Author Archives: David Rotenstein

Web History

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Last week I distributed Historian for Hire’s  first e-update. In the one-pager I mentioned the first professional Web site I created. Designed for Cultural Resource Analysts, a cultural resource management company in Lexington, Kentucky, the site went live in January 1996. My local files for time I maintained the site have long since succumbed to data rot but the good folks over at the Internet Archive have it preserved on their servers. It’s not pretty nor is it flashy, but it did the job. And, if you surf through the company’s current Web site structure you will see that despite almost 15 years and multiple webmeisters, the basic architecture that I designed remains intact.

CRAI’s owner Chuck Niquette advertised the new site in a post to a young professional organization’s public listserv, ACRA-L. A few days later I registered the company’s new domain name and moved the site off of my grad school Internet account held at the University of Pennsylvania. The screen capture shows the front page in early 1996 and below is CRAI President Chuck Niquette’s announcement of its birth:

CRAI Home Page Announcement.

First Quarter 2010 Update

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The first 2010 update went out last week. Check out what’s new.

Hamlets 1, County 1: Local Landmarking

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In January I wrote about the difficulties of local designation in the aftermath of chairing my final Montgomery County Historic Preservation Commission hearing. Last week the newly constituted HPC continued the worksession begun in January and concluded that the two proposed historic districts did not meet the County criteria for designation. The hearing and HPC’s decision was reported in this morning’s Montgomery Gazette: Claggettsville Out of Running for Historic Designation. Last week’s worksession stretched well into the night and was stopped before the HPC was able to complete its consideration of all of the properties proposed for designation; the worksession continues next week (10 March 2010).

Clagettsville Determination of Eligibility Form

Although the Gazette reporter touched on many of the key issues, she failed to broach some of the more difficult problems facing the HPC: incomplete research and the troubling failure by County historic preservation staff to disclose the fact that one of the historic districts, Clagettsville, had been evaluated by the State Historic Preservation Office in 1991 and found to not meet any of the Criteria for Designation for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. According to the DOE form, apparently completed by then-Montgomery County Planning Department historian Mike Dwyer, “The crossroads community of Claggettsville has undergone numerous alterations and has many intrusions. It no longer conveys the sense of a 19th and early 20th century village and lacks sufficient cohesiveness to be considered a district.” The February 18, 2010 HPC staff report prepared for last week’s worksession mentions the MHT document but fails to include any of the language in the MHT document. Furthermore, contrary to my request to HPC staff that links to the MHT documents (post at the MHT/MD Archives Web site) be included with the hearing material, the staff elected to let stakeholders know that the materials are available and left it up to individuals to find the materials on their own. There are some very serious implications for the property owners in the two historic districts if they are designated locally and found by MHT to be not eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. Chief among the implications are the benefits of designation touted by historic preservationists vis-à-vis state historic preservation tax credits. If a historic district is not listed in the National Register or (and this is important) is not determined eligible for listing in the National Register by the MHT, then property owners are not eligible to receive state historic preservation tax credits.

Among the continued concerns I have that remain from the January hearing and its supporting documents are the ways in which HPC staff rely on National Park Service/National Register of Historic Places guidance and standards only when it is convenient to support their positions (sometimes demonstrably incorrectly as with some of these designation documents) but when individuals attempt to bring in the NPS/NRHP literature HPC staff takes the position that the NPS/NRHP materials are informative only and that Chapter24A criteria are the only applicable standards.

Last year Councilmember Mike Knapp introduced legislation to amend the County’s historic preservation law (Chapter 24A) . I think with the Upper Patuxent Master Plan Amendment working its way towards the Planning Board and Council there is an opportunity to revisit amending Chapter 24A to open up the designation of historic districts to more property owner involvement, i.e., provisions for owner consent by establishing a percentage threshold of consenting owners within the boundaries of a proposed historic district to enable a historic district designation to move beyond the HPC.

More on this next week.

