more recently, Asia and the entire globe," Spitzer said.
John W. Wilbert Jr.
A lifelong preservationist, Wilbert has moved and renovated more than two dozen buildings, including the restoration of his own 1850-era home, Variety Plantation.
He has served as president and been a board member of the Foundation for Historical Louisiana for almost 20 years.
Wilbert has purchased, conserved and donated heritage Louisiana artworks, and saved century-old live oak and sweet olive trees. He has rooted and given hundreds of historic plants.
Among the many fine American antiques Wilbert has saved and restored is a late 1800 horse-drawn hearse.
Wilbert served as a commissioner for the restored naval destroyer, the USS Kidd. He has carried on the tradition of blowing taps at the funerals of veterans for 65 years.
He's also widely known for his preserved figs.
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