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The Public Architects (PA) Committee promotes excellence in public architecture and enhances the role of the public architect as an essential element in the planning, design, construction, and management of public facilities. Join us!

  • 1.  Preserving Historic Buildings that Bats Call Home

    Posted 12-09-2021 01:54 PM

    Acadia National Park is going to restore its historic Rockefeller gatehouses. Here's how we'll protect the imperiled bats that live there.


    Preserving Historic Buildings that Bats Call Home

    Iconic American financier John D. Rockefeller, Jr., built the Jordan Pond and Brown Mountain gatehouses at Acadia National Park in 1932. He placed them at the entrances to his estate's carriage roads on Mount Desert Island off Maine's rocky coast. American architect Grosvenor Atterbury designed the stone and half-timbered buildings with a nod to historic French architecture, creating a unique "Acadian" design style.

    Both gatehouses need extensive masonry rehabilitation, but they are also home to three vulnerable species of Myotis ("mouse-eared") bats. Bat populations have declined by the millions in North America since the emergence of white-nose syndrome, a devastating disease. The National Park Service's mission tasks the agency with protecting these buildings and the imperiled creatures that roost in their nooks and crannies. How can we reconcile these two seemingly competing goals?

    Preserving Historic Buildings that Bats Call Home



    ------------------------------
    Ronda Bernstein
    Historical Architect
    National Park Service
    Southeast Regional Office
    Atlanta, GA
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  • 2.  RE: Preserving Historic Buildings that Bats Call Home

    Posted 12-13-2021 11:58 AM
    Very Interesting - thank you for sharing

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    Miken Clark AIA
    Senior Architect
    City of Virginia Beach
    Virginia Beach VA
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  • 3.  RE: Preserving Historic Buildings that Bats Call Home

    Posted 12-15-2021 06:02 PM

    Call an ornithologist in your area and get some professional advice.  You really should want these bats...just not where they are living now. The Nebraska Capitol has hundreds of them but our large masonry monument has the ability to absorb some of nature's more unusual gifts.  Building bat houses and locating them in strategic places may be one option.  Good luck and be patient.

     

     

    Robert C. Ripley, FAIA

    Capitol Administrator

    Office of the Nebraska Capitol Commission

    Nebraska State Capitol, 7th Floor

    P.O. Box 94696

    Lincoln, NE 68509-4696

    402-471-0419   fax:  402-471-6952

    bob.ripley@nebraska.gov    web: www.capitol.org

     

     






  • 4.  RE: Preserving Historic Buildings that Bats Call Home

    Posted 12-17-2021 01:54 PM
    When I toured your capitol many years ago, we were told that you had a pair of falcons living in your tower. The good news was that there wasn’t a pigeon within a mile of the building.

    JIM GALLAGHER, AIA, CBO




  • 5.  RE: Preserving Historic Buildings that Bats Call Home

    Posted 12-17-2021 02:14 PM

    Jim-

    That comment about falcons was true for about 15+ years, however this pair has aged out of their reproductive years and don't produce live chicks, so there deterring pigeons etc. from atop our tower is no longer a value- added feature of this pair of Peregrins.  We hope to change that in the next year or two with a new nesting pair.

     

     

    Robert C. Ripley, FAIA

    Capitol Administrator

    Office of the Nebraska Capitol Commission

    Nebraska State Capitol, 7th Floor

    P.O. Box 94696

    Lincoln, NE 68509-4696

    402-471-0419   fax:  402-471-6952

    bob.ripley@nebraska.gov    web: www.capitol.org

     

     






  • 6.  RE: Preserving Historic Buildings that Bats Call Home

    Posted 12-14-2021 08:47 PM
    My first thought is to relocate the bats.  Will they allow you to build a replacement habitat somewhere in the area, and move the bats to the new place?

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    James Gallagher AIA
    Fayetteville AR
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  • 7.  RE: Preserving Historic Buildings that Bats Call Home

    Posted 12-16-2021 08:08 AM
    Hi - thank you for thinking of the bats.  Here at the University of Florida and we have many bats who take up residence in and around our buildings.  We have built 3 large bat houses/barns to house around 500,000 bats with the most recent barn built in 2017.  It took a few years for the bats to move into the original bat house, but they eventually did.  Since then, we work with our staff and experts to incentivize them to move in the fall - after pup season - if we find a new colony taking up residence in a building.  One of the unexpected surprises is that our bats are now a spectator event every evening and something that we celebrate.  https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/bats/

    Good luck



    ------------------------------
    Cydney McGlothlin AIA
    University of Florida
    Gainesville FL
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  • 8.  RE: Preserving Historic Buildings that Bats Call Home

    Posted 12-16-2021 09:48 AM
    I used Terracon Environmental to deal with bats on a site.

    --

    Michael L. Katzin, AIA

    p | 470.469.5586 

    e | mlkatzin@gmail.com 

    Member | City of Johns Creek Planning Commission