Back to the Blues, Part I

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Last week folklorist Bill Ferris gave a lecture at the Library of Congress in support of his new book, Give My Poor Heart Ease: Voices of the Mississippi Blues (2009, The University of North Carolina Press). I hadn’t really thought about how much of an influence a brief 1988 meeting with Bill in his University of Mississippi office had on my career until after his lecture ended. In the summer of 1988 I was documenting folk artists in Arkansas and my background research for the project included meeting with folks who had worked there and regionally before my arrival. Bill Ferris was one of the people and Jim O’Neal, founding editor of Living Blues magazine, was another.

I ultimately didn’t get around to documenting a whole lot of artists before leaving Arkansas to return to grad school at Penn, but I did get to do some incredible fieldwork that exposed me to Delta blues culture. I went on to write about blues culture and heritage tourism in a 1992 article, “The Helena Blues: African-American Folk Music and Cultural Tourism in Helena, Arkansas” (Southern Folklore 49, no. 2: 133-46). I also found a way to help pay for school by writing about blues (and other) musicians for several newspapers and magazines. I wrote about zydeco musician Chubby Carrier for Living Blues magazine and did interviews for the Charlotte Observer, Philadelphia Inquirer, and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Great contacts with Knight-Ridder newspaper chain entertainment editors provided me with a pipeline to the chain’s wire service and my articles were picked up by newspapers from New York City to Chicago to Portland.

In the meantime I was still trying to finish my doctoral program in Folklore and Folklife at Penn. In addition to the courses tied to my area of concentration, material culture and vernacular architecture, I took ethnomusicology classes and worked as a research assistant for an ethnomusicologist writing on the history of African American spirituals. In 1992 I decided to write a class paper on the body of legends that grew up around guitarist Robert Johnson (1911-1938). I didn’t want to confine my research to the library so I called up some musicians who knew Johnson some younger artists who were influenced by his music and I interviewed them for the paper. I also could draw on interviews I had done with artists who knew Johnson but who had died prior to 1992 (see Back to the Blues, Part II).

Bill Ferris’s lecture and book got me thinking about all of the old analog recordings I have lying around. I decided to try and take some of the recordings — some were done in crowded bars,  backstage at performances, and by phone for newspaper articles to be run in advance of gigs — and find some new life for them on the Web. My first effort, the Ziggy’s Blues Web site, was up from 1995 through 2006 and it had the copy from several of my newspaper articles. Ziggy’s Blues used to be available at the Internet Archive until aftermarket domain name thieves entrepreneurs got a hold of my old domain because I let the registration lapse. Ziggy’s Blues was listed in early books documenting blues on the Web and I’d like to think it was how New York Times writer Jon Pareles found my interview with John Lee Hooker to quote in Hooker’s 2001 obituary.

My latest effort is to try and combine photos I shot in the field and on assignment with the recordings to create media for distribution on the Web. First out of the can are excerpts from my 1991 interviews with B.B. King which were done in Atlanta, Georgia. The clip is available at my Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/#!/video/video.php?v=1365878913118&ref=nf.

Historic Preservation in Montgomery County

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Although I am no longer chairman of the Montgomery County Historic Preservation Commission (as of Tuesday 23 February 2010), I can still help folks understand the benefits and costs of historic preservation in their local communities. Back in 2008 while I was the HPC vice-chair I wrote an article for my neighborhood’s civic association newsletter detailing how the County’s historic preservation law works. The link to the PDF is here:  How MoCo’s Historic Preservation Program Works <http://historian4hire.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/nfcc_hpc_2008.pdf>. The PDF is free to distribute.

Montgomery County’s Historic Preservation Program
David S. Rotenstein

First things first: The Montgomery County Historic Preservation Commission does not have the authority to tell people who own properties designated as historic under county law what color to paint their walls or where their living room furniture may be placed. Since 1979 Montgomery County has had a law on the books – codified under Chapter 24A for those brave enough to navigate the legalese – defining the legal standards for what may be determined historic, the process by which a property is designated, and the regulatory framework for ensuring the protection of designated properties. The historic preservation ordinance created the Historic Preservation Commission and paved the way for staffing units in the Planning and Parks departments housed in the Maryland National Capital Parks and Planning Commission who document and ensure the protection of the county’s archaeological, architectural, and cultural landscapes that make Montgomery County unique.

