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Tripp Rogers
Historic Preservation
2-4-2010
Dr.
Morrill
Historic
Preservation in the United States began before the Civil War. It continues
on into today. There different aspects of preservation that one can look at.
One could look at preservation at a variety of levels. The three levels of
historic preservation are local, state and national. National historic
preservation deals with an individual property or a collection of properties
that are of National historic importance. Historic preservation at the state
level deals with an individual property or a collection of properties that
are of a historic importance to the state they are located in. Local
historic preservation deals with an individual property or a collection of
properties that are of local historic importance. All of these properties
are listed in the National Registry of Historic Places.
The National
Registry of Historic Places is a list of Individual properties or a
collection of properties that are of either a local, state or National
importance. Ninety-five percent of the properties in the national registry
are of local importance. These properties include local historic landmarks,
and local historic districts. The National Registry of historic places is
operated by the National park service.
The
overwhelming majority of historically preserved places are privately
funded/owned. With the exception of Gettysburg all other historic
preservations are private. Before the civil war preservations were due,
almost solely, to private individuals using their private money. There were
very few examples of any form of government whether it be, local, state or
federal giving money to preserve anything. Why would someone spend their
money to preserve a house that did not belong to them? The answer to that
question varies from nationalism to the architecture of the building. One of
the earliest preservation Jobs was the saving of Mount Vernon the home of
the first president of the United States George Washington. Ann Pamela
Cunningham was told of the badly deteriorating Mount Vernon by her mother
who had seen it on a boat ride on the Potomac River. Her campaign to have
the women of the south to save Mount Vernon kept going through the Civil
War. After the Civil war it became a national campaign, and it was still run
by Ann Pamela Cunningham. Mount Vernon is still privately owned by the Mount
Vernon ladies association. Other properties that were preserved with
private money prior to the Civil War are the Touro Synagogue in Newport,
Rhode Island, Uriah Levy paid for the restoration of Thomas Jefferson’s home
Monticello, and James Madison’s Montpelier.
The federal
government did not get involved in preservation until after the Civil War.
In 1895 the federal government bought the battlefield at Gettysburg in
Pennsylvania. After the Civil War there were two very different methods of
thinking developed. One, held by a French man named Eugene Viollet le Duc
was that you should make things look better and improving upon them. For
example le Duc restored the Cathedral of Notre Dame. He took the Cathedral
and restored it to what he said the original builders would have wanted it
to look like but did not have the resources and technologies to do so. A
short description of his philosophy on preservation is that he believed in
prettying things up. The other major post Civil war philosophy was held by
two English men named John Ruskin, and William Morris. Their belief was one
that differed greatly from le Duc’s. Ruskin and Morris’ view was that you
should not do anything to restore the building. They believed you should
simply stabilize the structure. They were the leaders of the Anti-Scratch
School. Both of these philosophies are still used today, it is simply left
up to whether or not you believe a place should be restored or whether you
believe that restoring a building or landmark, is dishonest. Another major
figure during this period is William Sumner Appleton. He came up with the
idea of adaptive re-use, which is a way of saying restore the building and
use it for something other than what it was originally used for. In 1910
Appleton began the society for the preservation of New England Antiquities
which was the first regional private preservation. This is known today as
Historic New England. He is also important for why he chose building or
structures as historic. He didn’t care who had been there or what had
happened there in the past. He chose building and structures for their
architectural qualities. Appleton is important for being as interested in
more unassuming structures as he was in more elegant buildings and
structures.
Starting in
the twentieth century the government begins to get involved in preservation.
President Theodore Roosevelt got the twentieth century started with the
passage of the Antiquities Act in 1906. The Antiquities Act only effected
federally owned land and was originally intended to protect Native American
sites from unauthorized archeological digs. It made someone required to get
a permit before digging for an archeological find, particularly in the
southwest United States. President Roosevelt looked at the Antiquities Act
and used it more broadly that originally intended to include geologic and
geographic sites such as the Devils Tower in Wyoming, and the Grand Canyon.
Woodrow
Wilson started the National Park service in 1916. It like the Antiquities
Act also only included federal property. It began consolidating the National
Parks. Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Historic American Building Survey
(known as HABS) in the 1930s. Its main purpose was to make meticulous
drawings and take photographs of historic places. The job of HABS was to
record or document historically significant artifacts. It is a database of
federal and private properties of some sort of historical importance. After
the attacks on Pearl Harbor there was a lull in preservation. In 1957 the
National Park Service succeeded in establishing the National Landmark
Commission. The National Landmark Commission listed only landmarks of
National significance. Although it was established in 1957 the first
property was not listed until1960. The National Landmark Commission offers
no protection, it only offers recognition.
Lyndon B.
Johnson created the modern historic preservation movement as part of the
Great Society Program. In 1966 The National Historic Preservation Act
created the National Register of Historic Places to prevent the federal
government from destroying or harming historic resources. The main goal of
the National Register of Historic Places was to restrain the federal
government. 106 Review was established with this act. The number refers to
the section of the act which states that before any federal initiative can
begin, there must be a determination as to whether that initiative has an
adverse effect on a historic property. If it does then everything possible
must be done to protect the property before the project can begin. Ronal
Reagan signed the Tax Reform Act of 1986 which gave a twenty percent federal
income tax credit for a nationally registered property with a certified plan
(certified by the National Park Service) to substantially rehabilitate the
property to become income producing.
Lastly, Local
Historic Preservation is a huge part of Historic Preservation. There were
two projects that shifted the focus of preservation from National to Local.
These two projects were Henry Ford’s Greenfield Village, and W.A.R. Goodwin
and John D. Rockefeller Jr. forming Williamsburg, Virginia into a Colonial
Village. Local preservation began in Charleston, South Carolina with Susan
Pringle Frost. Susan Pringle Frost wanted to keep the historic buildings of
Charleston the way they were. She also established the Historic Preservation
Society of Charleston. She, with the help of other wealthy people
established the first local historic district in 1931 in Charleston, South
Carolina. A local historic landmark or district is an entirely different
animal because it is using local police power to control changes that are
made to individual or collections of properties. This differs greatly from
the National Register where if you own the building and use your own money
you can do whatever you want to the building, when it comes to local
preservation, before you can get a building permit you need a certificate
from the local commission of appropriateness to determine if the changes you
are making are appropriate for the property no matter where the money is
coming from.
In
conclusion, historic preservation has had a varied past. From local to
National preservation there are several different societies, commissions,
and registers. Motivations for preservations vary from pride, to respect, to
the beauty of the architecture. There are also different philosophies on how
to preserve, do you give the property face lift or do you simply stabilize
the structure so as not to disturb the buildings current state? No matter
whether its on the national level, the local level, the motivation for the
preservation or the philosophy for how you should preserve the property it
all starts with the importance of preserving the past.
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