Building Tradition Episode 25: Interview with Christina Rae Butler

Host Peter H. Miller Hon AIA interviews Christine Rae Butler, Dean, Professor of Historic Preservation, and the Education Chair at the American College of the Building Arts in Charleston, South Carolina. She is also an adjunct professor of historic preservation at the College of Charleston and Clemson University and the owner of Butler Preservation L.C. which specializes in historic property research, National Register nominations and preservation plans. When not in the classroom or library, Ms. Butler is a preservation carpenter.

"I knew I wanted to work on old buildings when I was three years old," Christina exclaims. "Growing up in the Western Reserve of eastern Ohio, I saw urban high-style Gilded Age buildings and vernacular farm buildings in the Amish country. My path to a traditional trades career was circuitous; it didn't have to be had I known about ACBA sooner."

"We make better buildings when we understand what worked in the past,” says Butler. “Our students enjoy the satisfaction of making things, tangible things, preserving buildings which tell us who we are. Life moves so fast now; it can be fleeting. This fast pace is not sustainable, but the things we make with our hands are."

A career in the traditional trades was not always an 'obvious choice' for young people. But with a skills gap in the construction and historic preservation field, opportunity knocks. "There is so much work out there,” Butler says, “we tend to take traditional buildings for granted, as if they only exist in textbooks. But they are everywhere: not just pretty or culturally important but adaptable, useful and important to our future."