Montgomery County’s historic preservation program is like hundreds of others throughout the nation at the county and municipal level. It is based on federal historic preservation programs administered by the National Park Service. The National Park Service administers the nation’s honorific inventory of important historic and prehistoric places known as the National Register of Historic Places. To be listed in the National Register a building, site, structure, or object (e.g., a statue or a historic ship) must meet one or more criteria. Properties may be listed because of their association with significant individuals; they may be important because they reflect important periods in history or an important event occurred there; they may be architecturally significant; or, they may have archaeological significance. Maryland also has its own inventory program known as the Maryland Inventory of Historic Properties.

County law establishes two basic categories of historical significance: historical and cultural significance and architectural and design significance. Montgomery County’s inventory of historic properties is known as the Master Plan for Historic Preservation. To be listed in the Master Plan (or in an intermediate classification known as the Locational Atlas and Index of Historic Sites), an individual property or a district of related properties must be evaluated against the county’s criteria. This evaluation process involves the completion of an inventory form that includes historical information about the property as well as detailed descriptions of its architecture and environmental setting. Anyone – a property owner or a third party – can nominate a property to be designated in Montgomery County.

The inventory forms are submitted to the Planning Department’s Historic Preservation Section for review. Once an application has been found to be complete it is then brought before the Historic Preservation Commission – a nine-member volunteer board appointed by the County Executive composed of experts in architecture, history, and archaeology, as well as community representatives – which votes on whether the property meets one or more of the criteria for designation. While the County Council has the final say on whether a property is designated or not, the Planning Board votes whether to forward the designation to the Council with a recommendation to add a property to the Master Plan.

Once a property is listed in the Master Plan, it is subject to the regulatory oversight of the HPC and it becomes eligible for state and county tax credits for qualifying rehabilitation and restoration work. To make significant changes to a designated property, e.g., putting on a new roof, an addition, replacing windows, or demolishing an outbuilding, property owners must submit a Historic Area Work Permit that details the proposed work. The HPC then determines if the HAWP meets the standards established under county law and the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation. It is this process that is the least understood and most feared by communities. Generally speaking, the standards work to maintain community character by preventing teardowns and McMansionization; property values remain stable or increase in historic areas; and, contrary to popular belief, the rules for designated historic properties are significantly less restrictive than most homeowners assocations which dictate paint color, and landscaping among other things.

In our community there is one property that is designated in the Master Plan for Historic Preservation. Holly View, an antebellum vernacular farmhouse at 130 Kinsman View Circle, was designated in 1979. Nearby, just south of University Boulevard, is the county’s smallest historic district. The Polychrome Houses Historic District consists of five Art Deco-style houses fronting Colesville and Sutherland roads. Built between 1934 and 1936, this district is also listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

Before 1996, there also were several properties in the Four Corners area that were listed in the Locational Atlas. The former William Read house at 507 Dennis Avenue, a frame house built in 1904, was found to have been significantly altered and the HPC and Planning Board recommended removing it from the Locational Atlas.

There currently are about twenty historic districts and four hundred individually-designated Master Plan historic properties. These include properties such as Bethesda’s Riley Farm (Uncle Tom’s Cabin) and Silver Spring’s Jesup Blair House, both of which are county-owned. There are many properties that have historical and architectural significance in Montgomery County have not yet been evaluated. Among these are properties in the North Four Corners area, including early homes in the Northwood Park subdivision (1936-1939) and perhaps even the 1950s faux log cabin recreation building in North Four Corners Park.

Montgomery County’s historic preservation program relies on active public involvement by individual citizens and community groups. For more information on how the program works and to view an interactive map with the entire inventory of the county’s designated properties, go to the Historic Preservation Web site at: http://www.montgomeryplanning.org/historic/.

Confronting the Covenants: Hidden Racism at Home

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NPR’s Morning Edition this past Sunday included a segment on racially restrictive deed covenants <http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122484215>. NPR noted that the covenants were not legally enforceable and that they were widespread throughout the United States.

Robert Fogelson, author of Bourgeois Nightmares: Suburbia, 1870-1930, discussed restrictive covenants at length. Other authors on the history and sociology of American suburbs also have written on restrictive covenants. In my work over the past 25 years I have done projects in quintessential American suburbs that involved primary documents research, including land records (deeds, etc.). These communities include Shaker Heights, Ohio, and Chevy Chase (Maryland and the District of Columbia).

