The following was scanned from the latest issue of the OLD HOUSE JOURNAL.
 

Editor's Page (page 6) - Old House Journal June 2002

Only a handful of issues ago I had the pleasure to announce on this page OLD-HOUSE JOURNAL'S move to a new corporate-and corporeal -home in historic Georgetown, Washington, D.C. Now I am equally happy to report our architecturally minded media family is expanding again by welcoming two more magazines under the Restore Media roof.

Many OHJ readers who have attended the Restoration & Renovation Exhibition and Conference already know these fine publications: Traditional Building, the professional's resource for public architecture, and its residential counterpart, Period Homes. Both these magazines reflect the same commitment to historic buildings and sensitive rehabilitation that are the standard at OHJ and Restoration & Renovation. What folks who know either magazine may not realize is that the relationship extends even further through many ideas, places, and people to a single man. Clem Labine is not only the founder, editor, and publisher of Traditional Building, but was also the originator and longtime editor and publisher of OLD-HOUSE JOURNAL.  What brought Clem in 1973 to start an insider-written, no-nonsense newsletter about restoring 19th-century row houses in the urban hinterlands of East Coast cities is a remarkable tale that speaks volumes about how far we've all come since then. In those post-Woodstock days, when "Victorian" was still a dirty word, a few hardy souls were saving and restoring century-old buildings with little more than their own sweat and ingenuity. There was precious little written material to guide them, even fewer period-appropriate building materials and products to help them, and certainly no TV shows with smiling experts to inspire them. Clem was on the front lines restoring his own row house in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn, New York, when he realized the need for a publication that would spread hard-to-find information about vintage buildings while it brought together a far-flung network of people who were passionate about preserving them. The magazine you hold in your hands was born back then in Brooklyn as a 12-page, black-and-white monthly with three-ring-binder holes and has grown apace with the restoration movement ever since.  I feel privileged to have known Clem since the late 1980s, when he struck out into new, nonresidential turf with Traditional Building, and colleagues such as Judith Siegel Lief who, at one time or another, have helped make all three magazines possible. In addition to inspiring a clutch of unique publications and helping to nurture a diverse group of restoration-appropriate products into an industry, Clem continues to be a key figure in vanguard organizations such as the Institute of Classical Architecture. We all look forward to working on the same team with you and the rest of the group at Traditional Building and Period Homes, Clem. Now, about those Dodgers..

Gordon Bock