Transcript Social and Ethnic Dimensions of Historic Preservation

Social and Ethnic Dimensions of Historic
Preservation
What narratives tell the story of America?
The authors of the essays contained in With Heritage So Rich did not
have imagined that the historic preservation field would incorporate
such a broad story into the narrative of the nation’s heritage. Why?
This oversight is due in part to the nature of historical study in
the mid-1960s.
The focus of history instruction was on military and political events
and zeroed in on the achievements of national figures, usually
European American men.
Architectural historians of the mid-1960s who played a major role in
the development of the legislation, focused on significant examples
of academic style architecture.
African-American History
The participation of ethnic and social minorities in the practice of
historic preservation is a very recent goal of the preservation
community. This is an uncompleted goal and reflects unfulfilled
expectations larger than heritage recognition.
The first sites recognizing African American who made important
contributions to American life to came from Congress.
1. In 1943, in the midst of World War II, Congress added the
George Washington Carver National Monument in Diamond,
Missouri, to the National Park System.
2. In 1956, as the civil rights movement was gaining momentum
across the South, the Booker T. Washington National
Monument in Hardy, Virginia, was added to the NPS.
3. In 1962 the NPS assumed responsibility for the Frederick
Douglass House in Washington, D.C.
The unexpected consequences of the
Bicentennial in 1976
The political reality of inclusion of the need to include
every community’s heritage became part of the
practice of historic preservation professionals in the
decade of the bicentennial (1976).
This included:
It did not include:
Women
Hispanics
African American
Gay and Lesbians
Asian American
Native Americans
Rural Americans
Others?
The pattern of participation of minorities has
been slow and uneven
The earliest forms of recognition came from creating national
monuments or shrines to national figures with minority status.
The reaction to the need to recognize diverse heritage communities led
to a renewed emphasis on E Pluribus Unum – “out of many one.”
The Civil Rights movement produced a scrutiny of government actions
and agencies and a desire to see how they sought out, or cared for
the minority.
1968. The Society for the Preservation of Weeksville and BedfordStuyvesant History in New York City. Founder Joan Maynard,
became a national figure promoting African American heritage in
the historic preservation field. She later sat on the board of trustees
of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
The Delivery of Services Approach
The federal and state preservation agencies call for surveys
specifically seeking sites associated with ethnic heritage in the
1970s—that met the standards of the Historic Preservation
approach.
This agenda did not change the structure of preservation
practice, but added emphasis to the criteria A & B.
The 1990s the issue of representation in decision-making becomes
more critical and attempts begin to recruit ethnic participation in
the preservation.
Recruitment tools to credential minority preservation
professionals, including scholarships and internship programs
fails to bring broader minority participation into historic
preservation. Why?
Creating distinct programs with the National
Park Service
National Park Service, Cultural Resources Diversity
Program created in late 1998.
Heritage Matters is one of the publications of this
program.
The Stonewell Controversy.
Increasing diversity in the staff of the National Park
Service.
What are the goals of minority communities?
Carl Westmoreland and Mount Auburn, is a
neighborhood in Cincinnati Ohio. Model Cities
Physical Planning Program organized the Mount
Auburn Community council. To improve housing and
a community spirit in its own residents. Mount
Auburn Good Housing Foundation purchased and
renovated housing, then either resold or managed as
low-income housing. The goal was to maintain
community.
The continued resistance to the widening of public
preservation Harriet Beecher Stowe House.
The Gentrification Blues
Mount Auburn was still threatened, but not by
economically advantaged young urban professionals
moving in, instead the older concern that large
institutions, the University or the hospitals would
encroach continued to be a problem.
Preserving Maxwell Street, Chicago, from living to
tourism. The forces for change is the University of
Chicago and their expansion of the campus.
Gentrification
The process of higher-income people moving into a
transitional area and restoring or renovating much of
the existing housing stock; typically accompanied by
the displacement of many of the existing residents
and businesses because of higher rents or purchase of
the buildings they occupy.
Conflicting values
In the United States we have had a freedom to travel. The ability to
relocate in new areas has been upheld by the Constitution.
All of the inner city neighborhoods potentially protected are cases of
continuing replacement of one group by another.
If we define neighborhoods by ethnicity, would they need to maintain a
certain level of ethnic population to continue certification? Would
this lead to quotas, that have historically been most detrimental for
the very ethnic groups that it would not protect.
Would zoning laws in place need to be rewritten at the local and state
level in order to include ethnic and social fabric questions? Would
the court accept these new standards accustomed to basing
preservation zoning on aesthetics, property values.
Multi-culturalism
Multiculturalism relates to the influx of immigrants in
the past forty years. They do not meet the conventional
standards of history, but how should the preservation
community be recording their initial adaptations?
How can standards be adjusted to gain “cultural equity.”
On Nov. 2, 2001 the principle of cultural equity as a
human right was affirmed in UNESCO’s Universal
Declaration of Cultural Diversity, which put defense of
culture on a par with protection of the environment
and individual rights.
Challenges to historic preservation
Can preservation provide humanizing influences?
Can preservation provide the context for “civic discourse.”
Gentrification merges into questions about whose property is this
anyway?
Should the neighborhood be considered as corporately owned by
the community, or the property of the residents who live there?
Government has the right to condemn property under eminent
domain, but
Does the city have a right to encourage tourism into the
neighborhoods, that increases traffic and invite through
brochures people to look at the homes as public property?
Without giving the “attractions” a voice in the decisionmaking is this a taking?