New Hampshire is full of historic homes, barns and churches that are at risk of falling apart. These structures often need a contractor who understands historic building techniques like timber framing or slate roofing, but there's a shortage of people who know how to do that work. Advocates fear that gap could mean many historic buildings falling into decay or eventually disappearing.
“Whether it be stonework or blacksmithing, timber framing, window glazing, wooden shingles – all these trades are in demand,” stone mason Kevin Fife said. “But there's less and less people that do it.”
Fife is one of the people who volunteers for a program that is trying to train more young people for careers in these historic trades. The New Hampshire Preservation Alliance’s Career Exploration in the Old Building Trades is a week-long program where high school students can spend their winter or spring break learning these skills hands-on.
Joshua Adams,17, signed up for the workshops during New Hampshire schools’ vacation week last month. He took Fife’s workshop on how to build a dry stack stone wall, meaning one without mortar or cement holding the stones together.
“I wasn't really too sure about this one,” he said. “But I'm having a wonderful time here with the stone wall building.”
Joshua is in the construction program at the Concord Regional Technical Center where he learns electrical installation, plumbing and welding, but he’d never learned about some of these historic trades. He was interested in a barn repair class he took, where he learned about old-school timber framing and how buildings were once constructed without nails – just wooden pegs keeping the beams together.
He said he expect that learning these kinds of historic building skills could line him up for a lot of jobs.
“Around here, especially in places like New Hampshire and New England, there's so much historical stuff,” Joshua said. “I used to go to historical places, museums, with my grandfather all the time. There was just so much work to be done, but I think people just aren't pursuing it.”
Regional industry surveys show young people aren’t joining the historic trades workforce nearly as fast as tradespeople are retiring. That means the people who still do this work often have years-long waitlists for clients, which could lead to some people deciding that repair work isn’t worth the wait.
“That can mean loss of old windows, loss of old plaster, loss of an old porch that really gives the building its character,” Jennifer Goodman, executive director of the New Hampshire Preservation Alliance, said. “On another level, we can see that there could be demolitions and total loss of buildings if there aren't enough people around to do this work.”
The Canterbury Shaker Village is one of the places that will be hiring the next generation of tradespeople. The village was settled in the 1700s by followers of the Christian Shaker movement. The structures across the village – now a museum – date back centuries and are in constant need of maintenance.
To build the preservation workforce, the Preservation Alliance workshops are open to not only construction and carpentry students, but also people who are new to the building industry entirely.
Rowan McGrath, 18, said he knew how to use a drill, but not much more about construction. A computer engineering student at Concord Regional Tech Center, he is attending the spring workshops to give him career options in the future.
“AI: it’s a big thing that’s going to probably take over tech,” Rowan said. “So [with these skills] I have something I can rely on as a backup, and it makes pretty good money.”
Fife, the stone mason, said this line of work is rewarding. He’s made a career of maintaining the stone structures people put together centuries ago. He grew up in Canterbury, and his family goes back generations here.
“I like to do it the traditional way because that's a part of our ancestry, our heritage, and that's why people come to New England,” Fife said. “It’s just more fitting.”
If there are enough people who can do the work, they can keep history standing a bit longer.
