Phillip A. Morris Fund for the Design Arts Annual Lecture

The Philip A. Morris Fund for Design Arts, a Field of Interest fund with the Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham, is proud to present Mary Means as the guest speaker for its annual lecture.

The lecture will be held from 5 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday, October 3 in the Birmingham Museum of Art’s Steiner Auditorium, followed by a cocktail reception in the 8th Avenue Lobby.

Mary Means led the team that launched the Main Street movement. From a risky three community pilot in the late 1970s, to a six state/30 communities expansion in the early 1980s, the pioneering preservation-based revitalization strategies she and her team developed are now central to the Main Street programs thriving in Alabama and 43 other states, a network now known as Main Street America. Today active Main Street organizations assure town center vitality in more than 1600 communities across the country.

For more than 30 years, her small but mighty planning firm helped communities and other public interest organizations create strategic plans with wide public support, sparking momentum that overcame inertia. From heritage tourism strategies to neighborhood revitalization plans to vision-driven downtown plans, Mary’s work has been recognized with numerous state and national awards. In 2019 the American Planning Association honored her with its national Planning Pioneer Award, and in 2020 the National Trust for Historic Preservation gave her the Louise du Pont Crowninshield Award, the highest honor in historic preservation.

A native of Atlanta, Mary is a graduate of Michigan State University and the University of Delaware. She was a Loeb Fellow at Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

She is the author of Main Street’s Comeback and How It Can Come Back Again and is working on Something Worth Saving, a memoir that will be out in early 2025.

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