Leslie G. Madrigal (USC, Masters in Heritage Conservation)
During USC’s Spring Break most of the Masters in Heritage Conservation students (past and present) could be found at the Boston Architectural College in Boston, Massachusetts. The reason: the 2025 Preserving the Recent Past 4 Conference planned in partnership with none other than the awesome Trudi Sandmeier, Board President of the Historic Preservation Education Foundation, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs, and Director of Graduate Programs in Heritage Conservation. The conference itself took place over three central days (March 19, 20, 21) with March 18th and 22nd serving as opportunities to go out into Boston with guided tours led by organizations such as Docomomo US. Throughout the conference, sessions running concurrently were separated into three different categories: History and Context, Preservation and Advocacy, and Technical Presentations.
Documenting the Recent Past Workshop Lesson on Measured Drawings. Photo Credit: Leslie Madrigal. 2025.
Prior to the initial reception of the conference I attended the Documenting the Recent Past Workshop with the National Parks Service Heritage Documentation Programs, held at the “Beehive” in Boston Architectural College (BAC). This workshop provided in depth discussions on the use of various documentation technologies, like light detection and ranging (LiDAR) in our profession. After some morning presentations we broke out into two groups, those who had experience in completing measured drawing, and those who primarily focused on the context and report writing side of things. I joined the latter and found myself amongst a crowd of preservationists who were equally eager to understand documentation, and when and how to apply it so we may effectively preserve our places. We conducted initial measured drawings of an interior space within the library of the BAC using tools such as architectural rules, tape measures, and the profile gauge tool. Jonathan Spodek, Professor of Architecture at Ball State University gave our group a discussion on deciding what type of documentation certain places need, and why hand-measured drawings are still reliable resources that have stood the test of time.
My particular interests lie within historical context and advocacy work, so to no one's surprise, I was in several of the History and Context and Preservation and Advocacy talks, including, “Better than 3% - the Los Angeles Women's Landmark Project” which featured USC Alumni and Neighborhood Outreach Manager at the Los Angeles Conservancy, Lindsay Mulcahy and current USC PhD Candidate and Women's Heritage Intern at the LA Conservancy, Arabella Delgado. This presentation delved into the details of the Conservancy’s current partnership with the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Where Women Made History initiative, and how they are engaging communities in the process of designating and amending previous designations of places that have left out women's contributions within Los Angeles. Their talk brought attention to the current state of the field, “less than 3% of Los Angeles Historic Cultural Monuments include women's history,” and looked to the future with the more widespread implication of their work. In short, the program seeks to amend HCM’s in Los Angeles to include womens histories, and through collaboration with the California Office of Historic Resources, potentially expand the current designation application to better document multi-layered historical contexts, to avoid the dismissal of important histories in future designations. While I adored their presentation and work in the field, it was great to experience the audience have an equal reaction to their talk. The remainder of this session saw questions from preservationists nationwide that were enthralled with the execution of this project, how Lindsay connects with communities and youth to encourage their continued partnership with the conservancy's work, and how Arabella categorized existing cultural monuments so the program could better understand how to prioritize the amendment process. It was encouraging to witness how this field continues to learn from and encourage one another.
In between sessions the MHC students could be found volunteering in any way they could lend a hand, some were helping run the book sale at BAC, others were technical help in the many presentation cycling throughout the day, one of my duties involved volunteering for the Docomomo US Christian Science Plaza Tour. It is considered to be the largest publicly accessible private open space in Boston. The tour went over the team's efforts towards maintaining the open space publicly accessible, and preserving the 1972 plaza that was part of the overall site's mid-century update.
The "Re-tooling Preservation" session from left to right: Lindsay Mulcahy, Christine O'Malley, Albert Chao, Arabella Delgado. Photo Credit: Leslie Madrigal. 2025.
Christian Science Plaza Tour, organized by Docomomo U.S. Photo Credit: Leslie Madrigal. 2025.
While I love the social and contextual side of things, A presentation I equally loved that had a much more technical discussion was “From Roadside Lodging to Affordable Senior Housing: Repurposing the Jackson Holiday Inn Southwest” by Senior Manager at Ryan LLC, Beth Jacob. Here Beth went into the history of the Holiday Inn franchise, how it changed the roadtrip industry, how it prioritized consistency from location to location, and how her team used these themes to not only preserve this lodging that was in a state of deterioration, but transformed it into affordable senior housing to better serve its community, into what is now known as The Pearl. Beth detailed how their adaptive reuse work required the maintenance of character defining features such as original railings, staircases and roof patterns which were necessary in order to maintain their historic status and apply for much needed funds to see this project through.
Throughout this conference there was a common thread between the different categories and diverse projects. Preserving the recent past involves not just looking at a building, but including its entire context. This was seen in talks about Boston’s City Hall and its original intentions to be a cross point for Bostonians through its plazas and open interior spaces. It was also seen in how several of the studies focused on how people used buildings alongside architectural significance as opposed to the common practice that has long forsaken cultural patterns. And what I believe to be most important, it placed preservation in a contemporary setting, including modern voices in the process as Lindsay said, “often people don't realize that they are part of history too.” The recent past is constantly moving— the 50 year line will look different at PRP5— and it is promising to know that we are striving to save our places in their fullest context to better talk about our collective built environments.
This post was written by Leslie Madrigal, who is a recent graduate of the Masters program in Heritage Conservation at the University of Southern California.