Katherine Hill MSHP

Katherine Duffield Hill is an architectural historian, preservationist, writer and photographer.

As a child, my father fit a hardhat to my head and took every opportunity to present me as his junior engineer. When he visited boiler rooms, I held the flashlight steady and learned the purpose of the rumbling machine. We’d point out buildings that still had coal chutes, stop together at grade crossings to wave at passing locomotives, and he spun tales of the early railroads moving pioneers west.

After co-founding an urban photography blog in high school, I realized my interest in history had expanded to include even those unglamorous corners of urbanism and infrastructure. I began to wonder about the lives of the people who had created my city’s first brick sewers. It was invigorating to be able to ask questions about my city with images, and I began to write my first building histories. It also wasn’t long after I started documenting my surroundings in photos that I began to notice how quickly the city was changing. On one hand, the constant evolution of the city was what made it so fascinating to photograph. On the other, I was seeing far fewer coal chutes. I had looked forward to pointing such details out to my own children, and I despaired at the loss.

I am passionate not only about saving and rehabilitating historic places but sharing their value with the community around them. I believe my background in archaeology allows me to bring a unique perspective to the table, and I most look forward to any opportunities I may have to study the ways in which industrialism shaped modern American cities, and how to best reuse industrial sites as new community spaces. By reusing such spaces we instill history as an integral piece of our modern lives, and we can save the coal chutes.