Mary@MaryBrush.com     restorechic@mac.com     www.marybrush.com

  January 10, 2005      

December arrived with all the happiness of the holiday season, and the wistful awareness of the end of a wonderful six months of professional, cultural, and life enhancement.  I am so grateful the French Heritage Society and the American Architecture Foundation for creating the Richard Morris Hunt fellowship.  This experience has been so much more inspiring than I could have possibly imagined - thank you.

December included very brief visits with architects that I met during my travels.  The first, Architecte-en-Chef, Marie-Suzanne de Ponthaud has an office in Paris, but one of her regions is Sarthe.  I visited projects in the vicinity of Le Mans for several days. 

Saint Suzanne is a walled town with the ruins of the chateau.  The ruins of the ‘donjon’ will be stabilized as a ruin wall, but an interior catwalk will be installed to provide a view from the upper walls. 

A visit to the office of Architecte-en-Chef, Alain-Charles Perrot in Paris provided access to projects such as the completed restoration of the Opera Garnier - complete with practice studios for the ballet, and the restoration of the Grand Palais with an entirely reconstructed glass and steel roof.

My official final presentation to the French Heritage Society was on December 15, and to a crowd of more than 60 people.  My language abilities have improved enough to speak in French about the program and the 6 months of professional travel and architectural observation.

I was invited to return to see the progress on some of the buildings that I first visited in June with architecte-en-chef, Didier Repellin.  These happened to be his projects in Rome.  The consolidation on the walls at the Villa Medicis is complete.  The winter season provided a demonstration of Italian Frost on the garden of the villa. 

The fresco restoration of Eglisia San Nicholas was within days of completion.  This was just beginning in June, and now the intricate plaster and marble cleaning, which occurs with cotton swabs and a lot of patience, was almost complete.  The scaffolding has been removed, and the beauty of this small church is breathtaking.

The exterior wall work on the Trinita dei Monti continues, and the installation of the new bells in the bell towers is currently underway.  The writing on the new bells says ‘Tutti es possible...’ All is possible, and that I find to be true in the world of French preservation.  It takes, architectural and craftsmanship experience, ‘savoir faire’, time, financing, and the values of preserving the buildings for future generations. 

My Christmas and New Years holiday were spent with good friends from Chicago in Florence, Italy.  I departed Rome on 24 december, and the Christmas week was spent in a lovely apartment across the Arno river from the Uffizzi Gallery.  One of our primary connections as friends is a rowing and kayaking club in Chicago.  It was a wonderful discovery to see out our window that the rowing club of Firenze dock is in the basement of the Uffizzi,.  The week following Christmas brought the first snowfall that Florence has seen in 25 years - and the snowball fights and snow covered statues were all greatly amusing.  A day trip to the walled town of Lucca benefitted from off season lack of crowding.  The view from the top of the highest tower provided the scenery of the Tuscan countryside in the rare white dusting of snow.

The new years was brought in with a fine feast of incredible food and fine wine and the happiness of good friends. 

I then went off to Venice for a few days, as it seems that an architectural sketchbook requires a few entries of the beautiful canals and surrounding architecture. What a wonderful way to begin the new year. 

I will be returning home to Chicago in the end of January.  I bring with me the the anticipation of bringing many of these inspired ideas to the preservation of Chicago architecture.

Thank you for visiting and following my travels,   Please email or contact me.

Happy New Year,  Bonne Annee, et Buon Anno