Rain & The Secretary of the Interior

It's been raining a lot lately so our construction activities have been limited. We do have two new new roofs (yes, two "new"s) that have corrected some issues with the first new roofs we added to our outbuildings (see my previous post), but that's about it.

Here's the new new roof at the Amstel House with shingles of narrower width and joints that do not repeat for at least three courses of shingles:

Here's the new hip joints on the Dutch House shed roof. I think the roofers did a nice job with these overlapping joints:


Just because it rained today doesn't mean that there's no historic preservation news in New Castle though.

This afternoon Senator Tom Carper arranged a town meeting in New Castle to discuss the national historical park proposed for Delaware. In addition to Senator Carper and Congressman Mike Castle, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and the Deputy Secretary Tom Strickland were both in attendance as well! It's not often that a member of the President's cabinet makes an appearance in New Castle so this was big!

The meeting was very positive with both the Secretary and Deputy Secretary pledging to champion the cause of establishing a national park in Delaware (the only state that does not have one). The audience in attendance (about 100 people) were all very positive about the park as well with public comments in support of the park proposal being voiced by the Mayor of New Castle, the Delaware State Historic Preservation Officer (Tim Slavin), and several others. The Secretary of the Interior also received a copy of the New Castle City Council's resolution in support of establishing a visitor service center in Historic New Castle. Not a single comment against the national park was voiced. Excellent!

If the park is established under the current proposal, the Historical Society will be partnering with the National Park Service to interpret New Castle's history. Secretary Salazar mentioned that the park format might resemble the model used in New Bedford, MA. Another possible model may be the Boston National Historical Park. Whatever form it finally takes, we're looking forward to working with the Park Service as a partner.

Hopefully, we'll return to our regularly scheduled construction discussions tomorrow.