The Question Collection

Above: Bruce Blanchard, recently retired Facilities Technician, Piscataqua Region. Photograph by Nick Jones.

In each issue, we ask a Historic New England staff member to share their unique perspective on history, preservation, and sandwiches.

Afer Bruce Blanchard finished his BFA in Historic Preservation at Savannah College of Art and Design, he returned to his hometown, Newburyport, Massachusetts. He saw a job posting for a preservation carpenter on a local crew. Bruce had worked as a carpenter a er leaving the U.S. Air Force and before beginning his preservation program, so the job seemed like a good t. His first assignment was working at Spencer-Peirce-Little Farm in Newbury in 1986; in 1993, Bruce joined Historic New England’s Property Care team. Historic New England’s philosophy of retaining as much historic fabric as possible and replacing materials in kind is, to Bruce, “true preservation.” If he’s not kayaking, camping, or exploring the Abruzzo region of Italy, you may run into Bruce around town when you visit our sites in South Berwick, Maine. Bruce retired from Historic New England in May a er thirty-eight years of service, but he can’t seem to quit us—he and his wife, Cynthia Mariano, recently moved into Eastman House, next door to Sarah Orne Jewett House. Read on to find out what the self-proclaimed “Bauhaus fanatic” wishes he could take home from work and what he orders at Newburyport institution The Grog.

1. What’s your astrological sign?

Capricorn

2. Which Historic New England site would make the best setting for a reality TV show?

None of them!

3. If you could have one thing from our collection in your home, what would it be?

Gropius’s Bauhaus desk

4. If you were an architectural style, what would you be?

Craftsman

5. What are your three favorite books?

Framed Houses of Massachusetts Bay, You Can’t Go Home Again, The Prince of Tides

6. Coffee or tea?

Coffee!

7. Hardwoods or carpet?

Hardwood

8. Do you compost?

Yes

9. If you could meet anybody, dead or alive, who would it be?

Richard Alpert

10. If you could buy a new property for Historic New England, what would it be?

A Craftsman bungalow

11. Define preservation in three words:

“Keeping it real.”

12. What’s the best sandwich?

Mushroom Swiss Burger

13. Which season is the best?

Spring