The La Laguna project wins a second award – the CPF Preservation Design Award in the Cultural Resource Studies, Reports category!
"Monster Park" La Laguna de San Gabriel. Photo by Garavaglia Architecture, Inc.
The La Laguna project has just been honored with another award! This time it’s the Preservation Design Award from the California Preservation Foundation in the Cultural Resource Studies & Reports category. Garavaglia Architecture produced the Historic Structures Report and Preservation Plan for the Friends of La Laguna this past year. The same project was just recently awarded a Los Angeles Conservancy Award earlier this Spring. Congratulations again to the team!
Entrance Sign to the Park
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For more information see also the timeline and navigate to the year 1963.
Ambrose Wong visited the Preston Castle for a Johnny Cash Tribute & BBQ event. Garavaglia Architecture has provided consulting services to the Foundation. The Castle is located in Ione, CA.
Preston Castle in Ione, CA. Photo by Sarah Hahn.
Our project manager, Ambrose Wong, headed to a fun concert at Preston Castle this past weekend. The event was hosted by the Preston Castle Foundation and featured a Johnny Cash tribute band with James Garner. Ambrose says, the evening started off with a tri-tip barbecue and just “became better with the start of the music.” The event was a musical journey of Johnny Cash’s hits performed in the same style that they were originally performed. As the day came to a close, the bats came out and the resident white owl made its evening flight from the tower up lit by the building’s lights.
Preston Castle is a brick and stone Richardsonian Romanesque building constructed on land that was purchased from the Ione Coal & Iron Company to house the Preston School of Industry, established by the State Legislature to rehabilitate juvenile offenders. It served as the administrative building and is one of over a dozen associated buildings on the site.
The historic Chinese structures in Fiddletown has just been selected as a winning project for the Preservation Design Awards.
The General Store (left) and Gambling Hall (right) of Fiddletown. Photo by Kelly Thomas
The California Preservation Foundation just selected the Fiddletown Project Team with a 2009 Preservation Design Award in the preservation category this week. The c. 1850 Chinese Gambling Hall and General Store are part of a grouping of four buildings specifically associated with Chinese miners from the Gold Rush. Along with the Chew Kee Herb Shop and a rammed earth residential structure nearby, these structures constitute a significant sub-district that reflects Chinese gold-era history. Both structures are National Register listed for their contributions to the assemblage of Gold Rush-era structures in Fiddletown, California.
Both the Gambling Hall and General Store are unreinforced masonry and stone buildings. While they have survived nearly 150-years, their overall condition was quite poor, requiring significant structural stabilization and seismic upgrading. Large cracks from seismic movement and settling were evident and visible in pictures dating back to the 1930s. Continue reading “Fiddletown Project Wins CPF Preservation Design Award”
