Jordan Harris Poole · Historic Preservation
Where
preservation
meets craft.
Twenty years of hands-on conservation work — from the rooms of George Washington’s Mount Vernon to the doomed estates of Buckhead. The things that cannot be replicated deserve the people who understand them.
“The things we lose are not always the things we fail to love — sometimes they’re simply the things no one was watching.”
— Jordan Harris Poole
The Practitioner
Expert hands.
Trained eyes.
Jordan Harris Poole is one of the rare preservation professionals who works with both the strategy and the material — someone equally at home writing a Section 106 compliance plan, analyzing historic paint layers, or carefully lifting a 19th-century hand-painted wallpaper panel from a condemned wall before the wrecking ball arrives the following week.
With a foundation built at George Washington’s Mount Vernon, the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation, the National Trust, and the international stage in Le Mans, France, Jordan brings federal-level expertise to projects across the Southeast — and a field practitioner’s intimacy with the physical materials of history.
When Atlanta’s preservation community needs someone trusted with the irreplaceable, they call Jordan Poole. The wallpaper whisperer.
What I Do
Conservation.
Consulting. Legacy.
Wallpaper Conservation & Removal
Specialist removal, documentation, and stabilization of historic wallpapers — including hand-painted panels, scenic papers, and rare decorative treatments. Work performed to archival standards for auction, installation, or institutional preservation.
Historic Paint Analysis
Paint layer sampling, cross-section analysis, and historic color documentation. Whether for restoration accuracy, legal documentation, or grant compliance, every layer of paint is a chapter in a building’s biography.
Wood & Millwork Restoration
On-site consolidation, repair, and finish restoration of historic woodwork, paneling, flooring, and architectural millwork. Reversible techniques. Period-appropriate finishes. No shortcuts.
Preservation Consulting & Planning
Preservation plans, historic structure reports, maintenance schedules, and Section 106 consultation for property owners, nonprofits, developers, and government agencies navigating complex regulatory requirements.
Grant Writing & Funding Strategy
A proven record securing preservation funding from state, federal, and private sources. Grant narratives, application management, and funder relationship strategy for institutions and private owners alike.
Historic Property Development
From adaptive reuse feasibility to heritage tourism strategy, Jordan has built thriving cultural sites from neglected properties — including founding Howard Finster’s Paradise Garden as a nationally recognized destination.
The Work
Saving What the
Wrecking Ball Could Not.
The call came the way these calls tend to come — urgent, urgent in the way that only the imminent destruction of something irreplaceable can make a phone ring with a different quality of panic. A grand Buckhead estate, the Laudermilk mansion, was scheduled for demolition. Inside it, still on the walls, were hand-painted scenic wallpapers executed in the tradition of Gracie — the legendary New York atelier whose hand-painted silk panels have graced the White House, Winterthur, and the finest houses in America since 1898.
The papers had never been catalogued. They had never been formally attributed. They had simply been there, generation after generation, doing what great decorative art does in grand houses — becoming invisible through familiarity. Until the house was marked for the ground.
Why This Work Requires Specialization
Historic wallpaper removal is not a task for the general contractor, the interior designer, or even most preservation professionals. The papers are often adhered directly to plaster substrates that have moved, cracked, and settled over decades. The painted surfaces are water-soluble, light-sensitive, and structurally fragile. A single wrong decision — too much moisture, too much speed, the wrong tool at the wrong angle — and a century-old painting is torn beyond any hope of recovery.
Gracie-style hand-painted papers represent the absolute apex of the decorative arts tradition. Each panel was painted by hand, often by multiple artists, depicting elaborate chinoiserie landscapes with birds, botanicals, and narrative figures executed in gouache on paper or silk ground. They cannot be reprinted. They cannot be reproduced at true equivalence. What exists, exists. What is lost, is gone.
“The mansion was razed the week after I finished. Those panels were the last thing to leave standing.”
The Process
Working under a deadline measured not in weeks but in days, Jordan mobilized the careful, methodical process that hands-on conservation demands: assessment of substrate and adhesion, controlled humidification to release bond without saturating the painted surface, careful separation panel by panel, documentation by photography at every stage, and stabilization for transport and eventual auction.
The Atlanta preservation community knew who to call. That knowledge didn’t come from a website or a brochure — it came from twenty years of showing up to the difficult jobs, the condemned buildings, the estate sales where no one else had the training or the nerve to work on the clock against a demolition permit.
The Result
The wallpaper panels were successfully removed, documented, and preserved. They were subsequently sold at auction — carrying with them a provenance record and documentation that would not have existed without professional conservation intervention. A piece of Buckhead’s domestic history, and of American decorative arts, survived the date with the wrecking ball.
The house did not.
“The Atlanta community knew who to call. They called the wallpaper whisperer.”
This is the nature of the work Jordan Poole does — not just consulting from a distance, but present, gloved, at the wall, in the final hours. It is preservation as it must sometimes be: urgent, skilled, and unrepeatable.
Selected Work
A Record of
Saving Things.
Historic Structure · Restoration Management
George Washington’s Mount Vernon
Led restoration of the last unrestored 18th-century outbuilding at America’s most visited historic house. Featured in The Washington Post.
Folk Art Site · Founding Executive Director
Howard Finster’s Paradise Garden
Founded and established the Paradise Garden Foundation, transforming a decaying folk art environment into a nationally recognized cultural destination. Featured in CNN, The Daily Beast.
International · Restoration Direction
International Restoration Project
Directed a cross-cultural historic preservation project in Le Mans, France — bringing American preservation methodology to a European architectural context.
Partnership · Program Development
Partners in the Field Program
Developed the “Partners in the Field” program in collaboration with the Georgia Trust and National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Begin Here
Let’s Talk About
What You Have.
Whether you have an estate in transition, a condemned property with irreplaceable interiors, a nonprofit with a complicated building and an impossible deadline, or a historic home that deserves a plan — the conversation starts simply.