Sally Donovan of Hood River, a longtime Oregon-based cultural resource specialist and photographer, will be honored next month with the 2016 George McMath Historic Preservation Award, at the University of Oregon in Portland. The award is presented by the School of Architecture and Allied Arts. The luncheon, open to the public, will be May 11 from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the Event Room, White Stag Block, 70 NW Couch St.
Donovan has led Donovan and Associates, a historic preservation firm in Hood River since her graduation from the UO’s historic preservation program in 1987. Her list of National Register nominations, building surveys, preservation plans for counties and cities, large-format photography of historic properties, master plans for historic districts, environmental impact statements, and more runs well into the hundreds. Her firm, a certified woman owned business, specializes in the preservation and treatment of historic cemeteries.
Cost is $50 per person; reservation deadline is Friday, May 6. Proceeds support financial aid for historic preservation students. Lunch program presentation will be by Arianna Urban, graduate student in the UO Historic Preservation Program.
Donovan and her husband, Bruce Howard, have been working together for about 15 years repairing gravestones and conducting workshops at several sites throughout Oregon. She and Howard teach appropriate techniques for re-setting tilted, leaning, and fallen markers, and for documenting dislocated grave markers and marker fragments.
Her friend Ellen Shapley said, “What’s really special is that when she first started on her project to inventory Hood River’s historical buildings 20 some years ago, George McMath accompanied her around town. He was a great Portland preservationist and the grandson of the eminent early 20th century Portland architect, A. E. Doyle. Doyle designed four buildings in Hood River … Butler Bank, Lakecliff Estates, the Eliot Building (Shortt Supply) and the former classical church on the hill across from the Children’s Park, now a home.”
Donovan’s focus on cemetery work came early in her consulting career, when one of her first contracts was to prepare a preservation master plan for the Jacksonville Cemetery. “It was a great opportunity to study the various components of historic cemeteries from the road circulation patterns, signage, fencing, landscape features, block enclosures, management, and cemetery objects,” she said.
Other cemetery projects came her way as a result, sparked in part by formation of what is now the Oregon’s Commission on Historic Cemeteries. From 1995 to 1999, Donovan served on the Pioneer Cemetery Commission, forerunner of the Oregon Commission on Historic Cemeteries.
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