2022 Preservation Achievement Award Winner: John Schnitzler

The N.H. Preservation Alliance is pleased to announce our 2022 Preservation Achievement Award winner, John Schnitzler, for Excellence in Preservation Practice and Leadership.

This award recognizes John Schnitzler for his distinguished accomplishments in preserving important historic buildings in the seacoast area, his positive influence on clients, and his impact on both students and colleagues.

To quote from the nomination for this award, “John is an unassuming, highly intelligent, and discerning craftsman. He is also a consummate artisan, a skilled diagnostician of architectural evidence, and a person who has quietly contributed great treasure to our understanding of the buildings of Piscataqua.”

John came to Strawbery Banke as a young apprentice in the mid-1970s and worked with former master carpenter Norman Clark. He showed a great aptitude for building restoration and served as the preservation carpenter overseeing the care and restoration of the museum’s incredible collection of museum houses. As you probably know, Strawbery Banke boasts houses that depict 300+ years of architectural and social evolutions with structures that link visitors, residents and scholars to the people who lived on the Portsmouth waterfront from 1695 to 1954.

Beyond that, he has tended to the needs of many of the important historic houses in and around Portsmouth—the state-owned Wentworth Coolidge House, the Moffatt Ladd House, Wentworth-Gardener as well as many privately-owned properties.

Colleagues have deep respect for John's keen abilities as an artisan and as a highly observant diagnostician of the evolution of old buildings.

Retired state architectural historian James Garvin shared this example from their recent collaboration at the Tobias Lear House: “The house had evolved from a c. 1740 center chimney hall-and-parlor two-story dwelling into a two chimney, two-room-deep hip-roofed Georgian mansion of the 1760s. With his keen eye John was able to differentiate the 1740 joinery from that of the 1760s, to clarify the evolution of the building, and to restore the structure impeccably for its new, private owner and its preservation easement holder.”

John's forensic abilities with building styles and construction methods give him an uncanny ability to precisely explain a building's history, and are matched by his expertise in carrying out appropriate restoration for the building. Moreover, he is widely acknowledged as a great teacher whose immediately puts his students at ease. He is generous in sharing his many talents with dozens of colleagues and carpenters that he has worked with over the years.

This award celebrates all that. John Schnitzler is a treasure who is setting an impeccable standard for the preservation movement in New Hampshire and offering an inspiring example to the next generation of craftsmen.

Read about the rest of our 2022 Preservation Achievement Award Winners here.