Historic Preservation and Conservation Commons^™

Assessing Legacy Collections: Analyzing The Preservation, Recovery, And Interpretive Value Of Archaeobotanical Remains From Site 15le70 (Pine Crest Rockshelter), Lee County, Kentucky, Jennifer Carroll

Graduate Final Projects

This paper uses the archaeobotanical assemblage from Site 15Le70, a multi-excavated and extensively looted rockshelter in eastern Kentucky, while opening new lines of inquiry into gendered labor and practice during the Archaic-Woodland transition. Because legacy collections are often dispersed across institutions and/or research projects, the materials from any single site may be fragmented, as was the case for 15Le70. Such collections can be overlooked, yet this investigation into 15Le70’s archaeobotanical assemblage demonstrates that partial or scattered datasets can yield meaningful results and hold the potential to fill gaps in the archaeological record left by looting.

In this study, a small …

After The Final Whistle: Designing The Future Of Stadiums, Alan Zabdyel Garcia

Hospitality Design Graduate Student Capstones

After the Final Whistle: Designing the Future of Stadiums explores how the lifespan of aging and abandoned stadiums can be extended through adaptive reuse and community-centered design. As billions of dollars continue to be invested into sports infrastructure, many stadiums face obsolescence after only a few decades, often leaving behind urban voids and environmental waste. This design capstone develops a framework for evaluating stadium transformation through multiple lenses including adaptability, economics, urban planning, history, environmental impact, politics, sporting needs, and community engagement. Using case studies such as Sam Boyd Stadium and Cashman Field in Las Vegas, the research explores how …

Addressing The Abandoned Typology Of Mills, Terra M. Castresana

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

As anthropologists have shown, rivers are foundational to the creation of human settlement, and many cities design their urban fabric to interact with their respective rivers. Despite the scale of the Chattahoochee River, however, a typical visitor of Atlanta might not see the river as it is covered with highways and other infrastructures. Since the inception of colonial Atlanta as a railroad town in the nineteenth century, the urban design deviated from having the rivers be central to the city’s evolution as scholarship shows. Despite this structural arrangement, there was still an existing relationship with its rivers when waterways, most …

Kattam Choreography- A Facade Of The Virgin Islands, Kiyani J.M. Ottley

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Kattam Choreography reimagines a historic building in Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, USVI as a vibrant cultural hub that celebrates dance, memory, and commerce. Rooted in the embodied traditions of the qudrille folk dance, this project explores adaptive reuse as a performtive act—where architecture becomes a living archive of movement and heritage.

The design treats the building’s layered history not as a static artifact, but as a choreographic score. Quadrille’s spatial logic—its symmetry, rhythm, and communal gestures—informs circulation, program, and atmosphere. The building unfolds as a triptych: a dance pavilion, multi-purpose educational spaces, and a gift shop. Each element responds to …

Interweaving Cairo's Urban Fabric: The Formal, The Informal And The Contemporary, Hagar Ahmed

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Architecture is a negotiation between memory and change, preservation and erasure. In Cairo, a city layered with history, rapid development threatens historic areas and informal settlements (AlSayyad, 2011). While monumental heritage preservation is institutionalized, informal urban fabrics are often excluded from heritage discussions and planning. This research explores Mansheyet Nasser, or Garbage City, an informal settlement between Islamic Cairo and the Mokattam plateau. Over the past fifty years, Zabbaleen residents have built a communal waste collection and recycling system that processes up to 80% of materials, outperforming many regulated cities (Fahmi and Sutton, 2010; Didero, 2011). This infrastructure is both …

From Demolition To Digital: Using Virtual Reality To Interpret Hamilton House, Hannah R. Miller

Graduate Final Projects

This master’s project investigates the potential of digital reconstruction as a tool for documenting and interpreting demolished historic resources, using Hamilton House as a case study. Employing a mixed-methods approach, the research integrates archival analysis with digital modeling to recreate the spatial context of the house. By grounding the digital model in historical evidence, this study examines how virtual reconstruction can be used to interpret social relationships, patterns of use, and lived experiences that are not fully captured through traditional means of documentation. This project also considers the interpretive implications of reconstructing using fragmentary historical data, addressing the possibilities and …

Federal Government Shutdowns And Gateway Communities: Impacts On Businesses, Communities, And Workers’ Perceptions And Attitudes, Dean W. Zakrzewski

Landscape Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

This study aims to answer a presented gap in the literature on how gateway community workers and businesses are directly impacted by federal government shutdowns. Three gateway communities were selected as case-study communities for this research based on a set list of criteria, including size, proximity to urban centers, geographic context, and the prominence of their associated park. The selected communities are Bar Harbor, Maine; Estes Park, Colorado; and Moab, Utah. Community profiles were drafted for each community to understand them from a contextual level, including the breakdown of their workforce and other general descriptions of their communities. A combinational …

Using Non-Invasive Metal Detecting, Ground-Penetrating Radar, And Light Detection And Ranging Surveys To Locate Non-Extant Structures On A Plantation In Charleston County, South Carolina, Thompson Mccormick Teasdale

All Theses

Many historic sites across the United States including plantations such as those in the South Carolina Lowcountry are increasingly at risk of development pressures, environmental changes, and the general loss of more ephemeral buildings associated with these sites. There is a growing preservation need to understand these more ephemeral buildings, especially their connection to enslaved individuals. However, with so many having been lost already or in the process of deteriorating, this area of study is increasingly becoming the purview of archaeologists who can study non-extant examples. Traditional methods of archaeological survey such as open-area excavations and shovel tests are not …

Tribute To The Dead Is Honor To The Living: Uncovering The Evolution Of Funerary Monuments In Black Cemeteries Throughout Charleston, Sc, Lorena Garrod

