The United States National Experience

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    PROCEEDINGS OF THEUS/ICOMOSINTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM

    U.S.PRESERVATION IN THE GLOBAL CONTEXT

    INDIANAPOLIS,INDIANA,USA 6-9APRIL 2000

    UNITED STATES NATIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL ON MONUMENTS AND SITES

    COMIT NATIONAL DES ETATS UNIS DU CONSEIL INTERNATIONAL DES MONUMENTS ET DES SITES

    The United States National Experience

    James A. Glass, Ph.D

    I have been asked to speak today about the national experience of the United States with

    historic preservation and to comment on the national preservation structure in this country. I

    speak from the several vantage points as an observer and student of the American preservationexperience: as a professor of historic preservation at Ball State University for 8 years, a

    member since 1997 of the Board of Advisors of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and

    as a board member since 1995 of Historic Landmarks Foundation ofIndiana. I have also served

    as a Deputy State Historic Preservation Officer for Indiana, a preservation project manager for

    an East Coast engineering and architecture firm, a project supervisor and historian for the

    Historic American Buildings Survey, staff historian for a local historic preservation commission,

    and author of a doctoral dissertation and book describing the events leading up to the passage

    of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 and legacies of the act. I also recently

    presented a paper on the recent history of the preservation movement inI

    ndiana,"Preservation Comes of Age in Indiana" for the Indiana Historical Society.

    We should start with two fundamental observations about the preservation movement in the

    United States: (1) it is predominantly private in composition and impetus, driven by the

    aspirations of millions of individual persons and thousands of non-profit organizations and (2)

    what gets preserved in the United States is largely by virtue of which historic places capture the

    enthusiasm and passion of grassroots activists and organizations. These two truisms run

    counter to the systems that operate in much of the rest of the world, as is evidenced by the

    presentations that we've just heard.

    In the remainder of this paper, I hope to persuade you of the validity of these observations by

    describing in more detail the nature of the American preservation movement, the participants

    in movement, and their respective roles in preserving the historic built heritage of the nation.

    Who Makes Up the Preservation Movement in the United States?

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    PROCEEDINGS OF THEUS/ICOMOSINTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM

    U.S.PRESERVATION IN THE GLOBAL CONTEXT

    INDIANAPOLIS,INDIANA,USA 6-9APRIL 2000

    UNITED STATES NATIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL ON MONUMENTS AND SITES

    COMIT NATIONAL DES ETATS UNIS DU CONSEIL INTERNATIONAL DES MONUMENTS ET DES SITES

    To begin with, one should acknowledge the sage observation of the late Charles Hosmer,

    historian of the movement, that the American preservation movement is a fabric made up of an

    ever-increasing number of threads--each thread representing a distinct organization, initiative,

    or program started by an individual or group of people. Hosmer said that no thread, no matter

    how old, ever dies, it simply continues, sustained by a sometimes decreasing number of

    adherents, while new concepts of preservation, organizations, and initiatives are constantly

    being born and operate in addition to the older "threads."[1] We can see the validity of

    Hosmer's point if we take a brief historical review of the history of the United States experience

    in preservation.

    The movement began in the mid-19th century with house museums -- the most prominent and

    influential of which was that created in 1858 at Mount Vernon, home of George Washington,

    first president of the United States, by a private, non-profit organization, the Mount Vernon

    Ladies Association of the Union. Mount Vernon established three ideas simultaneously: that

    the homes of patriotic heroes like Washington should be preserved, that they should be

    preserved as museums, open to the public, and that preservation of such shrines was the

    natural province of women. The success enjoyed by the Mount Vernon Ladies in raising money

    for Mount Vernon and publicizing it ensured that hundreds of ladies organizations throughout

    the country adopted the concept of saving a local residence associated with a patriotic figure

    and forming a volunteer group to acquire, restore, and open the structure to the visitor.[2]

    In the eastern United States, a multitude of the residences or other surviving structuresassociated with the Founding Fathers, early Presidents, military heroes of the American

    Revolution or the early Republic were preserved in this way. In Indiana, one of the first house

    museums was founded in 1917 by a local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution

    to save "Grouselands," the Vincennes, Indiana home of General William Henry Harrison, a

    military hero and later ninth President of the United States. In other cases in the state, house

    museums were instituted by male-led organizations, but women served as managers and

    docents for the home, such as the James Whitcomb Riley "national shrine" in Lockerbie Square

    ofIndianapolis and the home of President Benjamin Harrison in the near northside of the

    capital city.[3]

    For the most part, these now thousands of house museums continue to operate and attract

    thousands of visitors per year. New house museums are still being formed, following the lead

    established long ago by Mount Vernon.

