Title: PACA Membership & Volunteer Recognition Party
Location: Salvage Warehouse – 44 E. Washington, C
Description: Annual PACA party to celebrate our great members and volunteers. Food, drink, and music provided. Come and meet and celebrate with our wonderful PACA volunteers and members! Open to all.
Start Time: 4:00
Date: 2010-10-30

Shoppers crowded the sidewalks, stores featured elegant interiors and elaborate window displays, and Robeson’s restaurant served the best pie in town. Look back at the glory days of downtown Champaign department stores, including Kuhn’s.

Host John Paul talks to Kyle Robeson, grandson of the founder of Robeson’s, and Gordon Tracy, general manager at Joseph Kuhn’s. Robeson describes how his grandfather started the store, the rooftop music and dances there during the big band era, and the fabulous cooks who worked at the store restaurant. “We had the best pies in town,” he says. Kyle Robeson said he never knew what was in the other downtown stores. His father wouldn’t let his son go inside the competitors’ businesses.

On May 27, Illinois Pioneers looks the days when downtown Champaign was filled with as many as 22 theaters.

Funding for Illinois Pioneers is made possible, in part, by The Noel Foundation, by donors to the Champaign 150th Anniversary Celebration Fund, and by the Office of Corporate Relations at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Illinois Pioneers
7:30 pm Thursday on WILL-TV

[Source: Illinois Public Media website; http://will.illinois.edu/site/headline/the-heydey-of-department-stores/]

The Historic Champaign County: Neighborhoods and Homes digital collection is now available online. It depicts multiple photographs from the Champaign County Historical Archives and architectural surveys from the 1980′s of homes in Champaign and Urbana from the Preservation and Conservation Association (PACA).

The collection includes searchable documentation, including newsletters of PACA from 1981 to 2007. If help is needed to navigate the collection, please refer to search functions.

The 2010 PACA Annual Membership Meeting will be held April 18 at Edison Middle School, at 306 West Green Street, Champaign.  A short business meeting, including the election of three directors and the presentation of the annual budget, will begin at 2 pm followed by the presentation of the 2010 Heritage Awards.  Refreshments are provided.  The meeting is open to all PACA members and the general public.

The Preservation and Conservation Association recently sold a semi-tractor trailer load of carved, medieval limestone. The stone was acquired by the Art Institute of Chicago in 1922 and was installed in the former Lucy Maud Buckingham Medieval Room at the Art Institute.  The Buckingham Room was dismantled in 1965 and the stone relegated to storage (Chicago, 1965-1985; Urbana, 1985-2009).  PACA acquired the stone from the Spurlock Museum at the University of Illinois at Urbana

The grouping consisted of over 200 pieces of carved limestone from a medieval quarry located in Normandy, France.  The major fragments comprised three large Gothic window frames and two interior doorway surrounds.    Continue reading »

There is only ONE MONTH until the nomination deadline for the National Preservation Awards!

Do you know of, or are you part of, an exciting and inspiring preservation project? The National Preservation Awards recognize a diverse array of projects and organizations, from rewarding organizational excellence to honoring preservation projects at the frontier of the green preservation movement to volunteer efforts and more.

Download the nomination form now. The deadline is March 1, 2010.

If you have questions or need additional information about the awards or the nomination process, please call 202.588.6315 or email. We look forward to receiving your nomination.

On Sunday October 18, 2009, PACA will be hosting the “Annual Membership and Volunteer Recognition Party” at the Salvage Warehouse. This event is in honor of all of our volunteers (especially our paver workers) and all those that support PACA through their membership and donations. Come, relax, and enjoy the company and fellowship of others who appreciate our community’s past and historic buildings/architecture.

PACA Salvage Warehouse, 44 East Washington, Champaign

3 p.m. –

Food and drink provided

The Illinois State Historical Society has created an award for 150-year-old church congregations in 2010. Churches of all denominations established in Illinois in 1860 or earlier are eligible to apply for the award.  The award includes a certificate, a  one-year complimentary membership in the Society, an invitation to a special awards banquet, and statewide recognition.

  Churches must document their age with at least one of the following items:  minutes of early church meetings, photocopies of marriage or baptismal records, official charter, contemporary newspaper advertisements or articles, and old city directories.

A $50, non-refundable application fee is required with each application.  Further information and forms are available at  www.historyillinois.org and 217-525-2781.