Keynote Speech by Karen M. Gravel, Lord Aeck Sargent, “Places of Influence–Understanding and Preserving the Environment of a Writer”

Karen M. Gravel, Lord Aeck Sargent Planning and Design, Inc. is a historic preservation architect practicing in Atlanta. She serves as a principal, the director of Historic Preservation and chair of the governing board for the company. She is a Kentucky native, having graduated with a degree in history from Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, in 1993, before earning a Master of Architecture from Georgia Tech in 1999. She has been working on old buildings for the past 25 years, including several projects for Georgia College & State University–the GCSU Campus Preservation Plan (2005), Hill House (2012), Ennis Hall (2014), Terrell Hall (2020) and exterior improvements to the Old Governor’s Mansion. She is now researching and writing a historic structure report for the Gordon/Cline/O’Connor home for GCSU. She loves the intersection of history, architecture and the stories they tell.

This is part of the Flannery O'Connor's Second Century: Looking Forward, Looking Back conference sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities.