Intern Experience: Lydia Woods, Wisconsin State Historical Society

Throughout the summer of 2013, I served as an intern in the department of Historic Preservation at the Wisconsin State Historical Society located in Madison, WI. It was there that I worked with the 2,382 National Register Sites listed in the state of Wisconsin. The Historical Society recently began altering their website to become more user friendly to the average citizen. This process included writing a short synopsis of each National Register Nomination along with listing significant information such as the architect, date of construction, address, and if the building is located within a district or if it is individually listed. Over the course of several weeks I summarized 86 National Register Nominations in 12 counties and paired them with archival photographs for publication.

I also worked with the documentation photographs for the Tax Credit program, Determination of Eligibility and, properties and sites impacted by the Department of Transportation. Each photograph was scanned, altered for maximum resolution, and saved within the digital archives containing specific information about each project.

During my internship, the Historical Society was compiling information about the recent controversial 100 Block of State Street project in which several historic buildings were demolished to make room for new development. I worked with the in-house marketing and design division to produce several graphics that will be used in their marketing campaign to educate the public about the devastation in Madison’s historic downtown district.

During the summer of 2013 I also worked for a local restoration contractor, David Arndt Construction. He is currently working on several timber frame barn restoration projects around south central Wisconsin. As an intern for the company I visited several of the barns, took extensive photographs, and working in MicroStation developed a series of measured plans. One project, located in Black Earth was the construction of a new 24’ X 32’ gambrel roof barn made of reclaimed material, some of which come from the 100 Block demolition on State Street in Madison. The drawings were then used within the project to construct the building.