Against Interpretation

A Presidential Sanctuary: Restored Lincoln’s Cottage Tells Story of the Emancipation Proclamation
Perched on a hill three miles north of the White House, a 19th-century cottage sits overlooking the capital city, where, for one thoughtful president in the 1860s, it captured the summer breezes and provided a place of refuge from Washington’s rough-and-tumble wartime crowds. The National Trust for Historic Preservation is funding a $15 million renovation of President Lincoln’s Cottage, a 2.3-acre site on the grounds of the Armed Forces Retirement Home in northwest Washington, D.C. With seven-years of planning and renovation nearly complete, President Lincoln’s Cottage at the Soldiers’ Home will open to the public on Presidents’ Day, February 18, 2008.

Athletic Field House Transformed into Modern Shakespeare Theater Center
Ashfield, Mass.-based Clark & Green Inc. has designed a new theater facility in Lenox, Mass., for the acclaimed Shakespeare & Company theater group. The new Shakespeare & Company Center for Production and Performing Arts adaptively reuses a 1960s athletic field house that once enclosed a hockey rink and basketball courts. The new center incorporates sustainable features that include large translucent clerestory windows for natural light, daylight sensors, room-by-room climate control, and a native wetland garden. The design project incorporates flexible seating and integrates the performance, training, production, and office aspects of Shakespeare & Company under one roof. The center will be complete in May 2008.