Public Invited to Friday Morning Event at 1861 Custom House to Hear Results of Three-Week Preservation Field School Work in Galveston by Graduate Students from U.T. San Antonio

The lights have been burning late at the Menard House as graduate students participating in the University of Texas at San Antonio College of Architecture’s three-week summer Historic Preservation Field School put the finishing touches on their research and get ready to present their findings Friday. The students’ presentations will begin at 10 a.m. in the 1861 Custom House’s second floor courtroom. The program is free and open to the public.

A graduate student team from U.T. San Antonio discusses accessibility issues in one of the attic rooms of the Bishop's Palace. From left to right, Instructor Rick Lewis, AIA, leads the discussion with students Matthew Tompkins, Andy Castillo, Sara Luduena and Andrew Mendez.

The projects cover preservation and adaptive use of the historic Martini Theater, improving accessibility of the Bishop’s Palace for the physically challenged, and a cultural landscape study and suggested planning for Broadway Avenue.

Friday morning’s power point presentations will consist of slides and overviews of the projects’ content and conclusions. In addition to the visual presentation, the students are also producing hard copy documentation of their research and findings.

The final presentation documents generated for these three projects will be given to GHF, with the hope that they will prove to be be useful tools in the foundation’s ongoing preservation of the historic character of Galveston.