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    PROCEEDINGS OF THEUS/ICOMOSINTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM

    U.S.PRESERVATION IN THE GLOBAL CONTEXT

    INDIANAPOLIS,INDIANA,USA 6-9APRIL 2000

    UNITED STATES NATIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL ON MONUMENTS AND SITES

    COMIT NATIONAL DES ETATS UNIS DU CONSEIL INTERNATIONAL DES MONUMENTS ET DES SITES

    A second major thread in the present movement dates to the 1920s: the museum village. One

    of the first was the hodgepodge of landmarks from the industrial and literary history of the

    United States collected and moved to Dearborn, Michigan by the eccentric founder of the Ford

    Motor Company, Henry Ford. Side by side in this "Greenfield Village" stood the Menlo Park,

    New Jersey laboratory buildings of Thomas Alva Edison, inventor of the incandescent light bulb

    and the phonograph; the home of popular song composer Stephen Foster from Kentucky; the

    residence of dictionary creator Noah Webster from Massachusetts; and the bicycle shop and

    residence of the Wright Brothers, founders of the airplane, from Ohio. Millions visited Ford's

    assemblage of historic structures, and the prototype for scores of historical villages, or

    "heritage squares" was created.[4]

    A second and possibly even more influential museum village was founded by the heir to the

    Standard Oil fortune, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., in the 1920s and 1930s: Colonial

    Williamsburg. Rockefeller's village preserved surviving buildings from before the 1790s in the

    old colonial capital of Virginia and reconstructed all those demolished since the 1790s in order

    to recreate the exact setting where the events leading to the Declaration ofIndependence and

    American Revolution took place. The objective was to provide visitors with an inspirational and

    patriotic experience. Colonial Williamsburg has enjoyed a phenomenal popularity among

    visitors since the 1930s and has spawned numerous progeny across the eastern United States,

    such as Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts, Strawberry Banke in Portsmouth, New

    Hampshire, and the Plimouth Plantation in Plymouth, Massachusetts.[5]

    In Indiana, local philanthropist Eli Lilly created his own museum village in the 1960s: Conner

    Prairie north ofIndianapolis, visited by thousands of school children annually to learn about life

    in a hypothetical Hoosier community of 1836. In New Harmony, Indiana, Historic New

    Harmony, Inc., led by its benefactor, Jane Blaffer Owen, preserved and opened to the public

    during the 1950s and 1960s key buildings of the Rappite and Owenite settlements of the early

    19th century. West ofIndianapolis, entrepreneurs in Parke County have more recently created

    "Billie Creek Village," a collection of houses, barns, and covered bridges moved there from the

    surrounding region and open to visitors.[6]

    A third thread, which came to the preservation movement considerably later than the first two,

    was the commercial tourist square, a product partially of the Main Street USA segment of

    Disneyland, the enormously successful theme park created in the 1950s by movie/cartoon

    impresario Walt Disney, in Anaheim, California.[7] Business leaders and city planners in several

    cities across the nation noted the tourism revenue generated partially by Main Street USA and

    began by the late 1950s to generate plans for small, often rectangular "squares" composed of

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    PROCEEDINGS OF THEUS/ICOMOSINTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM

    U.S.PRESERVATION IN THE GLOBAL CONTEXT

    INDIANAPOLIS,INDIANA,USA 6-9APRIL 2000

    UNITED STATES NATIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL ON MONUMENTS AND SITES

    COMIT NATIONAL DES ETATS UNIS DU CONSEIL INTERNATIONAL DES MONUMENTS ET DES SITES

    surviving historic commercial buildings or residences that could be converted into restaurants

    and shops to attract tourists to downtowns. One of the earliest plans for such a square was in

