February 11, 2016

The Case for Historic Preservation Districts

  • By: Stephanie K. Meeks

In the last few weeks, historic preservationists across the country have noted heightened threats to a key protective tool in saving places: historic districts.

In the words of our Preservation Leadership Forum team, which has compiled a number of helpful resources on the topic, "these attacks ignore the short- and long-term benefits of historic districts—economic, social and environmental—in favor of politically expedient but unnecessary curbs that would likely drive down the very development and investment that historic district opponents are trying to attract."

Stephanie Meeks, president of the National Trust, weighed in with an excellent rebuttal on CityLab, excerpted below. (Read her full article.) Here's part of what she had to say:

A front porch on Pullman's Executive Row

photo by: Cynthia Lynn

A front porch on Pullman's Executive Row

"All across America, from Cleveland and Buffalo to Portland and Pittsburgh, people from all walks of life—led by the young, diverse, millennial generation—are choosing to live, work, and play in historic neighborhoods. When asked why they moved to these areas, residents often talk about the desire to live somewhere distinctive, to be some place rather than no place. They want things like windows that open, exposed brick, and walkable communities, and continually use words like “charm” and “authenticity” to describe what they are looking for. In short, many Americans today want their homes and workplaces to be unique and distinctive—exactly the kind of distinctiveness, character, and sense of place that historic preservation districts provide.

Indeed, historic preservation districts provide benefits to people, whether or not they actually own a home in them. In New York’s Lower East Side, for example, millions of people visit annually to experience a remarkably intact 19th century tenement neighborhood. In Chicago, the annual Historic Pullman Community house tour is among the most popular residential house tours in Illinois, providing a glimpse into the lives of workers in George Pullman’s planned community. These places and thousands of others—from the Milwaukee Avenue Historic District in Minneapolis, to the Harvard-Belmont Historic District in Seattle—provide more than just housing for current residents. They also serve as living history lessons, and tangible reminders of a city’s past. They connect us across time to those who came before us.

Historic preservation districts also help Americans to tell the story of their nation, in all its complexity and diversity. No one would argue that certain historic districts feature grand historic homes and affluent residents. But for every Georgetown or Beacon Hill, there are places like Eatonville, Florida, or Detroit’s Corktown, modest communities that have been home to generations of working class families. The history embedded in these communities is just as important, and just as worthy of our full preservation efforts."

Read the rest of Stephanie's CityLab editorial here.

National Treasures: Pullman Historic District

A row of houses in Pullman

On Thursday, February 19, 2015, President Obama personally visited Pullman Historic District in order to designate the community as Pullman National Monument, affirming its national significance of Pullman and the many American stories it tells. Learn more about this remarkable place.

Stephanie K. Meeks was the president and CEO of the National Trust for Historic Preservation from 2010-2018. She is the author of "The Past and Future City."

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