Janie-Rice Brother

Janie-Rice Brother is a native of Mt. Sterling, Kentucky, where her family has lived and farmed since the 1820s. A graduate of Centre College and the University of Kentucky, Brother has worked for the Kentucky Heritage Council (the State Historic Preservation Office), and the University of Kentucky as an architectural historian. Currently, she works for Palmer Engineering as Senior Architectural Historian. She has worked across the Southeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Northeast, and spent several summers studying architecture and landscapes in England. Brother has served on the board of directors for numerous nonprofits, including Preservation Kentucky and the National Barn Alliance, and co-founded Preserve Lexington to save a block of historic buildings in downtown Lexington. Through her blog, Gardens to Gables (www.gardenstogables.com), she highlights stories of historic buildings and landscapes, both in Kentucky and further afield.  Her blog received the University of Kentucky’s Department of Writing, Rhetoric and Digital Studies’; Campus and Community Excellence in Writing Award. In 2018, the Blue Grass Trust for Historic Preservation recognized her preservation work with the Lucy Graves Advocacy Award. Brother and her family live in a 1901 farmhouse on the family farm in Montgomery County, and they spend most of their free time planting trees, and fighting the scourge of honeysuckle and multiflora rose. She serves on the board of the Montgomery County Public Library and reads whenever possible.