    Indianapolis: Lockerbie Fair (later Square), a 1950s concept that would have created a

    Disneyland-like commercial attraction in the neighborhood of Hoosier poet James Whitcomb

    Riley. Lack of investor interest ultimately prevented the commercial version of Lockerbie from

    coming into existence.[8] In Denver, during the 1960s, business and civic leaders marked off a

    two-block area of the downtown commercial district for partial preservation and called it

    "Larimer Square." Shops and restaurants were installed in surviving commercial structures,

    while new development was permitted on the sites of historic buildings outside the boundaries

    of the square. Another extremely successful example of the commercial historic district

    concept was Pioneer Square in Seattle, a section of nineteenth century office and retail

    buildings that was rehabilitated in the 1960s and 1970s for both shops and office space.[9]

    Probably the most pervasive "thread" of the contemporary preservation movement is that

    formed by the back-to-the city movement beginning in the 1960s and 1970s that resulted in

    thousands of historic neighborhoods (districts) being restored and rehabilitated by people

    wishing to live in historic residences. This sweeping movement, which over the past 35 years

    has touched almost every city and town in the country, began in the late 1950s and early 1960s

    with a handful of federally subsidized redevelopment projects that emphasized rehabilitation of

    historic residences in downtown neighborhoods. In such urban projects as College Hill in

    Providence, Rhode Island and Society Hill in Philadelphia, historic 18th and early 19th century

    dwellings were saved and re-sold to private homebuyers who were persuaded that downtown

    living was desirable. In Columbus, Ohio, during the early 1960s, an old German neighborhood,

    called "German Village," was earmarked for preservation, and pioneering lovers of Victorian

    houses began to purchase and restore residences in the district.[10]

    By the early 1970s, a national trend had begun to take hold in most of the major cities of the

    nation, as young professionals and "empty nester" couples began to discover the delights of

    nineteenth century architecture and craftsmanship in the run-down neighborhoods of

    American cities and restore homes in those areas using "sweat equity." The motivations for

    these urban pioneers were three-fold: they were frequently looking for an affordablealternative to purchasing a new house in the suburbs, they often wanted to live downtown,

    where they worked; and they nearly all had a passion for Victorian houses, which had been

    despised by mainstream American culture during the 1950s and 1960s. In the Manhattan and

    Brooklyn sections of New York City, in the Back Bay district of Boston, in the west side

    neighborhoods of Philadelphia, in the Western Addition of San Francisco, Lincoln Park area of

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    U.S.PRESERVATION IN THE GLOBAL CONTEXT

    INDIANAPOLIS,INDIANA,USA 6-9APRIL 2000

    UNITED STATES NATIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL ON MONUMENTS AND SITES

    COMIT NATIONAL DES ETATS UNIS DU CONSEIL INTERNATIONAL DES MONUMENTS ET DES SITES

    Chicago, and the Garden District of New Orleans, the back-to-the-city movement took hold and

    set a trend that spread through the 1970s in much of the rest of the country.[11]

    In Indianapolis, for example, the urban pioneers transformed Lockerbie Square's run-down

    worker's cottages into appealing downtown domiciles close to places of work. Other

    renovators changed the Old Northside and Woodruff Place, which were dotted with large

    Italianate and Queen Anne residences, into comfortable, pedestrian-scaled neighborhoods with

    a special atmosphere.[12]

    Contemporary with the back-to-city movement and drawing from a similar psychology, was the

    commercial adaptive-re-use, rehabilitation thread of the preservation movement. The impetus

    for the adaptation of vacant, endangered historic buildings to different, economical uses came

    mainly from architects and a few developers interested in trying an alternative approach to

    development in downtowns, one that exploited the unusual spaces, materials, and

    craftsmanship found in abandoned old factories, railroad depots, and warehouses. One of the

    first commercial successes came in the mid-1960s with the conversion by architects Wurster,

    Bernardi and Emmons of an old chocolate factory in San Francisco into a collection of retail

    shops and restaurants, Ghirardelli Square.[13]

