Preservation Foundation Issues 2012 Awards

Winners of the Preservation Foundation's Annual Awards at the Transportation Museum tonight.

Restaurants, a renovated service station, downtown lofts, a restored locomotive, a garden club and the Fitzpatrick family are among the 11 recipients of awards presented by Roanoke Valley Preservation Foundation at its 2012 annual meeting Thursday.

Each year, the Foundation calls attention to the values of restoring and reusing older structures, encourages stewardship of these buildings and also recognizes environmental projects and individual achievement. “This year’s list has a great deal of diversity—both in building types, recipients and location—which speaks to the vibrancy of preservation in the valley,” said Alison Blanton, Foundation president.

The awards include the typical downtown development projects, as well as new building types such as a gas station and new areas like Williamson Road and Wasena. A family and two civic organizations are recognized for their efforts to preserve local history in its various forms.

The River House

“We are especially excited to give awards to two projects—1222 Campbell Avenue, SW, and Mill Mountain—which were previously on our endangered sites list,” Blanton said.   
 

The 11 awards recipients:

•             16 West Marketplace, 16 W. Church Ave.
•             Carlin’s Amoco Station, 1721 Williamson Road
•             Woolworth Building, 24-28 Campbell Ave, SW
•              River House, 806 Wasena Ave., SW
•              River and Rail Restaurant, 2201 Crystal Spring Ave., SW
•              Lofts at West Station, 357 Salem Ave., SW
•              1222 Campbell Ave., SW
•              Habitat for Humanity, Hurt Park, Old Southwest neighborhoods
•              Chesapeake Western diesel engine 662, Virginia Museum of Transportation
•              Mill Mountain Garden Club, Mill Mountain Park
•              Helen Fitzpatrick and sons Beverly Jr., Eric and Broaddus

              116 West, Carlin’s Amoco, Woolworth Building, River House, River and Rail and the Lofts were cited for adaptive reuse; 1222 Campbell, for renovation; Habitat for Humanity, for renovation and compatible infill development; Engine 662, restoration; Mill Mountain Garden Club, environmental stewardship, and the Fitzpatrick family, lifetime achievement.

Carlin’s Amoco station was built in 1947 and operated as a gas service station until the 1980s when it remained vacant until Berglund Automotive Group bought it in 1998 and began renovating it for office space. Among the original details preserved and restored are the entrance pylon with glass block strips, large display windows and garage doors. The station is a symbol of the development of Williamson Road as a center for auto sales and service.

16 West

 Bill Elliot bought two vacant, adjoining Woolworth buildings, dating from the early 1900s, and converted them into three commercial spaces, 11 apartments and an interior garage. The art deco buildings housed a confectionary, hardware store and later Woolworth, until it closed in 1994. The buildings had a number of design challenges, such as a four-foot difference in elevation from one side to another. In 1949, the buildings were encased in light, beige brick, with stone coping and aluminum storefront.

The River House was a cold storage operation, Roanoke’s main source of ice, from the early 1920s until the 1990s. Developer Ed Walker has renovated the formerly vacant building for 128 apartment units, a restaurant and tap house and a rock climbing wall. The structure overlooks Roanoke River and its greenway in the Wasena neighborhood.

Whit and Lauren Ellerman and Kari and Lee Atwood have converted the former Lipes Pharmacy in the Crystal Spring neighborhood of South Roanoke into River and Rail Restaurant. The pharmacy operated from 1929 until it closed in 2011. The only exterior change in the rehabilitation was addition of an awning on the front façade. An old Lipes Pharmacy logo and storefront aluminum were retained.

Campbell Ave. home

Bill Chapman, a Richmond developer, took a four-story warehouse built in 1903 for Lindsey-Robinson, a milling company, along with an adjoining 1912 warehouse for Victory Specialty Co., and produced 71 apartment units, a movie theater and Virginia Tech coach Frank Beamer’s restaurant, with an outdoor dining patio. Natural light for the interior was provided by an atrium, used as a model by the National Park Service.

In another John Garland project, a long-vacant craftsman bungalow at 1222 Campbell has been renovated as a home for his son, Aaron Garland and his wife. The 96-year-old house retains such architectural details as exposed rafters, soffits, original plaster and wood floors and restored wood casement windows.

Habitat for Humanity has been constructing compatible, residential infill and renovating historic homes in the Hurt Park and Old Southwest neighborhoods since 2009. Habitat is contributing to the integrity and character of neighborhoods, in addition to providing a home for a deserving family. New homes are compatible with existing houses and those renovated kept many original features, such as hardwood floors, leaded glass transoms and mantle pieces. Twelve new homes and three renovations have been completed.

Diesel-Electric Engine 662, built in 1946 when steam locomotives were replaced, was restored by the Roanoke chapter of the National Railway Historical Society at Virginia Museum of Transportation. The engine was used by Chesapeake Western Railway in the Shenandoah Valley until it was retired in 1964 and left rusting as one of the “Lost Engines of Roanoke” at Virginia Scrap Iron & Metal. That firm donated the engine, an outstanding example of an historically accurate cosmetic rail restoration, to the museum.

            

Carlin's Amaco

 Mill Mountain Garden Club has maintained a wildflower garden on a 2.5-acre tract atop Mill Mountain for almost 40 years. The club recently planted five blight-resistant chestnut trees there and installed a chestnut “education box” to dispense information about the endangered trees. The club has provided a water recycling system, plant markers, a woodland outdoor classroom and many native wildflowers, shrubs and trees.

            
The family of the late Judge Beverly T. Fitzpatrick has made many contributions to the Roanoke Valley. The judge was a leader in restoration of the high school as the Jefferson Center. Helen Fitzpatrick has written many notes of celebration, encouragement and sympathy for years. She has been an elder and Bible teacher at Second Presbyterian Church, a reader for the blind and a community supporter. Of her three sons, Beverly T. Fitzpatrick Jr., has led the Transportation Museum to a strong position as a repository of trains, planes and all forms of transportation. A former vice mayor and City Council member, he has held executive posts in banking and education.

            

Diesel 622

Eric Fitzpatrick, an award-winning artist, has won recognition for paintings with both his right and left hands. His works in oils, watercolors and pastels of landscapes, seascapes and Valley events, are widely held. Washington & Lee University produced a film of his work. Broaddus Fitzpatrick, an environmentalist and retired lawyer, has held leadership roles in Western Virginia Land Trust, Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation, Friends of the Blue Ridge Parkway and he worked as a conservation easement specialist. He served on the Blue Ridge Soil and Water District board and has worked on wind energy, mountaintop coal removal and uranium mining issues.

            
 The awards were presented at the annual meeting of the Foundation at the Virginia Museum of Transportation. 

Wayne Henderson, leading petroleum industry historian from North Carolina, talked on the historic gasoline stations of Roanoke. Henderson maintains the world's largest information and photo archives on gas stations and has authored or co-authored 16 books about petroleum industry history and petroleum collectibles.