Building Lessons

The real estate business and a "19th-century work ethic" were learned at his parents' knee, says R. Christopher Noonan '78. He put himself through Colby and picked up valuable trade skills working construction jobs during the summers. A Colby degree in history and a master's in preservation studies from the University of Vermont filled out his résumé for a career that is focused and varied at the same time, just as it is both financially successful and personally fulfilling. Noonan's career is based on his 12-year-old firm, Preservation Services, Inc., a closely held family corporation that does historic preservation, architectural design work, building and general contracting, land use planning, interior and landscape design and heritage education.
When Custom Building magazine profiled Noonan as its Custom Builder of the Month a few years ago, it highlighted his success at establishing a niche--historic preservation--in his local market instead of chasing quick profits. By staying focused and eschewing speculation in land or buildings, Noonan achieved stable and steady growth during a "boom-bust cycle that left many New England builders in bankruptcy court," the magazine said.
"Too many speculators are millionaires the first year and paupers the second," Noonan said.
This spring Noonan's firm was busy with four projects that represent a cross section of his construction work, he says. One was a design-and-build package for a $500,000, 5,500-square-foot, Federal-style reproduction farmhouse with a Greek Revival wing. Another was a 6,500-square-foot, passive-solar contemporary home set on six acres. The third was an "interpretive restoration" in an 1898 Flemish Revival single-family home, replacing its anachronistic 1960s kitchen. Another project was disassembling a mid-19th-century barn and reassembling it as a custom home on a bluff overlooking the Blackstone River.
The key to historic preservation work, he says, is balancing modern efficiency with old-fashioned construction techniques within the constraints of available capital and still "having it read right."
Noonan's education, and his application of it, is a model for putting the liberal arts to use. He studied American history at Colby and honed his communications skills working on the Echo and the Oracle and serving on the Student Association. Experience as a laborer in the building trades was more than just a job to pay tuition bills; it was part of his career education.
And his dedication to learning holds a valuable lesson as well. He recalls that he made an effort to attend every class. On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving one year, he was one of two students who showed up for an 8 a.m. American intellectual history class taught by Fraser Cocks, the Special Collections librarian and a lecturer in history at the time. The intimacy of that three-person group led Cocks to ask both students what they planned to do after Colby. After Noonan discussed his disparate interests, Cocks suggested that he might look into a graduate program in historic preservation and went on to name the top 10 such programs in the country. "I had never even heard of the discipline until that time," Noonan recalls. A year after graduating from Colby he enrolled at UVM.
Noonan said his undergraduate experience at Colby was "excellent." Even now, when he deals regularly with couples who are making big decisions about building or remodeling, he harkens back to his days as a head resident and resident advisor. "A healthy part of my time is negotiating and mediating among lots of parties and, as a head resident, we got good training for that," he said.