Venture through the intriguing world of preservation with Amanda Herterich, the new executive director of Historic Tyler. As an East Texas native, Herterich shares her experiences of preservation work in an Alaskan national forest, a project that not only solidified her love for preservation but also her relationship with the man who would become her husband, Conor. Her captivating narrative of working with limited resources in extreme conditions will make you appreciate the dedication behind preserving history.
Herterich offers an exclusive preview of what the future holds for Historic Tyler. Hear about the ongoing projects that are shaping Tyler’s historical narrative and her plans for a greater focus on advocacy, education and investment in historic preservation.
MIKE LANDESS: Tyler, Texas, was founded 173 years ago with fewer than a thousand residents and five streets running north and south and four streets running east and west. Today, that history is shared by the Historic Tyler organization, which partners with six different historical district organizations. Just recently, Historic Tyler welcomed a new executive director, who’s a native East Texan and shares her 1893 Greek Revival home in the Brick Streets district with her husband and two daughters. Welcome, Amanda Herterich.
AMANDA HERTERICH: Thank you, I’m happy to be here.
LANDESS: Your educational background is history and art history, but you’ve got hands-on preservation experience in southeastern Alaska. Tell us about that.
HERTERICH: It was early 2017. At the time, my boyfriend, who’s now my husband, he found this opportunity to do hands-on preservation work in southeast Alaska in the Tongass National Forest, so it’s near Ketchikan. At that time, I didn’t have anything lined up for the summer. My teaching gig was about to end, and so I needed a job, too. He said, “Hey, why don’t you apply for this with me? Let’s just see what happens.” I said OK. Sure enough, they selected the both of us. So, we got on a plane in Dallas and landed in Ketchikan, Alaska, for the summer, and we worked with the National Forest Service to restore three different historic sites in the Tongass National Forest, which is huge. It’s over a million acres. And, it’s also Alaska, which means it’s rugged. The situation we found ourselves in was the first site was like an Adirondack-style shelter, and the only way we could go into that site was by a two-hour boat ride. We had to take in all of our supplies, which meant all of the logs to rebuild this CCC 1930s-era shelter. We had to filter our own rainwater. And because it’s the National Forest Service, there were sound protections in place, so planes could fly over and whatnot intermittently, but we could not use power tools. So we had to do it all by hand.
LANDESS: Oh, my goodness.
HERTERICH: Yeah, felling trees … We lived in tents for about 8 days in this wet, 50-degree weather conditions doing preservation work and chiseling and felling trees and peeling bark off the trees and doing all that kind of really intense labor as a crew of five people total, counting me and him.
LANDESS: Well, now, that was a test, for a variety of reasons, certainly of your new relationship.
HERTERICH: Yes, it was. It was certainly a labor of love.
LANDESS: I was about to say you stayed in love and got married anyway.
HERTERICH: Yeah, at the end of the trip, he proposed to me. So, then he became my fiancé.
LANDESS: Well, there you go. It all worked out.
HERTERICH: It all worked out.
LANDESS: Now, you’re from East Texas, but you’ve only called Tyler home for a few years now. Tell us about your move here.
HERTERICH: So, I was raised about an hour and a half south of here on a 100-acre cattle ranch about 25 miles west of Nacogdoches. So, for me Tyler was the big city.
LANDESS: Oh, yeah.
HERTERICH: Yeah, very much the big city. So it’s familiar. I’d been here numerous times. But once my husband and I had finished grad school, he got an opportunity to go to Bloomington, Indiana, to be a short preservation officer, so we moved up there. Then all of a sudden, I got pregnant, and then we had a baby, and 10 days later there was this strange virus identified in Wuhan, China. And then the world changed.
LANDESS: I’ve heard about that.
HERTERICH: Every single person, right, affected on earth. And then we had another baby, so we had two babies in quick succession.
LANDESS: Was that a COVID baby? I can’t tell you how many people I’ve interviewed who said, “And then we had a COVID baby.”
HERTERICH: Yep, we had two of them, and he got an opportunity that put him back here in Texas, and I was raising babies. And then this opportunity at Historic Tyler came open, and it just kind of felt like a godsend. I felt like it was the perfect job for me, and the timing was really right.
LANDESS: Yeah, sounds like it. What kinds of projects are planned or underway at Historic Tyler, and what would you like to see happen?
HERTERICH: So we’re currently wrapping up two projects that my predecessor, Ashley Washmon, had begun before me. So, we’re at the absolute tail end of the Pollard Farm National Register nomination. So that will be the ninth, I believe, historic district in Tyler, the eighth one that Historic Tyler has been involved in. So downtown was a separate project. But with the Pollard Farm nomination we’ve got over 1,200 properties in total, so it’ll be the largest one. And at this point, it’s just months away from tying up. So, homeowners will be notified soon about that. The other one is the coffee table book. She’s finishing that up, and we’re crossing our fingers. We’re hoping to have that for sale in April for Historic Tyler on Tour.
LANDESS: Oh, nice.
HERTERICH: So those are the ones kind of finishing up and as far as looking ahead. So, our mission, of course, is historic preservation within the city of Tyler. And it’s kind of has a, it’s three-pronged. There’s advocacy, there’s education and then there’s public and private investment. So, for instance, me being here, that’s advocacy in and of itself, right? And then another part of that is education. So, a project I’m taking on now is to kind of build upon the website revamp that we did, and I want to get more information out there to the public. As far as, you know, how did historic preservation become a profession in America, kind of the history of it. If you’re interested in nominating your home or building to be on the National Register or to be like a THC Recorded, Texas Historic Landmark, if you want it to be a Tyler local landmark, how do you do that? You know, what protections does that mean? Not mean? That kind of thing. Historic preservation is a very niche field, and if you’re, if you’re not involved in it, it can be kind of confusing, and I want to kind of give some clarity to it and help people better understand it and hopefully support it and buy into it, because that’s, I think it’s very worthwhile.
LANDESS: You talked about hands-on experience with preservation. Are there or will there be opportunities like that for folks in our area listening to this conversation?
HERTERICH: So, this is a conversation my husband and I had last night, actually. We were talking about that. So, he is the northeast Texas preservation officer for Preservation Texas. So, he works for the statewide nonprofit entity for historic preservation, and I’m here at the Tyler local level, so we just happen to be in the same field.
LANDESS: And in the same house.
HERTERICH: And in the same house. But we talk about that, you know, how might you know if historic Tyler might be interested in offering some hands-on workshops? I think they’ve done that in the past, and we might look to that in the future. Or I mean, we are a small nonprofit and when I mean small, I mean tiny, because I’m the only employee. So of course money is always a factor. So, if we can’t afford to do that on our own, can we partner with other local groups? Can we partner with Preservation Texas to kind of make this happen? Because I want, I want people to kind of learn how to do this themselves, so they aren’t terrified when they see a historic building or something that needs a little bit of love or TLC. So, they, they look at it less as this rundown eyesore and more of you know what, I see the potential and I see what this could be. It just needs a little love and investment and time. And if we can give people the education and the tools and resources to do it, then it might help turn some of these buildings around and that way the buildings can still serve the people of today.
LANDESS: Our guest has been Amanda Herterich, executive director of Historic Tyler. To hear this conversation again or to share it, go to our website, KVUT.org. I’m Mike Landess for UT Tyler Radio.
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