Crafting Preservation Criteria

The National Register of Historic Places and American Historic Preservation

John H. Sprinkle, Jr.

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781136169830
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

In 1966, American historic preservation was transformed by the passage of the National Historic Preservation Act, which created a National Register of Historic Places. Now comprising more than 1.4 million historic properties across the country, the National Register is the official federal list of places in the United States thought to be worthy of preservation.

One of the fundamental principles of the National Register is that every property is evaluated according to a standard set of criteria that provide the framework for understanding why a property is significant in American history. The origins of these criteria are important because they provide the threshold for consideration by a broad range of federal preservation programs, from planning for continued adaptive use, to eligibility for grants, and inclusion in heritage tourism and educational programs.

Crafting Preservation Criteria sets out these preservation criteria for students, explaining how they got added to the equation, and elucidating the test cases that allowed for their use. From artworks to churches, from 'the fifty year rule' to 'the historic scene', students will learn how places have been historically evaluated to be placed on the National Register, and how the criteria evolved over time.

1

THE PREHISTORY OF PRESERVATION

Twice in the twentieth century the United States Congress changed the fundamental nature of historic preservation in the United States.¹ In the midst of the Great Depression, lawmakers acted upon President Roosevelt’s personal request to create a federal role in the conservation of nationally significant historic sites. Then, in 1966, during a very different period of turmoil, the Congress acted again to expand the mission of the National Park Service with regard to the historic preservation movement. In 1935 and 1966, preservationists sounded dire warnings of a multitude of imminent threats to the historic places that defined and elucidated American history. Both times, the United States looked to European governments for models of an enhanced federal role in encouraging historic preservation across the country. The public purposes of governmentally sponsored historic recognition programs were broadly the same in 1966 as in 1935: historic preservation would help to save what was beautiful and distinctive within the regional American landscapes; it would engage citizens with (and hopefully educate them in) the country’s complex past; while at the same time fostering economic development within historic areas. In fact, the 1966 National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) can be seen as the logical conclusion for the federal role in the identification, evaluation, and stewardship of historic properties that began with the Historic Sites Act of 1935. At both points in our history, the goals of the movement were espoused by politicians, policy-makers and preservationists as just the right medicine to address a wide variety of domestic issues; a pattern that continues to the present day.

The “prehistory” of the historic preservation movement is that period between the Historic Sites Act of 1935 and the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, a 30-year span during which the foundation of current preservation practice was shaped by the first generation of public historians who were given the opportunity to create an administrative framework that could incorporate the tapestry of American history. Guided by both vision and pragmatism, these practitioners shaped the way generations of historians, architectural historians, and archaeologists have surveyed, inventoried, categorized, evaluated, and recognized historic properties across the United States.

Federal Recognition Programs before the Great Depression

Established in 1916, for the first 15 years of its operation the National Park Service remained primarily a western land management agency concerned solely with the scenic and scientific values of what were considered economically useless landscapes. From 1916 to 1931, the agency did not employ a single professional historian.² In 1933, NPS Director Horace Albright fostered the transfer (via Executive Order 6166) of nearly 60 historical parks and monuments to Park Service stewardship. By the end of 1933, the Park Service’s inventory included 80 historic properties, representing nearly two-thirds of the units in the system. Because of these newly secured parks, the agency was forced to create a “new field” of historical technicians fostered by the creation of the first federally supported history office.³

Of course, the establishment of the Park Service history program did not occur in a vacuum.⁴ Between the World Wars, commemoration of the sesquicentennial of the Declaration of Independence (1926) and the George Washington Bicentennial Commission (which operated from 1924 to 1932) laid the foundation for the growth of popular history. Most importantly, the once sleepy town of Williamsburg, Virginia was rediscovered and restored from 1924 to 1934 via the patronage of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and the inspiration of the Reverend W.A.R. Goodwin. For many Americans, the “nostalgia for a near-imaginary bucolic past” provided relief from contemporary concerns—issues that were exacerbated by the onset of the Great Depression.⁵ Franklin Roosevelt said it best:

The preservation of historic sites for the public benefit, together with their proper interpretation, tends to enhance the respect and love of the citizen for the institutions of his country, as well as strengthen his resolution to defend unselfishly the hallowed traditions and high ideals of America.⁶

Faced with a failed economy, evidence of civil strife, and the apparent degradation of traditional society, the American experiment was sorely challenged by the Great Depression. Comprising a visible expression of an ineffable national identity, the country’s historic properties were equally threatened by the advance of modern society. Thus, preserving the places that illustrated American history helped to preserve the future of the present society, culture, and government.

The Historic Sites Act of 1935

In the midst of the Great Depression, Virginia Senator Harry F. Byrd and Texas Congressman Maury Maverick sponsored the Historic Sites Act at the request of Secretary of the Interior, Harold L. Ickes.⁷ The legislation directed the Department of the Interior to identify those sites that possessed “exceptional value as commemorating or illustrating the history of the United States.” Ickes argued that this inventory would provide a foundation for a “unified and integrated system of national historical parks and monuments which, taken in their entirety, would present to the American people graphic illustrations of the Nation’s history.”⁸

What was the inspiration for the Historic Sites Act? Several independent plans were formulated during the early 1930s to enhance federal participation in historic preservation—a new endeavor that was poorly defined during this period. During the late 1920s, Director Albright fostered the expansion of his agency’s mission to include historical and archaeological sites utilizing a thematic approach for categorizing stages of development provided by anthropologist Clark Wissler. Acknowledging that Congress frequently presented the Park Service with proposals for new parks, Chief Historian Verne Chatelain proposed a “Decennial Survey of historic sources” to ensure that the agency’s historical information was “kept always up to date.”⁹ Another avenue of inspiration came from Gist Blair, a friend of Roosevelt’s whose home was across Lafayette Square from the White House. In November 1933, FDR asked Blair to develop “some kind of plan” with regard to the identification and protection of historic sites. That December, Secretary Ickes compared Blair’s plan to unite the conservation of monuments and documents in one program with the Park Service’s “statement of principles and standards involving national historic areas.”¹⁰ Not surprisingly, Ickes favored his own agency’s approach.