All Theses

Black burial grounds throughout Charleston have long been understudied, and their funerary architecture even less so. Within the City of Charleston’s Urban Growth Boundary, many undocumented Black cemeteries are threatened by development. Previous scholarship is scant, as these sites have gone without dedicated research for many years. As awareness of their historical significance grows, attempts are being made to document and understand Black burial grounds, both within the context of Charleston, but more so within the context of the descendant communities these burial grounds serve. To this end, this research asked the question, “What material and formal shifts can be …

The Carolina Rain Porch: A Southern Vernacular Considered, Jackson M. Dent

All Theses

The “rain porch,” also known as the “Carolina porch,” is a distinctive vernacular porch type concentrated in South Carolina’s Pee Dee region and sporadically found in neighboring states. Despite its strong regional identity, the form has received little sustained scholarly attention. This thesis presents a comprehensive study of the rain porch, examining its origins, chronology, geographic distribution, and architectural variation. Defined by an extended porch roof supported by free-standing columns set forward of porch deck, the rain porch represents a purposeful environmental adaptation within nineteenth-century domestic architecture. The research integrates archival sources, National Register of Historic Places survey data, mapping, …

Demolition By Intent: Evaluating Charleston's Red X Placard Procedures, Enforcement Practices, And Communication Methods In The Loss Of Historic Structures, Jessica Stech

All Theses

This thesis examines whether the procedures, enforcement practices, and communication methods associated with the placement of Red X placards in Charleston, South Carolina, contribute to the demolition-by-intent of historic structures. Red X placards, also known as unsafe placards, are placed on the front façade of structurally unsafe structures by the Charleston Fire Department to inform first responders in the event of a fire or other emergency. Although these placards serve as a life-safety tool, they may influence how vacant structures are perceived by family or developer owners and the public.

Through using a qualitative approach, this thesis analyzes the outcomes …

Rainbow Row: Tourism, Color, And The Making Of A Civic Icon, 1930s – 1960s, Samantha E. Threlkeld

All Theses

This thesis investigates the emergence of Rainbow Row in Charleston, South Carolina, as a civic and tourism icon through an integrated analysis of visual culture, preservation governance, and material evidence. While Rainbow Row has become one of the most recognizable images of Charleston’s historic district, the chronology and cultural mechanisms through which its colorful façades were produced, interpreted, and disseminated have remained largely unstudied. This study addresses the primary research question: How Rainbow Row’s painted façades were leveraged in marketing and tourism narratives between the 1930s and the 1960s, and what those representations reveal about the construction of Charleston’s civic …

The British Are Coming; Effects Of The American Revolution On Charlestonian’S Importation Of Furnishings, 1765-1800, Summer B. Henry

All Theses

On the eve of the American Revolution Charleston’s ties to Great Britain, particularly London, were far greater than any other colonial city in America. Charlestonians of means traveled to the ‘mother country’ with frequency, sent their sons to be educated there, and were highly influenced by what was fashionable in London, for both home and person.

This study looks at what effects the American Revolution had on Charlestonians importation of furnishings and material goods beginning in 1765 as anti-British sentiment began to take hold in America, through 1800, a time when Charleston was rebuilding going into the Federal era. The …

A Cultural Landscape Analysis Of Early Twentieth Century Plantation Based Golf Courses In The Charleston Metropolitan Area, Thomas A. Darrah

All Theses

When Belvidere Golf Links was established along the banks of the Cooper River in 1901, golf began to blossom in the Charleston Metropolitan area. The early-twentieth century was an era of growth for golf in the region, which took advantage of former plantation landscapes for the further expansion of leisure activities. This thesis examines how these once agrarian landscapes were transformed into some of Charleston’s finest golf courses. To establish the history of what was lost and altered on each landscape, archival research was done to unearth historic, photographs, maps, and plats. Together these sources were organized to document and …

An Alignment Of Absences: The Medicalization Of Death And Its Implications On Archaeological Methodology, Makayla J. Bowman

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

Absence describes something that is "expected, wanted, or looked for [but] is not present or does not exist," (Merriam-Webster Dictionary 2026). The archaeological discipline interacts with absence in many profound ways, largely in its study of the past dead. This paper focuses on the ways in which the medicalization of death has influenced, limited, and misaligned archaeological methodology, and how the result of those methodologies produces archaeological analysis that is absent of or misrepresents our understanding of life, personhood, and our position within a greater, interconnected biosphere. Thus, I present an anthropological critique of the ways in which death and …

What Bombs Cannot Occupy: Memory, Heritage, And War In Ukraine, Dalton D. Conden

The Penguin Review

Air-raid sirens have become part of the daily soundscape in Ukrainian cities. They interrupt meals, classes, conversations, and sleep. When they blare, people gather what they can and move quickly sometimes to shelters, sometimes to basements, sometimes nowhere at all. Families lock their doors without knowing whether they will ever turn the key again. Children carry backpacks filled with whatever seemed important in the moment: a photograph, a stuffed animal, a book pulled hastily from a shelf. Around them, buildings that once anchored everyday life—churches, museums, historic neighborhoods— have been damaged or destroyed.

Restoration Of Rogers Hall, Patsy Glenn

Documents

History and information on much needed repairs of Rogers Hall at UNA, 2006

College Building Transformed Into Museum, Dolly Dalrymple

Documents

An article from The Birmingham News-Age Herald about Wesleyan Hall, its impact on the university and students/faculty, and the addition of a museum to the building, 1940

Una's Predecessor Dates To Feb. 14, 1855, Lorene Frederick

Documents

History of Wesleyan Hall and important dates on the history of UNA

The New Building, The Florence Times

Documents

Information on the new annex for Wesleyan Hall, 1909