    The idea caught on, and by the early 1970s, varied projects were catching the attention of both

    the architectural and preservation communities, such as the adaptation of famed nineteenth

    century architect Henry Hobson Richardson's New London, Connecticut railroad station byarchitects Anderson Notter Associates, Inc. for shops and a restaurant; adaptation of the

    former Chickering piano factory in Boston by architects and developers Robert Gelardin,

    Simeon Bruner, and Leland Cott into apartments and studios for artists and craftspersons; and

    the adaptive use by the Rouse Company of Boston's historic Faneuil and Quincy Markets and

    adjacent warehouses into a new downtown retailing concept: the festival marketplace. In Salt

    Lake City, local developer Wallace A. Wright, Jr. transformed the abandoned streetcar barns of

    the city into a successful retail complex for local shoppers.[14]

    The pace and popularity of adaptive use accelerated considerably during the late 1970s andthrough the 1980s, after Congress adopted federal income tax incentives to stimulate the

    rehabilitation and adaptive use of historic commercial buildings. Locally, in Indianapolis, these

    tax incentives spurred local attorney and developer Tom Charles Huston to adapt a vacant 1871

    former wholesale building into professional offices and an office furniture store, called

    Morrison Opera Place, in 1979 and 1980. During the mid-1980s, a $50 million investment by

    local developer Robert Borns transformed the historic Indianapolis Union Railway Station into a

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    PROCEEDINGS OF THEUS/ICOMOSINTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM

    U.S.PRESERVATION IN THE GLOBAL CONTEXT

    INDIANAPOLIS,INDIANA,USA 6-9APRIL 2000

    UNITED STATES NATIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL ON MONUMENTS AND SITES

    COMIT NATIONAL DES ETATS UNIS DU CONSEIL INTERNATIONAL DES MONUMENTS ET DES SITES

    festival market place. Elsewhere downtown, Mansur Development Corporation stripped off the

    aqua blue metal siding from a former Sears department store and restored the Art Deco facade,

    while adapting the building to a retail and office complex.[15]

    Nationally, billions of dollars were spent by private investors and developers on historic,

    income-producing structures by the 1990s, and rehabilitation developers became a major force

    within the preservation movement, driving the "adaptive use" tread.

    Harnessing, giving guidance to, and sometimes instigating the further propagation of these

    later, thick and pervasive "threads" in the preservation fabric have been non-profit

    organizations and government agencies, most of which have arisen in the last 35 years. These

    organizations/agencies are also threads in the preservation movement, although more often

    cast as stimulators of preservation by others, rather than preservers themselves. These

    include the chief advocate for preservation by private initiative, the National Trust for Historic

    Preservation, chartered by Congress in 1949; the myriad of local preservation non-profit

    organizations that have come into being since the 1960s to save threatened landmarks,

    neighborhoods, and commercial districts; the National Park Service, which since 1966 has

    coordinated a national system of promoting preservation efforts by State governments, local

    governments, and private organizations; the fifty State Historic Preservation Offices, or SHPOs,

    which carry out the provisions of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 and administer

    the federal historic rehabilitation tax credit program within each of their States; statewide non-

    profit preservation organizations, such as Historic Landmarks Foundation ofIndiana and theGeorgia and Connecticut Trusts for Historic Preservation, which promote preservation at the

    local, grass-roots level; local historic preservation commissions, which afford protection from

    demolition for historic structures in designated historic districts; and the national network of

    Main Street organizations, which promote the revitalization of downtowns in smaller towns and

    cities across the nation.

    How Does the American Preservation Movement Function?

    How do all these threads interact and accomplish preservation? Let us first consider the role ofgovernment, a major, if not dominant player, in the many of the other member nations of

    ICOMOS. The Federal government, through the National Park Service, plays a coordinative,

    indirect role with respect to preservation efforts by private individuals, developers, state and

    local governments, and non-profit organizations. The National Historic Preservation Act of

    1966, the implementation of which the Park Service oversees, established a National Register of

    Historic Places, intended to be a national inventory of what is "worthy of preservation"; a

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    U.S.PRESERVATION IN THE GLOBAL CONTEXT

