The Providence Preservation Society (PPS) invites the public to the 2016 Providence Symposium, Why Preserve? on November 3rd and 4th at the Industrial Trust Building, 111 Westminster Street. Thursday evening’s program is FREE, while registration for Friday’s day-long program is $60 or $45 for non-profit/government employees and PPS members.

The annual Providence Symposium engages experts from across the nation and local stakeholders on topics critical to the future of Providence. Sixty years after its founding, the 2016 Symposium will launch a year of community-based conversations around foundational preservation questions: Why do we preserve? What do we preserve? Who decides what we preserve – that is, who are “we”? What are the costs of preservation? Who bears them?

Part of the conversation will be PPS’s overriding concern for Providence’s hardest-to-use historic buildings. The Industrial Trust Building itself, an iconic Art Deco skyscraper, has been vacant since 2013 and cited as a critical development challenge. All Symposium attendees will enjoy tours of the building, which were sold out during summer 2016.

Leading the program, along with PPS and a line-up of expert panelists, will be special guests whose work has had monumental impact on countless communities and historic buildings: Curtis G. Viebranz, President & CEO of Mount Vernon; Carl R. Nold, President & CEO of Historic New England; and Dr. Max Page, MS Design Program Director and Director of Historic Preservation Initiatives with the Department of Architecture at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, as well as author of the newly-published book, Why Preservation Matters.

For more information and to register, visit ProvidenceSymposium.com or call (401) 831-7440.

(Industrial Trust Building image courtesy of PPS).