Legacy & Place: Auburn Walk & Talk [5 PDH Pending]

Course Description [5 PDH Pending]

This course explores Auburn, New York’s historic landscapes and cultural narratives through both individual site tours and a guided walking tour of Downtown Auburn. Participants will study nationally significant sites, including the Harriet Tubman National Historical Park, the Harriet Tubman Home, the Equal Right's Heritage Center, and Auburn’s downtown public realm. The session highlights how historic preservation, landscape design, and public art intersect to tell stories of freedom, equality, and resilience. The course also introduces the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties and how these guidelines inform restoration, rehabilitation, and preservation of heritage sites.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

1. Recognize the cultural and historic significance of Auburn’s landscapes, particularly those associated with Harriet Tubman, abolitionism, and equal rights movements.
2. Apply landscape analysis and preservation principles to historic sites in both urban and rural contexts.
3. Interpret and apply the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards to restoration and rehabilitation of national heritage sites.
4. Evaluate strategies for interpreting cultural history through landscape features, public art, and placemaking initiatives.
5. Assess how contemporary design interventions (sustainability, accessibility, and public art) can coexist with and enrich historic landscapes.
6. Engage with methods of community advocacy and storytelling that ensure the relevance of heritage sites for future generations.

Key Topics Covered

• Historical and Cultural Context: Harriet Tubman’s legacy, Auburn’s role in abolitionist and equal rights history, and the significance of place in shaping identity.
• Historic Property Preservation: Documentation, archival research, and design strategies for historic sites (Harriet Tubman Home, Fort Hill Cemetery, Seward House Historic Museum).
• The Secretary of the Interior’s Standards: Principles of restoration, rehabilitation, and preservation at national heritage sites as related to the Harriet Tubman National Historical Park.
• Interpretation and Public Art: Use of signage, wayfinding, and public art to communicate layered histories, with case studies from Auburn’s Equal Rights Heritage Center and placemaking initiatives.

Lunch is included and we will host a social hour after the event to make a day of it!

Info: The National Historical Park that consists of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, where Harriet Tubman was an active member and where her funeral was held. The NPS recently completed a restoration project that took them back to 1913, her date of death, and the period of significance in historic preservation. NPS staff will give a guided tour.

Info: Lunch & Learn: Tour of exhibits, historical lecture and catered lunch.

Info: Tour sites from Auburn's Downtown Revitalization Initiative with Jesse Kline, Executive Director of the Auburn BID, sculpture artist, Audrey Iwanicki, and Sue Steele, the project LA.

Info: Learn about the incredible history of Harriet Tubman and visit her home.

Info: Rest your feet and have a beverage together. Location TBD

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

NYS Equal Rights Heritage Center & Auburn NY Visitor Center, 25 South Street, Auburn, United States