By Kyle Mayhugh, Staff writer

CHARLESTON -- Nora Pat Small was mesmerized by the landscapes she saw as a child.

As much as she loved nature, it was the buildings that fascinated her. She wondered about the history of old barns and houses that dotted the countryside.

When Small got to college, she discovered an area of study that would capitalize on that childhood curiosity n architectural history.

Now Small, a professor at Eastern Illinois University, uses her expertise on both the national and local levels to help people understand history through the buildings that have survived it.

Small was honored recently with the Certificate of Appreciation at the 26th Annual Historic Preservation Awards ceremony, a joint production of the Coles County Regional Planning and Development Commission’s Historic Preservation Advisory Council and the Association for the Preservation of Historic Coles County. Small is a member of both organizations.

Small was cited for her contributions over the last decade, said Kit Morice, chairwoman of the advisory council, as well as curator of the Tarble Arts Center at Eastern.

“Since she’s been here at Eastern, she’s been active in local preservation projects,” Morice said.

From 2001 through 2004, Small was on the committee that worked to compile a historic preservation ordinance for Charleston. Approved by the city council in 2004, the ordinance provided the mechanism for recognizing and listing historic buildings and districts.

Small, who came to the area in 1995 as a professor at Eastern, spent last year on sabbatical cataloging and analyzing the architecture of East Coast lighthouses.

The most daunting challenge is convincing people that Coles County has a history worth preserving.

Some areas, such as the Northeast and the South, have a more natural tendency to preserve history.

“But people don’t realize that even a 50-year-old building can be historic,” Morice said.

The New England region where Small went to college is well-known for its colonial history, but Small says it is a common misconception that Coles County is less interesting historically. She said that the relatively less-studied Midwest leaves open more “possibilities for interpretation.”

Preserving historic sites can stabilize neighborhoods and property values, and attract tourism dollars, she said.

Small’s local preservation efforts include working with the Five Mile House Foundation Board, the Lincoln-Sargent Farm Foundation Board and the Dudley House Advisory Committee, all of which oversee local historical sites.

She also teaches the graduate-level historic preservation class in Eastern’s Historical Administration program as they work on local projects.

Small said it is important to teach the students to work on projects of local significance. She knows of a similar class at another school that asks students to design a museum to go on the moon.

“I want them to do things that are not so pie-in-the-sky,” she said.

Small’s most recently completed class project is still on display at the Tarble Arts Center, titled “Art and Cultures of the Ancient Mound Builders.”

The project features remnants of prehistoric cultures of the Ohio and Mississippi river valleys, including those who lived in the Embarras River valley.

Art, religious tools and pottery show the complex cultures that lived in this area before the arrival of European settlers. Many of the artifacts in the display date to around 1000 A.D.

Small and Morice first worked together in 1999 on a project at the Tarble Arts Center that outlined the history of Eastern’s Old Main, commemorating the building’s 100th anniversary.

Small’s work does not stop when her students move on. She is currently revising a proposal from a previous class to have Charleston’s Sixth and Seventh streets added to the National Register of Historic Places.

The class used tax records and other documents to put together a registry of the buildings, logging which are “contributing” and “non-contributing” to the area’s historic status and why.

Many of the houses in this area were built between 1880 and 1940. Many of the oldest were designed by local architect Charles Mitchell, known for his designs in the “Queen Anne” style, which is characterized by its steep, irregular roofs, patterned shingles and asymmetrical front.

Several notable historical houses line the two streets, including the Dudley House at 895 Seventh St. that now houses the Coles County Historical Society and the Dunn House at 924 Sixth St., which was originally owned by Illinois Supreme Court Justice Frank Dunn.

Small grew up near Chicago, but got most of her education in the Northeast. She chose the University of Delaware for its undergraduate art history department, then went to the University of Virginia for a master’s in architectural history. She finished her post-graduate work with a doctorate in American and New England Studies from Boston University.

Her dissertation, titled “Beauty and Convenience: The Architectural Reordering of Sutton, Massachusetts, 1790-1840,” was later reworked into a book, which was published by the University of Tennessee Press in 2003.

The book outlines the buildings and improvements made by farmers in Sutton, Mass., from 1790 to 1840, and explains historical trends and factors at work in the area at the time.

The book is part of Small’s studies in vernacular architecture, which she describes as the study of “common buildings, those that are not architect-designed.” She said this makes up 98 percent of all buildings.

Previously, Small worked for the Kansas State Historical Society and the Illinois Historic Sites Advisory Council.

Published on Tuesday, May 30, 2006 10:35 PM CDT
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