    INDIANAPOLIS,INDIANA,USA 6-9APRIL 2000

    UNITED STATES NATIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL ON MONUMENTS AND SITES

    COMIT NATIONAL DES ETATS UNIS DU CONSEIL INTERNATIONAL DES MONUMENTS ET DES SITES

    system of surveys to identify additional historic properties and districts eligible for inclusion in

    the National Register; and a system of matching grants to the fifty states to encourage

    preservation by local governments and private non-profit organizations. In addition, under the

    tax legislation passed by Congress in the 1980s, the Park Service oversees and sets guidelines

    for the States administering the federal historic rehabilitation tax credit.[16]

    To assist the State Historic Preservation Offices (SHPOs), the Park Service also has published

    and distributed a set of professional standards and guidelines for rehabilitation, the "Secretary

    of the Interior's Standards for Rehabilitation," that have served not only to guide tax credit

    rehabilitation efforts, but have become an informal national philosophical guidance for the

    preservation and adaptive use of historic structures in the United States. Another federal

    agency, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, created by the National Historic

    Preservation Act, oversees a protective review of federally financed and licensed construction

    projects by the SHPOs.[17]

    The SHPOs carry out the mandates of the National Historic Preservation Act and in many states,

    function as the only statewide presence promoting historic preservation. They coordinate and

    often carry out a comprehensive survey of historic places in their state; nominate historic

    properties to the National Register; distribute grant monies to promote survey, registration,

    educational and restoration projects by private and statewide non-profits and local

    governments; review under Section 106 of the Historic Preservation Act all federally funded and

    licensed projects in their state to assure that affected historic properties are taken into account,and process applications from developers and other owners of commercial historic properties

    for the federal historic rehabilitation tax credit. In addition, most SHPOs carry out preservation

    mandates given them by their state legislatures, including establishment of state registers of

    historic sites; state restoration grant programs; state rehabilitation tax incentives; and

    archaeological site protection laws.[18]

    Local governments, which exercise much of the police powers of government in the United

    States, provide the sort of direct regulation of demolition and exterior alterations to designated

    historic landmarks and historic districts that national governments often exercise in the rest ofthe world. There are now over 1,000 historic preservation commissions or preservation review

    boards in the nation, most of which are established by local town or city ordinance and review

    changes to the historic character of districts or individual properties.[19]

    The protection against demolitions and the adherence of new construction and exterior

    alteration projects to design guidelines that encourage preservation of the historic character of

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    U.S.PRESERVATION IN THE GLOBAL CONTEXT

    INDIANAPOLIS,INDIANA,USA 6-9APRIL 2000

    UNITED STATES NATIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL ON MONUMENTS AND SITES

    COMIT NATIONAL DES ETATS UNIS DU CONSEIL INTERNATIONAL DES MONUMENTS ET DES SITES

    the area and harmonization of the new with the old, frequently encourages more private

    investment in designated districts and even an enhancement in property values over time. [if

    you have time while in Indianapolis, be sure to see the wonders in revitalization of historic

    neighborhoods that have occurred in the local historic districts of Lockerbie Square, Old

    Northside, Fletcher Place, Chatham-Arch, Herron-Morton Place, and Ransom Place (an African

    American historic neighborhood)].

    In the United States, non-profit advocacy organizations tend to play a far more significant role

    than government in stimulating preservation activity among the "threads" of the movement.

    Local non-profits are formed by grass root preservationists, who often take the lead in defining

    what should be preserved in each community. The local groups pursue financial assistance

    from government programs and support from state and national non-profit organizations in

    their battles to save cherished landmarks and districts. In 1999, there were 144 such local non-

    profit preservation organizations in Indiana, most of which have been formed during the last 25

    years. Examples include Historic Madison, Inc.; ARCH, Inc., in Fort Wayne; Preserve to Enjoy in

    Columbus, Indiana; the Morgan County Preservation Society; South Bend Heritage;

    Bloomington Restorations; and the Wabash Valley Trust for Historic Preservation.[20]

    In many states, statewide preservation non-profit organizations also provide encouragement

    and professional assistance to local non-profits; assist local preservation advocates in forming

    organizations; lobby state administrations and legislatures for laws to provide financial

    assistance to local preservation projects and protection to state-owned historic properties; andengage in preservation projects of their own.

