On 23 March 2019 the New England Chapter of the Vernacular Architecture Forum held its twenty-first Annual Meeting at Old Sturbridge Village in Sturbridge, Massachusetts.  This year’s program again had a thematic focus, entitled Landscapes of Diversity: The Cultural Complexity of New England’s Built Environment.  Over seventy attendees heard not only an interesting and varied range of papers but also a report on past and upcoming field trips.  Ritchie Garrison provided a brief overview of the upcoming 2021 VAF meeting in Plymouth, Massachusetts, whetting our appetites while hoping to enlist assistance from Chapter members.  See full program here.

The first field trip for this year is scheduled for Saturday 8 June 2019 to Harrisville, New Hampshire.  Historic Harrisville executive director and Architectural Historian Erin Hammerstedt will lead a tour of the National Historic Landmark mill village with a focus on the twenty-first century issues that challenge the preservation of this nineteenth-century industrial landscape.  In the afternoon, the group will visit Aldworth Manor, a stuccoed villa crafted from a Greek Revival home originally located in Worcester, Massachusetts.  Erin will be joined by Aldworth Manor owner Shane Long and architectural historian Peter Michaud for a tour of the manor which is being rehabilitated using the federal preservation tax credit program.  Look for the announcement with full details later this month.  The chapter is also planning for two additional field trips in the fall.