The landmarks committee of the Ladies Village Improvement Society of East Hampton will hold its 33rd annual Landmarks Luncheon at the Maidstone Club on Oct. 24 at 11:30 a.m.
“The Good Fight: Why We Preserve Our Heritage” is the theme of this year’s luncheon, which will feature the speaker Michael Devonshire, an award-winning architectural conservator and preservationist who has worked at sites including Sylvester Manor on Shelter Island and the Pelletreau Silver Shop in Southampton Village. He will discuss why East Hampton’s future depends on preserving its past and why saving historic buildings is about more than nostalgia, according to the L.V.I.S.
For more than a century, the L.V.I.S. has worked to preserve and enhance the beauty, historic character, and quality of life in the village.
Preservation, said Janet Dayton of the L.V.I.S., “is the top line in our mantra,” and part of its mission from the organization’s founding in 1895. “I think you can thank L.V.I.S. for a lot of work that was done on Main Street to make it as beautiful as it is,” she said. “L.V.I.S. takes care of so many of the trees. You could say it makes a ‘landmark’ impression when you walk or ride down Main Street.”
Mr. Devonshire began his career as a restoration coordinator for the New York State Bureau of Historic Sites’ office at the Schermerhorn Row Block in lower Manhattan. He served as senior conservator for the Center for Building Conservation, where he directed restoration projects including the Hunterfly Road Houses in Brooklyn and the Lord & Burnham Palmhouse at Old Westbury Gardens. He performed the restoration of interior decorative plaster at Carnegie Hall in Manhattan, and as a restoration foreman at the National Trust Restoration Workshop he supervised restoration work at Ward’s Castle in Rye.
He is senior architectural conservator with the Jan Hird Pokorny Associates design firm, which focuses on historic preservation, where he was responsible for restoration work at both the 1864 Church of the Incarnation, which received a Victorian Society Award, and the 1765 Morris-Jumel Mansion, which received a New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission Award. He also directed the compilation of a historic structure report for the 1832 Merchant’s House Museum in Manhattan, and recently directed field restoration of the 1920 Guilin Building in Shanghai, and Manitoga, the Russel Wright Studio in Garrison, N.Y.
On behalf of the L.V.I.S., he recently conducted an assessment of the Osborn-Jackson House in the village, which was built in the second quarter of 18th century.
With the Landmarks Luncheon and Mr. Devonshire’s remarks, “we are trying to reinforce how important it is to maintain the heritage that has been established,” Ms. Dayton said.
Tickets for the Landmarks Luncheon are $150 and available at the “News & Events” page at lvis.org.