    Historic Landmarks Foundation ofIndiana, for example, the largest statewide organization in

    the country by way of endowment and professional staff, engages in an ambitious program of

    encouraging local efforts in preservation through a decentralized system of seven regional and

    field offices. Using revolving funds to save endangered historic properties that cannot be saved

    through the conventional real estate market; a statewide revolving loan fund to assist local

    organizations to preserve landmarks; a statewide survey project to identify historic buildings

    and districts; and an aggressive effort at encouraging local preservationists and governments toestablish preservation commissions and ordinances, Historic Landmarks has compiled an

    impressive record over the last forty years.[21]

    At a national level, the National Trust for Historic Preservation acts as a voice for the private

    sectors of the preservation movement generally and for non-profit preservation organizations

    in particular. Although the American National Trust owns over twenty historic museum

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    U.S.PRESERVATION IN THE GLOBAL CONTEXT

    INDIANAPOLIS,INDIANA,USA 6-9APRIL 2000

    UNITED STATES NATIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL ON MONUMENTS AND SITES

    COMIT NATIONAL DES ETATS UNIS DU CONSEIL INTERNATIONAL DES MONUMENTS ET DES SITES

    properties of national importance, paralleling the property-owning emphasis of the English

    National Trust that was its original inspiration,[22] the Trust in the United States now directs

    most of its energies toward encouraging preservation efforts at the local, grass-roots level of

    the movement. It does this through annual preservation conferences; formation of new

    statewide non-profit organizations, a nationally-circulating magazine, Preservation;

    demonstration projects for new preservation strategies; and lobbying Congress for new

    legislation to encourage private investment in historic properties and additional appropriations

    for the Federal-State governmental programs. A separate national lobbying organization,

    Preservation Action, devotes its energies exclusively to tracking preservation-related legislation

    in Congress and organizing a grass-roots lobbying network to push for enhanced incentives for

    preservation.

    Developers--both for-profit and non-profit--form an important bloc in the preservation

    movement that pursues the rehabilitation of commercial historic properties, yet as a group are

    not organized nationally. Developers tend to lobby as individual firms in their respective states

    with legislatures and to a more limited extent, through Preservation Action and the National

    Trust for improved and expanded tax credits for rehabilitation.

    Main Street organizations and their managers, which number in the thousands across the

    country, work together in statewide alliances or organizations and with the National Trust,

    which founded the Main Street revitalization concept in 1976.[23]

    The largest segment of the preservation movement, like the developers unorganized as a bloc,

    are the homeowners who live in historic neighborhoods throughout the nation. These people

    number in the millions, and many do not necessarily think of themselves as preservationists,

    but they are at the heart of the preservation movement today in the United States. Their

    restorations and desire to live in old houses has made preservation a familiar concept in nearly

    every community, in contrast to the house museum and museum village threads of the

    movement prior to the 1970s, which were experienced by most Americans by getting into a car

    and driving out of their communities.

    Summary

    To sum up the United States national experience in historic preservation, we can say that

    historic preservation is a decentralized movement in this country, an intricate fabric composed

    of a multitude of threads representing interwoven organizations, agencies, and

    individuals. Government's role is in the background--it is not at center stage as in Europe and

    other parts of the globe. Government in the United States supports the effort of the private

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    U.S.PRESERVATION IN THE GLOBAL CONTEXT

    INDIANAPOLIS,INDIANA,USA 6-9APRIL 2000

    UNITED STATES NATIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL ON MONUMENTS AND SITES

    COMIT NATIONAL DES ETATS UNIS DU CONSEIL INTERNATIONAL DES MONUMENTS ET DES SITES

    sector, which takes the lead in most situations. That private sector is made up of millions of

    homeowners and other owners of historic buildings who preserve historic structures either for

    the satisfaction of living or working in a historic environment or as an investment (or for

    both). It is also composed of thousands of local non-profit preservation organizations that act

    as advocates for landmarks and districts; of statewide non-profits who coordinate and

    encourage local efforts; and of developers who take on the preservation of commercial

    properties.

