Preservation as an Economic Generator (part 2)

Friday morning started off with a demonstration by Catherderal Stone Products on some of their masonry patches, cleaners, and strippers. It looks like some very impressive stuff.

I then took a tour of the Park Inn hotel. It was in much worse shape than I had thought. There's been a lot of water damage and all of the time and money so far has been put towards making it water-tight once again. It's the right thing to do, but I think the preservationists are meeting with a lot of resistance from the local government and community. Hopefully they can keep a peacefully existence! Here's the City National Bank that shares it's east wall.

At lunch four different Iowa communities talked about what works for their communities in getting people motivated and interested in their projects.

After lunch we took a tour of the Stockman house. And then walked through the back yards of some of the homes in Rock Glen. Two privet owners of these homes were kind enough to open their homes up to our tour. Both they Blythe and Melson homes were done by a man named Water Burley Griffin. Both he and his wife were students of Wright and took over his work when he left Mason City due to the exposure of his affair with the neighbor lady. Now I need to catch the next showing of the PBS show In His Own Right on the life of Griffin.

I'm definitely a conference junkie now. I'll have to start selling house parts to afford my habit :)