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Tag: heritage conservation

March 6, 2025
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Season 5, Episode 7

Posted in Episodes, and Season 5

Sharing Hidden History, from Place to Policy

In this “Where Are They Now?” episode, we catch up with Elysha Paluszek (MHC ‘10), senior associate, architectural historian, and preservation planner at Architectural Resources Group. She’s been highlighting hidden history since her master’s thesis, The Los Angeles African American Heritage Area: A Proposal for Development. At ARG, she’s worked on award-winning studies revealing how policy and practice shaped the built environment in West Hollywood and Los Angeles. Elysha chats with co-host Cindy Olnick about these projects and more, including her career path, the field’s evolution, and what she’d change with a magic wand.

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February 13, 2025
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Season 5, Episode 6

Posted in Episodes, and Season 5

After the Fires: What Remains

A month after the disastrous fires in the Los Angeles area, this special episode features a conversation among Save As co-hosts Trudi Sandmeier and Cindy Olnick, and producer Willa Seidenberg. Trudi reflects on the loss of her historic family home, her close-knit neighborhood, and the Will Rogers ranch, an integral part of her and her family’s lives. We discuss the city’s current state of grief and bewilderment, the understandable rush to rebuild along with the need to plan thoughtfully, and how we must focus not just on what we’ve lost, but what remains.

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December 12, 2024
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Season 5, Episode 5

Posted in Episodes, and Season 5

 

Everyday Urbanism in L.A.’s Koreatown

In this “Where Are They Now?” episode, we catch up with alum Junyoung Myung (MHC ’15), who followed yet another of many career paths in heritage conservation: research and teaching. His exciting work blends architecture, design, heritage conservation, and technology—from teaching undergrad architects about adaptive reuse, to training AI to identify architectural styles, and much more. He’s also finishing his doctoral dissertation, which explores how generations of Korean immigrants and Korean Americans created a unique ethnic urban landscape in Los Angeles. It builds on his master’s thesis, Values-Based Approach to Heritage Conservation: Identifying Cultural Heritage in Los Angeles Koreatown.

Jun talks with co-host Trudi Sandmeier about working with residents to identify overlooked places of memory and meaning, using digital technology to advance the field, and inspiring the next generation of architects to embrace heritage conservation.

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November 21, 2024
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Season 5, Episode 4

Posted in Episodes, and Season 5

How Lesbian Bars Built Community in San Francisco’s North Beach

As a young architectural historian in San Francisco, Shayne Watson would take lunchtime walks near her office, pondering how and where the city’s lesbian history took shape. She discovered that one of the earliest lesbian bars once stood right up the street in North Beach, a neighborhood that served as the birthplace of the city’s lesbian community—though you’d never know it just by looking. After earning her USC master’s degree in 2009, Shayne decided to do something about underrecognized LGBTQ history in San Francisco. She never looked back and is now a national leader in LGBTQ preservation.

Producer Willa Seidenberg took a walk with Shayne in North Beach to see some sites from her thesis, Preserving the Tangible Remains of San Francisco’s Lesbian Community in North Beach, 1933 to 1960. They discuss the neighborhood’s roots in tourism, its transformation after Prohibition, and its uncertain fate in the face of the affordable housing crisis.

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October 10, 2024
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Season 5, Episode 2

Posted in Episodes, and Season 5

Death Valley Ghost Town: Conservation of the Ryan Mining District

Before Death Valley became a desert tourism mecca, it was a mining hot spot. The homelands of the Timbisha Shoshone tribe were opened to industry during the California Gold Rush. In this “Where Are They Now?” episode, producer Willa Seidenberg talks with alumna Mary Ringhoff about her thesis on the early-twentieth-century mining town of Ryan, an unusually well-preserved site just outside the boundaries of Death Valley National Park. The company town housed workers at the Pacific Coast Borax Company, which produced the famous “20-Mule Team” cleaning agent used in millions of households.

Mary, an archaeologist by training, describes the lives of miners in a harsh desert environment, the town’s conversion into a hotel for tourists, and how it became a ghost town. She also shares the surprising project she’s been investigating in her work as an architectural historian.  

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University of Southern California