    Although much of the American public, raised and still residing in post-World War II suburbs,

    still thinks of historic preservation as house museums, museum villages, or projects preserving

    the heritage of the socially elite, the reality is quite different. In terms of the number of people

    involved, the number of buildings and districts preserved, and the number of communities

    revitalized, the preservation movement today is about conserving old neighborhoods,rehabilitating and adaptively using downtown buildings, and using our physical heritage for

    contemporary needs wherever it is found.

    __________

    [1] These observations were passed on to me by Charles Hosmer in several meetings I had with him in the

    summers of 1985 and 1986.

    [2] See Charles B. Hosmer, Jr., Presence of the Past(New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1965), pp. 41-101.

    [3]I

    bid, p. 137; James A. Glass, "Neighborhood Evolution," Lockerbie Square Historic Area Plan - 1 for theLockerbie Square Historic District(Indianapolis: Department of Metropolitan Development, May, 1978), pp. 29-30.

    [4] See Charles B. Hosmer, Jr., Preservation Comes of Age: from Williamsburg to the National

    Trust(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1981), Vol. I, pp. 237-59.

    [5] Ibid, pp. 153-92, ?

    [6] Brochures: "Conner Prairie an Earlham Museum" [undated]; "The Story of New Harmony," [typed hand-out

    for tours, undated].

    [7] See Wendell W. Phillips, Jr., and Louis C. Long, "Lockerbie Fair: a Problem, an Area, an Answer"

    (Indianapolis: Metropolitan Planning Department, 1959[?]).

    [8] Glass, "Neighborhood Evolution," pp. 35-37.

    [9] Larimer Square and Pioneer Square are both discussed in the 1976 publication, Economic Benefits of

    Preserving Old Buildings (Washington, D.C.: National Trust for Historic Preservation, 1976), pp. 4-31, 125.

    [10] The College Hill revitalization project is described in the 1959 planning report that was used to guide

    it, College Hill: a Demonstration Study of Historic Area Renewal(Providence, R.I.: City Plan Commission, 1959,

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    INDIANAPOLIS,INDIANA,USA 6-9APRIL 2000

    UNITED STATES NATIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL ON MONUMENTS AND SITES

    COMIT NATIONAL DES ETATS UNIS DU CONSEIL INTERNATIONALDES MONUMENTS ET DES SITES

    1967). See also James A. Glass, "The National Historic Preservation Program, 1957 to 1969" (Cornell University

    doctoral dissertation, 1987), Vol. I, pp. 48-49. The information about German Village was gleaned from newspaper

    clippings in the Lockerbie Square files of the Indianapolis Historic Preservation Commission, Indianapolis.

    [11] For comment on the back-to-the-city movement, see James A. Glass, "Historic Preservation Comes of Age in

    Indiana," [forthcoming chapter in book The State of Indiana History, to be published by Indiana Historical Society in

    2001], pp. 8-9 [of manuscript]; Documentation of the back-to-the-city movement is found in the back issues

    ofPreservation News, the newspaper of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, from 1970 to 1981.

    [12] Glass, "Historic Preservation Comes of Age," pp. 8-9.

    [13] A description is found in David Gebhard, Rober Montgomery, Robert Winter, John Woodbridge, and Sally

    Woodbridge,A Guide to San Francisco and Northern California (Santa Barbara: Peregrine Smith, Inc., 1976), pp.

    51-52.

    [14] Economic Benefits, pp. 59-61, 68-73, and 134-37.[15] Glass, "Preservation Comes of Age," pp. 23-25; personal knowledge.

    [16] See James A. Glass, The Beginnings of a New National Historic Preservation Program, 1957 to

    1969 (Nashville: American Association for State and Local History, 1990), pp. 7-63.

    [17] Ibid.

    [18] Ibid, pp. 59-63; personal knowledge.

    [19] Membership brochure, undated, National Alliance of Preservation Commissions.

    [20] See Glass, "Preservation Comes of Age in Indiana," p. 34; taped interview with J. Reid Williamson, Jr., June

    14, 1999.

    [21] Glass, "Preservation Comes of Age," pp. 21-33.

    [22] See Hosmer, Preservation Comes of Age, Vol. II, p. 840.

    [23] Glass, "Preservation Comes of Age," pp. 19-20.