For the past few years, the members of the Cold Spring Historic District Review Board have logged hundreds of hours updating the village’s design guidelines for property owners. This document has not had a refresh since it was created in 1999. Our goal is to provide a more user-friendly resource, expanded to cover advances in 21st-century materials and technologies, as well as energy awareness and other contemporary principles in preservation practice.
We are in the final stages of the design. In coming weeks, I will take advantage of the warming weather, semi-bare trees and emptier streets to update some of the photography in the book, highlighting architectural styles, adornment and restoration case studies. Let me know of any recent work you’re particularly proud of and we’ll try to include it.
We’d also like to invite our neighbors who may be desperate for an “indoor” project to share any historic images of their homes or of the village they may have collected, including from family barbecues, the first days of school, parades or trick-or-treating, that contain great glimpses of homes and shops. We are interested in images of buildings which have been significantly altered or lost over the years, as well as business and storefronts that are no longer with us. In addition, we’d love to see before-and-after photos of renovation projects, and especially historic drawings, plans or other documentation families have passed down.
While we work out the technical details of scanning under safe conditions, simple phone snaps are OK for now. Please email images to [email protected]. Thanks in advance for your help in preserving our beautiful and interesting community.
Sean Conway, Cold Spring
Conway is a member of the five-person Historic District Review Board.
