Historic preservation in America has long been focused on White upper-class male narratives. To some extent this is because they are historically significant as defined by National Register Criteria, having gained importance within a profession or group, and they have dominated the profession of architecture. But landmarking for historic association and master architects is rare. Mostly, they owned and built nice houses in nice places, houses that similar people have wanted to restore and preserve.

A large part of my practice focuses on correcting this bias. I’m proud to have helped lead the fight to save and display the tiłhini Aqueduct, the last purely Chumash-built structure in San Luis Obispo; to have written the Master List nomination for Tiny Mart (now High Street Deli), the first building landmarked in the city for association with an African-American man or woman; and to have written the Master List application for Edla Muir’s Muller-Noggle House, the city’s second building by a woman architect to be landmarked, after Julia Morgan’s Monday Club; and to have established the already listed Simmler Adobe and Garden’s association with Mary Gail Black, a historically significant LGBTQ figure in San Luis journalism, politics, and social reform, and with the campaign to establish a County Commission on the Status of Women, a rare site associated with an historic event in Second Wave Feminism.

I’ve also worked extensively on San Luis Obispo’s Chinatown, documenting its social and food history, and Japantown, identifying existing buildings with the Japanese period—an association previously denied—through historic aerial photography.