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Spotlight on Ann Jarmusch
November/December 2024
 Ann Jarmusch with a new friend, Gunslinger, in Arizona. Courtesy Ann Jarmusch |
Ann Jarmusch, part of SOHO’s publications and communications team, credits her family for preparing her from a young age to be a strong preservationist enamored of architecture, diverse cultures, and history. She is especially grateful to her mother, a history major and newspaper theater and movie critic who continued writing her entire 96 years, and to her maternal grandmother, a fourth-grade teacher passionate about the arts and the natural world. They took her and her brothers to big, old dusty barns overflowing with castoff furniture and other treasures, to gleaming art museums, and to evocative historic homesteads and Native American sites around home and on vacations.
It seemed only natural when her family moved into a rare historic house built in the 1830s in Ohio’s Western Reserve. In fact, Ann says it was a life-affirming privilege. Her mother showed her how to give classmates and occasional dinner guests house tours and signed her up as a docent at Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens, an enormous Tudor-style mansion filled with antiques in nearby Akron. There, “linenfold paneling” and “coffered ceilings” entered her vocabulary.
After an early role as the Philadelphia correspondent for ARTnews, Ann became a full-time art critic at the now-defunct Dallas Times Herald. Dallas and Fort Worth were buzzing with nationally recognized artists and architects, either visiting or residing, who enriched her mind and career.
In 1990, Ann’s life took a pivotal turn when she became the San Diego Tribune’s art and architecture critic, later focusing on architecture at the merged Union-Tribune. Her work went beyond reviewing buildings, although that remains a joy for her. Thanks to open-minded editors, she explored subjects ranging from potential homeless shelters and waterfront planning to historic preservation.
During these years, Ann covered SOHO and, being a trained observer, grew to deeply respect the group’s mission, methods, and mettle. Her Union-Tribune articles, such as those on the endangered Red Rest and Red Roost cottages and Rudolph Schindler’s El Pueblo Ribera, helped raise public awareness about crucial preservation issues.
Ann left the Union-Tribune in 2007, and four years later moved to a casita she’d previously bought as a picturesque writing perch in Sedona, Arizona. She continues freelance writing and editing for SOHO.
“Ann is an invaluable member of the SOHO communications team, co-editing Our Heritage eNews, contributing to advocacy pieces, and editing architecture tours and other publications,” Alana Coons, SOHO’s education and communications director, said. “She is a true wordsmith, and through her gift she makes all of the rest of us writers sound better.”
In addition to her volunteer and professional contributions to SOHO, Ann has served on San Diego’s Historical Resources Board and Sedona’s Historic Preservation Commission. In San Diego, she received an honorary Bachelor of Architecture degree from the NewSchool of Architecture & Design and a President’s Citation from the American Institute of Architects’ local chapter. In 2003, SOHO honored her with a People In Preservation Award, which she proudly spun into her email handle, sohotowncrier@gmail.com.
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