THE FIRST CHIEF HISTORIAN

Arriving in Washington, DC, during September 1931, Verne E. Chatelain (1895–1991) served as the National Park Service’s first Chief Historian.¹ Chatelain was remembered as “an idea man … way ahead of his time” with a “real vision of what the historical work of the Federal Government ought to be like.” His career with the National Park Service was short lived, ending in 1936 because of the controversy surrounding the “Wakefield fiasco.”² He soon found work in planning for the restoration of St. Augustine, Florida and, after military service in World War II, taught at the University of Maryland for more than two decades.

In 1985, NPS Director William Mott presented Chatelain with a special commendation for his role in implementing the Historic Sites Act of 1935 and laying the foundation for historic preservation within the federal government.³ Denise Meringolo viewed Chatelain as one of the creators of the “public history” because he “understood that historians could play a powerful public role, transforming individual sites into a map of national identity that visitors might use to locate themselves inside the American past.”⁴ Setting the stage for the growth of historic preservation in the 1930s and reflecting on the philosophical debate between Ruskin and Viollet-le-Duc, Chatelian quoted from Henry James’ book, A Little Tour in France, at the first meeting of the National Park System Advisory Board in 1936:

For myself, I have no hesitation; I prefer in every case the ruined, however ruined, to the reconstructed, however splendid. What is left is more precious than what is added; the one is history, the other is fiction; and I like the former the better of the two,—it is so much more romantic. One is positive, so far as it goes; the other fills up the void with things more dead than the void itself, in as much as they have never had life.

1 Charles B. Hosmer, Jr., “Verne E. Chatelain and the Development of the Branch of History of the National Park Service.” The Public Historian, Vol. 16, No. 1 (Winter, 1994), pg. 24–38.

2 AAA CBH, Charles Porter interview, pg. 11.

3 Verne Chatelain to William Mott, August 27, 1985. NPS PHP.

4 Denise D. Meringolo, Museums, Monuments, and National Parks, pg. 106.

In 1934, as President Roosevelt toured the restoration of Colonial Williamsburg’s Duke of Gloucester Street (declaring it to be the most historic street in the entire country), a constellation of ideas emerged through the legislative process, crystallizing as the Historic Sites Act of 1935. As early as 1930, the Reverend W.A.R. Goodwin wrote to his Williamsburg colleague (and Rockefeller confidant) Arthur Woods suggesting that “one of the most valuable results” of the Williamsburg restoration was that it aroused “an awakened sense of responsibility for the preservation of the memorials and the worthy remains of a beautiful and historic past.” In order to preserve “sufficiently characteristic” historic sites in places like Charleston, South Carolina, Annapolis, Maryland, and New Orleans, Louisiana, Goodwin proposed creating a commission that would assist the National Park Service to preserve “those things most typical of the past which if not safeguarded [would] vanish before the march of commercialism and materialism.”¹¹ The goal would be to make an “intensive and extensive survey of the historical assets of the nation” while acknowledging distinctive regional and chronological developments.¹² Initially working independently of Park Service efforts, in early 1934 Goodwin partnered with members of the Society of Colonial Wars to secure the support and cooperation of Gist Blair.¹³ In May, Goodwin met with Verne Chatelain and the two exchanged plans for the creation of a federally sponsored historic sites program. Goodwin’s call for a national survey of historic sites paralleled the Park Service’s proposed “Decennial Survey.”¹⁴ By September 1934, the general consensus was for a national survey of historic sites overseen by an advisory board of experts in American history, architecture and prehistory. Drafted by the National Park Service, in February 1935 Senator Harry F. Byrd and Congressman Maury Maverick introduced the Historic Sites Act.¹⁵ The congressional hearing on the proposed legislation, held in early April, illuminated the state of historic preservation practice during the 1930s.¹⁶

Proponents of the draft bill first described how the challenges of the Great Depression had impacted the nation’s appreciation of American history, culture, arts, and historic sites. “In the past few years,” said Secretary Ickes, “the American people have displayed a sharply increased awareness of its historic past.” The former Mayor of Morristown, New Jersey, Clyde Potts, concurred: “especially during this period of depression … we need to infuse in our people a spirit of patriotism and of devotion to our form of government.” President Roosevelt thought that there was a great need for action, especially, “at the present time when so many priceless historical buildings, sites and remains are in grave danger of destruction through the natural progress of modern industrial conditions.¹⁷ The threats posed by modern society that challenged the characteristics of historic areas were often related to the rise of the automobile: the construction of new highways, the widening of existing streets in urban communities, and the installation of gas stations. The dangers were immediate: Reverend Goodwin thought that if the country waited another 50 years, all of the “old French civilization” in New Orleans would be lost. Others noted that the twentieth century had increased the pa...