I’m out of town this coming week, at the APT conference in Detroit. Thanks to Covid, this is the first in-person conference since 2019. It’s in Detroit – the picture above shows the 1905 Penobscot Building (the tall one) and the 1900 State Savings Bank (the short one) – where I have not visited in a long time.
Over the 25-odd years I’ve been attending APT conferences, they’ve expanded from paper sessions to a bunch of preservation-related activities, including workshops, a student competition in preservation engineering, exhibits, and so on. All good, plenty to do in general, and since I’ll be one of the judges of the competition, some serious work.
I waited too long to get a room at the conference hotel, so I’ll be staying at the quaint, olde-timey hotel in the Renaissance Center. This is my second time staying at a John Portman hotel, so I know to get ready for the retro-future. The RenCen went up in 1977, so it’s not quite ready for the National Register, which has a general minimum age requirement of 50 years, but I will not be surprised if the complex ends up on the Register. Not because I think it’s architecture is so great, but because of its “significance to the history of [its] community.”
