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The Historic Preservation Workshop project, sponsored by the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training, falls within the multi-year Arts High School Project of the Center for Architecture and Building Science Research at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT Center) and the New York City Board of Education ( Board of Education). Other major participants are the World Monuments Fund (WMF), City Council Member Ken Fisher’s Office, the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training (NCPTT), the National Trust for Historic Preservation as well as many leading preservation organizations throughout the country.
The concept for a Preservation Arts High school is an outgrowth of the 1993 symposium sponsored by the WMF that identified the need to develop a model program for sustainable urban preservation. (Appendix 1,a) The participants at the symposium found that there has been a steady erosion of our historic fabric and the record of humanistic achievement and values embodied therein, as well as a parallel loss of the craft skills that created that legacy. Thus to preserve the record of its history and culture, society must generate a new corps of trained craftspeople imbued with a holistic understanding of this heritage. With this need in mind, New York City Council Member Ken Fisher envisioned the establishment of a high school dedicated to preservation training that would significantly benefit many New York inner city youth and help them meet the needs of society as well.
The threefold goal for the development of a Preservation Arts High School is:
- To create an holistic high school curriculum that integrates an interdisciplinary historic preservation-based curriculum with an artisan skills training curriculum and internship model that will meet the mandatory requirements of the New York State Board of Regents
- To qualify students for admission to post secondary programs
- To provide them with the equivalent of a one-year preservation arts internship
The curriculum is intended to enable students who graduate from the program to enter the workforce of an excellent academic background and earning potential, and the pilot program based at the High School for Arts and Business in Corona, Queens, the High School for the Preservation Arts project is seeking to develop a complete interdisciplinary core curriculum that integrates the studies of architecture and historic preservation into the History, English, Science, Mathematics, and Art curricula as well as artisan skills development.