Hopepunk and the the Suburbs

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to shift my attention to a paper that my wife and I are giving at the CHAT annual meeting in Innsbruck, Austria at the end of the month. Our paper is titled: The Heritage of Hope in a North American Small Town during the Cold War. Our goal is to bring together a series of five case studies from Grand Forks heritage management. First is a survey of over 3000 mid-century homes. Next, is the nomination of five midcentury schools to the National Register of Historic places. The third is the nomination of the Baukol edition, a 1940s suburb designed around the parameters established by the GI Bill making returning servicemen eligible for subsidized mortgages. The final two case studies are the former Grand Forks airport terminal building and the Chester Fritz Auditorium on UND’s campus. These case studies share certain common features: they represent the community’s effort to adapt to a growth in population, they reflect new ideas about education, housing,…