2018 Tour Day Leaders Announced
Docomomo DC is pleased to announce tour leaders for its annual Tour Day, which this year focuses on public spaces along Pennsylvania Avenue. Titled "Pennsylvania to Pershing: Modern Public Spaces in DC," the 2018 edition of the tour will be held on October 13 and led by Catherine Dewey, Charles Birnbaum, and Maureen Joseph.
Catherine Dewey has been the Chief of Resource Management for the National Mall and Memorials Parks for four years. Prior to that she was the Architectural Conservator for the National Capital Region. She worked with a conservation firm and preservation architecture firm prior to joining the NPS. Her background is in historic preservation with a masters degree from University of Pennsylvania. Her works experience outside of the United States includes internships abroad in Ukraine, Italy, and Egypt; and more locally in Philadelphia.
Charles A. Birnbaum, FASLA, FAAR, is the president, CEO, and founder of The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF). Prior to creating TCLF, Birnbaum spent 15 years as the coordinator of the National Park Service Historic Landscape Initiative (HLI) and a decade in private practice in New York City, with a focus on landscape preservation and urban design. One of his major projects is the Web-based initiative What’s Out There (a searchable database of the nation’s designed landscape heritage). He has authored and edited numerous publications, including the Modern Landscapes: Transition and Transformation series (Princeton Architectural Press, Volumes printed in 2012 and 2014), and Design with Culture: Claiming America’s Landscape Heritage (UVA Press 2005), among several others. Birnbaum is a visiting professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture Planning + Preservation.
Maureen D. Joseph, ASLA, is the Cultural Landscapes Program Manager for the National Park Service, National Capital Region. She earned her B.S. degree in landscape architecture from Colorado State University. Maureen has over 25 years of experience documenting cultural landscapes and providing treatment guidance for park managers for a variety of landscape types; from designed landscapes to vernacular landscapes. She has authored or co-authored numerous cultural landscape studies for several National Park Service parks. Most notably, she served as the project lead and co-author for the Lincoln Memorial Grounds and Dumbarton Oaks Park Cultural Landscape Reports. In recent years, she supervised Cultural Landscape research for some notable Washington, D.C. modernist public landscapes designed by Dan Kiley (Banneker Park), M. Paul Friedberg (Pershing Park), SOM (The Mall, Constitution Gardens), Sasaki (Pennsylvania Avenue, Southwest Waterfront) and Carol Johnson (John Marshall Park). Maureen continues serve as an advisor for on-going management of these sites and other National Parks within the National Capital Region.
Docomomo DC's "Pennsylvania to Pershing" tour will include stops at the Mellon Fountain, National Archives, the Navy Memorial, Market Square, the FBI Headquarters, and the Federal Triangle. The tour also will focus on two adjacent Modern landscapes conceived and constructed at the same time: Pershing Park and Freedom Plaza.
Tour Day is an annual event held by chapters of Docomomo US and Docomomo International. This year's theme for Tour Day is Public Spaces—Inside and Out, and chapters worldwide will investigate this theme in their respective cities.