Tag Archives: historic preservation

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.

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.