“To me, preservation is more about my grandchildren than about my grandparents.” -Harlan Griswold
Named for the longtime chair of the Connecticut Historical Commission and a founder of Preservation Connecticut, the award honors outstanding contributions to the preservation and revitalization of Connecticut’s historic places. The State Historic Preservation Office and Preservation Connecticut are honored to present the Harlan H. Griswold Award to Nancy R. Savin.
Ms. Savin has devoted her life to our state’s culture in many ways and through many mediums – both traditional and original. Ms. Savin’s preservation ethic of honoring place is shaped by both happy and tragic events as a child. She fondly remembers her childhood days spent in a Russian Jewish farm community in Chesterfield, Connecticut; as well as the horror of being a young survivor of the Hartford circus fire. Both left a permanent impact on her understanding of the importance of place and honoring it. As a young woman, she graduated Connecticut College as a major in Music History and Voice, won an honorary scholarship to Juilliard School of Music, earned a Master’s in Education from the University of Hartford’s Hartt School, and worked for the Downtown Council in Hartford before starting a 17-year-long career with Connecticut Public Television (CPTV).
At CPTV, Ms. Savin produced and hosted numerous documentaries and programs that featured Connecticut institutions, people, ideas, and events in the visual and performing arts. Through the people she met and stories she told, her path evolved to include more preservation efforts. In particular, she did several programs about Connecticut’s historic theaters that resulted in her partnering with the State Historic Preservation Office in 1981 to survey Connecticut theaters, concert halls, opera houses, and movie palaces built before 1940. The survey identified more than one hundred properties and it served as the impetus for nominating many of them to the State and National Registers of Historic Places. Her love of these places also led to her founding the Connecticut Association of Historic Theaters, the first statewide organization dedicated to returning Connecticut’s historic theaters to public use. In this role, she brought together the owners of these grand buildings to exchange ideas and support each other with preservation efforts. This organization played a pivotal role in preserving Torrington’s Warner Theater in the early 1980s and Manchester’s Cheney Hall in the early 1990s.
Ms. Savin continued working as a freelance producer and writer for CPTV at the turn of the century, creating award-winning short features such as Saving New Canaan’s International Style Architecture, Outdoor Sculpture at Risk, Historic Preservation in CT, and The Merritt Parkway. During this time, and until recently, she also served on the Board of Directors for the Merritt Parkway Conservancy. She is very proud of her involvement in the celebration of the parkway’s 75th anniversary in 2015, as well as her personal connection – she was born while her uncle’s construction company was building this historically significant piece of infrastructure.
With the historic theater survey, Ms. Savin learned that all good preservation efforts begin with knowing what you have and so she initiated another important architectural survey of Jewish Congregations in Connecticut during 1991. That survey resulted in the listing of 16 synagogues on the National Register of Historic Places, more than in any other state. This survey also was important personally to Ms. Savin, who fondly remembered the synagogue she used to walk to from her grandmother’s farm in Chesterfield. The New England Hebrew Farmers of the Emmanuel Society was founded in 1892 with support from the Baron Maurice de Hirsch Fund. The Farmers of the Emmanuel Society was described in 1910 as the largest and perhaps well-known Jewish settlement in New England. At that time, approximately 90 families devoted to agriculture, dairying, and hosting summer boarders were reported. The community started to decline during the 1930s, and the synagogue was destroyed by arson in 1975. However, the ruins of this building and archaeological deposits from the departed community still remain. This place reminds us that we are not the first generation to experience opportunity or endure adversity. Ms. Savin honored this community with the installation of a monument made from Mount Rushmore granite in 1986 adjacent to the synagogue foundation.
Twenty years later, in 2006, Ms. Savin reactivated the Farmers of the Emmanuel Society and reunited the lost community of her childhood. During the past 15 years, she has spearheaded the designation of the 1.47-acre site as Connecticut’s 24th State Archaeological Preserve, in 2007, and its listing on the National Register of Historic Places, in 2012. The site welcomed a University of Connecticut Archaeological Field School in 2012 and has used several grants from the State Historic Preservation Office to develop preservation plans to manage the property, as well as capital improvement grants to rehabilitate what remains. It would not be appropriate to say that Ms. Savin did all this alone, but her tireless commitment, admirable persistence, and constant caring for this place demonstrate her leadership in preservation. And, while many would be content with stopping here, Nancy has ensured the future care and preservation of the property by arranging for its transfer to The Archaeological Conservancy. The Conservancy, a nonprofit organization established in 1979, acquires, maintains, and manages archaeological sites throughout the United States with the goals of preservation and education.
Harlan Griswold once said, “To me, preservation is more about my grandchildren than about my grandparents.” Through her selfless preservation efforts, both small and large, Nancy R. Savin is helping to build a better future for our children and grandchildren. The State Historic Preservation Office and Preservation Connecticut are honored to present the Harlan H. Griswold Award to Nancy R. Savin for her outstanding and ongoing contributions to preservation in Connecticut.