Students Restore Historic Sites With the National Parks of New York Harbor, Summer 2023

Interns and NPS staff repairing historic windows and window frames on Ellis Island. NPS.

The National Parks of New York Harbor (NPNH) has a growing partnership with the Stephen T. Mather Building Arts & Craftsmanship High School. After its summer 2023 youth programs, the parks reported on what students accomplished.

Paid preservation work

Through the city-run NYC Summer Youth Employment Program, 36 Mather students and recent graduates were paid to work on historic preservation projects at eleven park sites in July and August. Working in small crews that rotated between sites, they took on:

• landscape management;
• restoring historic stairs and porches;
• varnish inpainting;
• restoring gravestones;
• replacing windows and window frames;
• stone carving;
• restoring fences;
• log carpentry.

The work let students practice and sharpen skills they had learned in class.

Rebuilding soldier huts at Morristown

Six more students, hosted through the Student Conservation Association, helped Morristown National Historical Park restore its Revolutionary War soldier huts, using pickaxes, crowbars, sledgehammers, crosscut saws and log splitters. Mather students were to keep building a hut structure in their classroom on Governors Island before returning to Morristown for more work on site during the school year.

Camping crews

NPNH also runs camping trips on which students help with preservation projects while camping and exploring a park. Over the summer, crews worked and camped at Yellowstone National Park, Grand Teton National Park, Saratoga National Historical Park and Weir Farm National Historical Park. Thirty students joined camping crews — and for sixteen of them it was their first time camping.

Exploring careers

Students were introduced to more than forty occupations and met more than fifty-five NPS staff for career exploration, returning to school with a better appreciation of the skills they were learning and of what a future with the National Park Service could hold. NPNH published a graphic report with details on each project.

Sources

• National Park Service, National Parks of New York Harbor: "2023 NPNH Summer Youth Activities."
• The source gives the school's name once as "Stephen T. Building Arts & Craftsmanship High School" and elsewhere calls its students "Mather students"; this page uses the full name implied.