Two years ago I published a post in this blog illustrating how maps produced by grassroots historic preservation organizations are used to erase communities of color. Yesterday I did a public program on history and historic preservation in Silver Spring, Maryland. For the first time, my slide deck included maps produced by the Maryland Historical Trust, the state historic preservation office, that have erased historically-Black Lyttonsville.
Maryland Historical Trust online mapping system. Screen capture April 14, 2019.
The Maryland Historical Trust maps are from a geographic information system (GIS) layer illustrating all properties documented in the agency’s official record of historic places in Maryland: the Maryland Inventory of Historic Properties (MIHP). The database includes long-form MIHP forms and brief determinations of eligibility for listing in the National Register of Historic Places produced by entities complying with Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act:
The Maryland Inventory of Historic Properties (MIHP) is a repository of information on districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects of known or potential value to the prehistory and history of the State of Maryland. The Inventory was created shortly after the Maryland Historical Trust was founded in 1961, and now includes data on more than 13,000 archeological sites and 43,000 historic and architectural resources. The MIHP includes information about both standing structures and archeological resources. Inventoried properties contribute information to our understanding of Maryland’s architecture, engineering, archeology, or culture. — Maryland Historical Trust website.
Many of the properties in the Maryland Historical Trust’s database in proximity to Lyttonsville are simply platted subdivisions recorded in Montgomery County land records for which histories were written and the existing buildings and landscapes were evaluated for their historical significance. Some of them, like the adjacent “Pilgrim Church Tract,” are completely illegible: “Today, the Pilgrim Church Tract is filled with 16 lots, several of which have been expanded, combined, and resubdivided since the 1960s,” wrote a consultant in 2012 who was working for the agency building the Purple Line light rail. “The area is almost entirely covered by paved parking lots and late-twentieth century warehouses ….” Yet, the space first inscribed in a plat filed in 1892 is visible in historic preservation records and maps.
“Littonville.” Montgomery County Land Records, Plat Book 1, Plat 36.
The MIHP database is the product of decades of grassroots and informal research as well as professional studies done by academics and government agencies, including the Montgomery County Planning Department, the Maryland Department of Transportation, and others. Yesterday’s program was held in Lyttonsville, in the Gwendolyn E. Coffield community center. While the map from the MIHP website was on the screen I asked the people in the audience to find Lyttonsville in it. Though a settled place since 1853 and platted in 1901, Lyttonsville didn’t appear in the MIHP map. Like the maps, books, and programs produced by the local historical society, Lyttonsville was invisible to Maryland’s official historic preservation agency.
Lyttonsville vicinity, Maryland Historical Trust base map screen capture (April 8, 2019) annotated by David Rotenstein.
Maryland Historical Trust map with 1901 Lyttonsville plat overlay. Arrow indicates Lyttonsville.
Erasure: “The practice of collective indifference that renders certain people and groups invisible” —Parul Sehgal, “Fighting ‘Erasure.’” The New York Times, February 2, 2016.
© 2019 D.S. Rotenstein