The Landmark Legends Architectural Tour is Sept. 28 from noon to 4 p.m. The tour features nine homes throughout the area. For those interested, the cost of a ticket will open doors to homes that have storied pasts — and introduce their current owners, who are happy to share the tales.
The story behind the tour itself is worth telling as well, since the event has taken a lot of planning and a large group working behind the scenes to make sure the day is successful.
Pat Stromberg, chairperson of the Landmark Legends tour and board member for Bradford Landmark Society, explained that more than 60 volunteers have been involved in the planning efforts since June. Meanwhile, on the day of the tour, numerous volunteers will be devoting time to help things go smoothly.
“It is a humbling experience — to have all of these people say, ‘Yes, this is something we want to do,’” Stromberg said.
Stromberg said that the planning process has spanned roughly three months.
“That has been a challenge, we have been making things up as we went along and thinking about simple things, like fees and whether kids are welcome — which they are, we are not charging for children age 6 and under. We are assuming we will nice parents with well-behaved kids,” she said. “We thought about how many houses to have on the tour, how many tickets to sell as a result of the capacity of the houses we have.
“The first thing we did was to begin seeking out properties, everything sort of hinged on that. We started in the direction of only having personal homes, but then it led to other things: the Old Post Office, Old City Hall…What is more iconic to the City of Bradford than Old City Hall?”
Stromberg said the next step was the planning committee developed goals and themes around what they sought and came up with four goals: first, celebrating the Landmark’s 50th anniversary, so an introduction or re-introduction to The Bradford Landmark Society; second, introduce the architecture of Bradford, third show those who participate that these are not just old buildings, they have had lives, transitioned from one purpose to another and hopefully will remain in use into the future (with a nod to preservation efforts) and finally, that perhaps not all of the buildings are grand or large but they are good properties that can be given new life through a coat of paint or some attention.
“These good, solid wonderful properties that people pass every day, we want them to think, ‘All that needs is a good coat of paint’ or ‘What could I do with that?’” Stromberg said.
Once the goals were set, several working groups were created, resulting in four major groups and several subsets, each with a chair or person responsible for taking the lead.
The planning group met every other week, with the off week devoted to owners’ group meetings. Then, as the event got closer, the planning group and owners’ group meetings were combined. This allowed for ideas and issues to be discussed and addressed by both groups at once.
A training session was held for those who have volunteered their time to assist the day of the tour. Background information and a job description for greeters, for example, were the main focus of the training.
“We have been working with Kiwanis Club who have supplied a good number of the volunteers; we have volunteers from the American Association of University Women and we have friends and family members — of the owners in particular — who have been drawn into the fray,” Stromberg said.
“We have tried to coordinate and organize the best we can, we have been working with Pumpkinfest and the University of Pitt alumni group, who are having their events the same day. The discussion early on was, are we ok to do this the same day? They said, the more the merrier,” she noted. “Bradford is a pretty wonderful place when it comes to volunteerism, people are willing to give their time and talents to whatever is going on.”
One sad note for the tour: despite efforts to secure a trolley to carry people to the various homes, the only transportation the day of the tour will be via personal vehicle. Stromberg noted there is plenty of parking around the various homes so tour participants should not run into any issues providing their own transportation.
For those who purchase tickets online through the tour’s Facebook page or www.bradfordlandmark.org, Stromberg and the planning committee want to remind you that the receipt is simply a placeholder. The ticket itself is a booklet that must be picked up in The Bradford Landmark Society office on East Corydon Street, anytime up to and including the day of the tour.
“We spent a lot of time on the booklets. There are nine sites, and one of the local realtors, Kathy Obermeyer, graciously took photos of all of them for us,” Stromberg said. “We spent a good bit of time with the owners, who gave us the info they knew about who the original owners were, the builders, etc… Then we did research through Landmark and other sources to put together a narrative — not just ‘that’s the facts on this location.’ It is designed to be a keepsake.”
Tickets remain available.
