On February 2, 1971, the ladies of The Woman’s Exchange (formerly Christian Woman’s Exchange) opened the 1831 Hermann-Grima House doors to the public as a museum. Fifty years later, the organization still owns and operates the Hermann-Grima House and now also operates the Gallier House as an historic house museum. As early as 1963, leaders of the Exchange recognized the importance of restoring and preserving the Hermann-Grima House, and over the next decade would update its mission from being a place where working women could live at modest rates to one focused on preservation, education, and interpretation of its valuable historic property. With the help of volunteers from the Exchange’s membership, the Colonial Dames, local scholars, architectural historians, and craftsmen and women, over the past half-century Hermann-Grima House and Gallier House have thrived as centers of study for preservation and life in 19th-century New Orleans. 

Join us with PRC Executive Director, Danielle Del Sol, as we celebrate preservation month in April. Ms. Del Sol will open with an introduction to the preservation movement in New Orleans and Curator, Katie Burlison, will discuss the efforts of The Woman’s Exchange in preserving Hermann-Grima + Gallier Historic Houses. 

The Woman’s Exchange member Avery Bassich with an archeologist in the 1970’s

About the Speakers:

Katie Burlison is curator at the Hermann-Grima + Gallier Historic Houses since 2017. A native of Mobile, Alabama, she holds a B.A. in French from the University of Virginia and an M.A. in the History of the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture from the Bard Graduate Center in New York. Katie is passionate about historic preservation, art and architectural history, and the nineteenth-century history of New Orleans. In addition to maintaining the museum’s two historic houses, she has curated several exhibits at HGGHH and elsewhere on such topics as Newcomb Pottery, motherhood in the 19th century, the French Opera House, and Acadian sculptor Pierre Joseph Landry. Outside of her museum work, Katie enjoys spending time with her family and traveling.

Danielle Del Sol is the executive director of the Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans. She was named executive director in February 2018, and is the fourth director in the organization’s 47-year history. She served for seven years before that as editor of Preservation in Print, the monthly magazine of the PRC. She is an adjunct lecturer in the Master of Preservation Studies program at Tulane University, of which she is also an alumna. She lives in Uptown New Orleans with her husband and two daughters in a c. 1905 camelback shotgun that the couple restored in 2015.

Pay what you can: We have made our lectures free to attend while in-person programming is paused, but we still have costs associated with putting on this program. We are accepting donations if you are in a position to support our museum. With this money, we will pay honoraria to all current and future presenters and cover overhead expenses such as Zoom and other technological services.