Historic Preservation Fund: Decatur report

Since 1970, the State and Tribal Historic Preservation Offices have received up to $46.9 million in annual matching grants through the Historic Preservation Fund (HPF) to assist in expanding and accelerating their historic preservation activities.

Funding is used to pay part of the costs of staff salaries, surveys, comprehensive preservation studies, National Register nominations, educational materials, as well as architectural plans, historic structure reports, and engineering studies necessary to preserve historic properties.

The All HPF-assisted activities must meet standards set by the Secretary of the Interior, and at least 10 percent of the allocations to the States are subgranted to assist Certified Local Governments for locally based activities. — National Park Service

The Beacon elementary school (1955) and Trinity High School (1956) were built to replace the Herring Street School. Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Wilson.In 2010 Decatur, Ga., received a $10,000 Historic Preservation Fund grant for historic preservation-related planning studies at the city’s former equalization schools, Beacon Elementary and Trinity High. The previous year, the City’s historic preservation consultants completed a citywide comprehensive historic resources survey and failed to mention the African American historic site (the survey did, however, include an inventory form for a building at 109 Waters Street with this note: “Number on building is 420 W Trinity, the police station”).

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Is Decatur High School’s historic facade landfill bound?

Last weekend the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that the Decatur school board (City Schools of Decatur) is considering plans that would demolish Decatur High School’s distinctive modernist facade.

Decatur High School. January 2013.

Decatur High School. January 2013.

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Decatur viewshed

 

Virtual zeitgeist, physical places, and real people

Architecture writer Nichole Reber has written a post for Hong Kong’s Perspective magazine blog that explores the intersection of history, preservation, and memory documented in past posts in this blog. Continue reading

There’s a mansion on the hill … (updated)

Developers paid better than the corn / But this was not the place where they were born — John Gorka, “Houses in the Fields” (Jacks Crows, 1991)

After the fall of 2011, each time I passed through the intersection of Ansley Street and Greenwood Avenue in Decatur’s Oakhurst neighborhood, Neil Young’s song title immediately popped into my head, along with the lyrics from two tunes on John Gorka’s 1991 album, Jack’s Crows. On the hill overlooking the intersection is Liz and Rob Broadfoot’s 2,800-square-foot home. Its historically inspired projecting bays and exaggerated Craftsman details look out over Oakhurst’s smaller homes conveying an air of conspicuous consumption and privilege.

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The power of place: research roles and the Web

Folks in my trade, history and architectural history, find buildings and landscapes interesting. Yet, it is the people who designed, built, lived, and worked in them who are the real stars in architectural history. Sometimes I meet a building’s earlier occupants through the property’s current stewards; the former homeowner or resident knocking on the door of a current resident is an almost universal motif in architectural history narratives. Those connections yield invaluable information sources for people who study old houses.

Over the past decade a different kind of connection has been becoming more frequent. The Internet has democratized the past in ways not anticipated by traditional historians accustomed to archival and field research; reporting in academic journals and conference papers; and, to dialogues with colleagues and students. In 2011 I wrote a blog post on the history of Parkwood, a suburban Atlanta, Georgia, subdivision.  Parkwood was among one of the last subdivisions developed in Druid Hills, the large suburb historically linked with some of Atlanta’s leading Gilded Age entrepreneurs and noted landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted and his successors. Continue reading

The Oakhurst food desert (updated)

Oakhurst does not fit any colloquial or technical definition of “food desert” — “L.T.”, August 4, 2012

L.T.  is a 30-something software professional who describes himself as an “amateur economist” in his Twitter profile. He wrote several comments on this blog reacting to a June 2012 post on Oakhurst’s food desert. He strongly objected to my description of his neighborhood as a “food desert.”[1]

After several comments on the blog and private emails, L.T. admitted, “I had never heard of a food desert before you posted about it. I’m just a guy who can read and do math.”[2] This post responds to L.T.’s assertion that Oakhurst’s hip bars and eateries and an overpriced boutique market preclude his neighborhood from being described as a “food desert.”

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Bike bummer

[Link to updates]

Decatur police officer R. Lindsey completes the citation he issued me for running the stop sign on Oakview Road.

Last year I got my first moving violation citation in more than 20 years. Decatur, Georgia’s, only traffic cop, Robert Lindsey, ticketed me for running a stop sign on my bicycle. I paid the $212.50 fine plus $21.00 online payment fees and thought the experience was over. (Yes, if you add it up, I paid $233.50 for running a stop sign on a bicycle.)

When I logged into the Georgia Department of Driver Services Website to change the address on my driver’s license I was shocked to see that I had three points on my record. And where did those points originate? The September 2011 bicycle ticket.

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