Heather Hendrickson

From a very young age, I was drawn to material culture. Living in Europe through my teen years I had the opportunity to visit many old and beautiful places and many museums. To me, there is nothing like the smell of a stone church that has been standing for hundreds of years. My first expedition into the material culture field led me to New Mexico, where I studied archaeology at UNM. I participated in an excavation in a desert outside of Albuquerque and thought about what my next step would be after graduation. I decided to shift my focus to above ground material culture and that is how I found myself in the Historic Preservation program here at Penn. I became interested in the planning side of preservation and hope to use my passion to help cities and communities protect and celebrate their heritage places. During the summer of 2021 I interned with Maine Preservation and was introduced to Strathglass Park, a model mill community in the company town of Rumford Falls, Maine. My thesis focused on crafting strategies to reactivate this historic community through preservation of their architecturally significant red brick duplexes.