The Preservation of History
Until quite recently the idea behind historic preservation in the
United States was solely to maintain for public benefit those
buildings, sites, and objects which were significant in the history
and culture of the nation. Preserved for their historic or aesthetic
value were a vast array of objects, such as the Declaration of
Independence, the papers of presidents, and the U.S.S. Constitution,
and a good number of important sites,
Historic sites which have been preserved include Jamestown, Va.,
and the battlefields of the American Revolutionary and Civil wars.
Also preserved is a wide variety of structures, including Mt. Vernon
and Monticello in Virginia and Pueblo Indian dwellings in New Mexico
and Arizona.
In the late 1960s, however, a radical change occurred in the
scope and meaning of the term historic preservation. It became an
umbrella phrase covering a wide variety of activities: the
rehabilitation and revitalization of urban neighborhoods and business
districts, the conversion of sound old buildings to new and
profit-making uses, the conservation of open spaces, the continued
maintenance and use of structures that are both typical and unique,
and the operation of historic museum properties.
As early as the 1850s a few public spirited citizens and state
legislatures sought to rescue historic buildings from destruction or
alteration. In 1850, New York State bought the Jonathan Hasbrouck
House, built in 1750 in Newburgh, which had served as George
Washington's headquarters during the last two years of the American
Revolution. Six years later the Tennessee legislature authorized the
purchase of The Hermitage, the home Andrew Jackson built from
1819-1831 and was rebuilt in 1835 outside of Nashville.
A nationwide push for historic preservation got under way in
earnest with the enactment of the Historic Sites Act of 1935, which
authorized several new programs to be carried out under the
sponsorship of the National Parks Service of the Department of the
Interior. Under the provisions of the act the secretary of the
interior was empowered to designate as national historic landmarks
those properties deemed to possess exceptional value for
commemorating or illustrating U.S. history.
Among the approximately 1,800 such landmarks currently protected
are such diverse properties as the Scott Joplin residence in St.
Louis, Mo.; the Ford Motor Company's River Rouge complex in Dearborn,
Mich. and Lyndhurst at Tarrytown, New York, one of the nation's
premier examples of domestic Gothic Revival architecture and the
former home of financier Jay Gould.
The next significant step in U.S. historic preservation came with
the 1949 chartering by Congress of the National Trust for Historic
Preservation, a private, nonprofit educational corporation mandated
to encourage and assist the private sector in its preservation
efforts and to accept historic properties on behalf of the American
people. With the aid of the National Trust the private sector's
preservation efforts expanded rapidly. By the late 1980s, according
to estimates, approximately 6,000 privately owned historic structures
and sites were permanently safeguarded and open to the public.
Most authorities trace the widened scope and explosive growth of
preservation since the 1960s to the beneficial impact of the National
Trust and to the enactment of the National Historic Preservation Act
of 1966, which widened the federal government's grasp over historic
resources to include those of state and local significance. Along
with providing for federal matching grants to state and territorial
historic- preservation agencies and to the National Trust, the 1966
act led to the establishment of the National Register of Historic
Places. Included on the National Register are not only national
historic landmarks but also districts, sites, buildings, structures,
and objects of significance in American history, architecture,
archaeology, and culture.
Since 1966, federal, state, local, and private preservation
activities have multiplied rapidly. The first issue of the National
Register, published in 1969, contained fewer than 2,000 entries; by
1989 that figure had grown to 50,000. In the same time span the
number of cities and counties with at least one local commission
empowered to oversee and protect landmarks (individual entities) and
historic districts (collections of structures) increased from 100 to
nearly 4,000.
As dramatic as its impact has been in the preservation of single
structures and contiguous groups of buildings, the concept of
adaptive reuse has had an even more important effect on many
communities. As example; museum properties tend to be outmoded
structures as expensive to heat and cool as they are to maintain in
their original condition, the relatively new strategy of adaptive
reuse has become increasingly important to the preservation movement
as a whole.
The idea behind adaptive reuse is to maintain or restore the
physical appearance of sound old structures while at the same time
adapting them to fulfill modern needs. Historic mansions and houses
that for one reason or another could not function as self-supporting
museums have been converted to branch banks, offices, and student
housing. Train stations, which are particularly expensive to
maintain, have gained new lives as restaurants, shops, schools,
science museums, and hotels.
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