Eastern Michigan University Beaver Island field-school final report, 2022

Summary

Eastern Michigan University’s Graduate Program in Historic Preservation issued this final report after a nine-day Beaver Island field school in May 2022. It records completed preservation, heritage-recording, and collections work at the Beaver Island Light Station and the Beaver Island Historical Society’s Print Shop, alongside four student adaptive-reuse scenarios for the lighthouse property.

What it establishes

The report says the hands-on team restored missing lantern-room blocking and wainscoting, scraped and repainted affected surfaces, repaired and rescreened exterior screen doors, and assessed other preservation needs. The heritage recording team made field sketches, plans, and photographs, including floor-plan sketches for Lighthouse School campus buildings and condition documentation. The collections team reviewed the Society’s collections policy, submitted a draft revision, and inventoried 139 boxes in the Print Shop archive and artifact room, with some additions or edits to PastPerfect records.

Evidence and limits

The report’s adaptive-reuse scenarios—for a water-trail stop, vocational school, and arts residency among others—are student recommendations. They do not prove a County, Networks Northwest, school, or Historical Society decision; funding; ownership; construction; program launch; public access; or continuing building condition. Its onsite observations are a May 2022 snapshot, not a current condition assessment or a complete historic-structure report. It describes collections work without providing a public catalog, accession ledger, or an item-by-item inventory, and it should not be used to publish sensitive cultural material or assign provenance to individual objects.

Why this archive holds it but does not display it

The report is held in full and cited throughout this article, and its pages are not published. Eastern Michigan University’s Graduate Program in Historic Preservation wrote it — the cover names Professors Dan Bonenberger and Nancy Bryk with Alec Jerome of The Henry Ford, and dates it 17 August 2022 — and the Beaver Island Historical Society hosting a copy on its website does not make the report the Society’s to license. The archive’s own record of the file says as much: “© the site’s owner; archived for research citation under fair use.”

It had been published as 45 page images under a collection-level policy written for “community heritage material with no stated terms”, which this item is not. That was withdrawn on 8 August 2026 and the file is now denied per asset. It remains available for research and citation here, and a reader who wants the document itself should go to the copy on beaverislandhistory.org, which this article links. Publishable in full if EMU grants terms.

Added 2 August 2026. Recent changes