I live and work in Silver Spring, a Washington suburb. My subdivision, Northwood Park, was created in 1936 and my home was built in the subdivision’s first year of existence. When we bought the house in 2002 our deed contained all the expected legalese, along with the clause, “Subject to covenants and restrictions of record.” It wasn’t until I began doing some research on the history of our subdivision that I discovered that some of those covenants and restrictions prohibited anyone of a “race whose death rate is at a higher rate than that of the White or Caucasian race.” Put in place in a stand-alone document recorded in Montgomery County land records, they were executed, “For the purposes of sanitation and health, and to prevent irreparable injury to Waldo M. Ward [the majority landowner] … and the owners of adjacent real estate.” Garden Homes, the company selling the lots and homes, executed the covenants almost six months after the first sales and signatories to the covenants included all of the people who had bought property up to that point.

Northwood Park is the subject of my paper in progress, “ The Greatest Publicity Stunt Available to Developers”: Washington’s 1939 World’s Fair Home.”

1936 Restrictive Covenants filed for Northwood Park (click to enlarge).

Marketing Modernism in the D.C. Suburbs

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Images from "The Greatest Publicity Stunt Available to Developers’

The Vernacular Architecture Forum’s 2010 Washington conference is taking shape and the paper sessions have  been announced. My paper,  “The Greatest Publicity Stunt Available to Developers”: Washington’s 1939 World’s Fair Home, is scheduled for the 10:30 session, “Marketing Modernism”. This post has more historical and contemporary images of the 1939 World’s Fair Home built in Silver Spring, just north of the D.C. line.

From the paper abstract: By 1939 suburban subdivisions were a familiar element in the American landscape. The spurious suburb created in the 1939 New York World’s Fair Town of Tomorrow offered visitors a sampler of tradition and innovation packaged for consumers just beginning to emerge from the depths of economic depression. Shortly before the Fair opened in the spring of 1939 Washington, D.C., subdivider and developer Garden Homes, Inc., secured the rights to use the Fair Corporation’s name and the plans to one of the 15 demonstration homes from the Town of Tomorrow. Designed by New York architects Godwin, Thompson and Patterson and sponsored by the Johns-Manville Corporation, House No. 15, the Long Island Colonial Home, became Garden Homes’ 1939 marketing centerpiece in Northwood Park, the Silver Spring, Maryland, subdivision located less than three miles north of the District of Columbia.

From the Current Research Files

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Bride's Home

The Bride's Home (1939 and 2009)

My 2010 Vernacular Architecture Forum paper, “The Greatest Publicity Stunt Available to Developers”: Washington’s 1939 World’s Fair Home, to be delivered in May will include photos from other homes built in the Northwood Park subdivision. One of those homes was called the “Bride’s Home,” which was built in 1939. Seen here are an August 1939 trade magazine ad and a photo of the altered home taken in October 2009.

All Landmarking is Local: Looking for Pragmatism in the Hamlet

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Last night I chaired a hearing to evaluate the historical significance of a batch of properties in Montgomery County. Designating these properties means placing them in the County’s Master Plan for Historic Preservation and subjecting them to regulatory review by the Historic Preservation Commission. Although advocates for historic preservation are heavily invested in increasing the population of things we call “historic,” I wonder where academic dialogue ends and pragmatism begins. What are the historic preservation objectives of preserving vernacular properties with debatable historical associations and questionable architectural integrity? Is it in the public interest to spend precious public resources to make a case for historical significance where little exists? What are the public benefits of subjecting property owners to regulatory compliance? And what are the benefits to taxpayers who must pay for the regulatory program, from the actual designation process through each future historic area work permit applied for by property owners?

The hearing was a challenge and the debate will continue in future worksessions. In December I read a blog post on historic property designation — “Local Landmarking v2.0 – Are Historic Preservation’s Glory Days of Local Landmarking Winding Down?” — that resonated throughout last night’s hearing. The hearing record posted at the County’s historic preservation office Web site will continue to grow as the public record remains open until February 16 after which the debate will continue.