The fireworks have started over my recent NEXTpittsburgh op-ed about the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation’s National Register of Historic Places nomination for a house historic preservationists have dubbed the “National Negro Opera Company House.”

One local historic preservation group complained that my op-ed didn’t give them enough credit. Another hurled threats.

While the preservationists have been circling their wagons and firing their defensive shotguns, none of them has bothered to ask me a few basic questions. One no-brainer is, “What other factual errors in the NRHP nomination are there besides the ones laid out in my article?” I first suggested to PHLF that there were issues with the NRHP nomination as early as the first week in January. Another is, “Why does it matter?”

PHLF is doubling down on its position that the NRHP nomination was defensible and accurate work. A PHLF spokesperson told me in the interview I did with him for the article, “We absolutely stand by it.”

PHLF reiterated its stance in communications with the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, the state agency that reviews National Register nominations before forwarding them to the National Park Service for a final determination and listing. “We stand behind [the PHLF consultant’s] work 100%,” wrote PHLF’s education coordinator in a February email to the state.

And yet, no one among the preservation crowd is curious about what led me to read the NRHP nomination and to the Hill District living room where I interviewed the 95-year-old woman quoted in my lede: Mrs. Dolores Slater. Nor are they interested in why I made such a fuss about the lack of oral history in the NRHP nomination. It’s not like PHLF didn’t have the money to do oral history — the National Park Service awarded the organization $41,378 to do oral history and the NRHP nomination.

I felt it was a legitimate question considering trends in historic preservation practice that have been emerging over the past 20 years. After I shared a copy of my op-ed with colleagues in a professional forum, one leading scholar replied: “The National Register is poised to release a new bulletin or some sort of update on oral history … I think the larger preservation community is still operating under old paradigms. Working with Native American TCPs and tribal preservation officers appears to be driving this new direction on the value of oral history and community voices at the Register.”

It seems like Pittsburgh is stuck with organizations like the PHLF firmly clutching those “old paradigms.”

But back to what led me to Mrs. Slater’s living room. In March of 2020 — just a little over three years ago to the day — I wrote a blog post about a historic Pittsburgh jazz club, the Aurora Club. Nine months after I wrote the post, one of the nightclub owner’s relatives read it and reached out to me in a comment she left at the site: “Did you bother to speak to anyone in the black community about the club and its’ history?” Angela James, now living in Detroit, added, “If you did, then you would know that it was so much more than was described.”

That comment led to a collaboration that has lasted more than two years. It also led to an introduction to Mrs. Slater and to a different chapter in James’s life story and the nightclub’s history — the “so much more than was described.”

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