New Horizons in Historic Preservation

No longer is historic preservation about the oldest or best.

By J. Randall Cotton

	Historic preservation will be more widely appreciated for the economic development, such as heritage tourism, it provides bringing jobs, people, and investment back to communities like the gold-rush town of Georgetown, Colorado. Photo Courtesy of J. Randall Cotton

Once upon a time, historic preservation meant saving the houses of the rich and famous, and that was about it. Today the practice of historic preservation encompasses much more: in the 21st century it's community revitalization, the adaptive reuse of abandoned buildings, an effective smart-growth strategy, economic development, heritage tourism, the protection of cultural landscapes, and restoring that old house with which you've fallen in love. As Old-House Journal celebrates its 30th anniversary, it's useful to review where historic preservation has come from and where it's headed.

Historic Historic Preservation
One of the first efforts in this country to preserve a historic site was the 1853 campaign to purchase and restore Mount Vernon. That early preservation model continued into the early 20th century as private groupsÑmostly community based and usually comprised of women, such as the local chapters of the D.A.R. and Junior LeagueÑrestored the houses of our presidents or other historical icons. Paul Revere's house, restored in 1905, is a good example.

The preservation movement has grown beyond single-mission campaigns since then. During the 1920s and '30s both local and federal agencies and legislation were established to identify and protect the country's historic resources. In 1924 New Orleans created the nation's first historic commission; in 1931 the first historic-district ordinance was passed in Charleston, South Carolina. The restoration of an entire area (Williamsburg, Virginia) began in 1926. The Historic American Buildings Survey began during the Great Depression (see Downtowner, page 125). The National Trust for Historic Preservation was chartered in 1949.

Congress gave federal and state governments a role in historic preservation with the passage of the National Historic Preservation Act in 1966. The U.S. Bicentennial in 1976 saw a national reawakening of all things historic. That year the first major tax-incentive program, part of the Tax Reform Act, provided financial impetus for the eventual restoration and adaptive reuse of tens of thousands of historic buildings by the private sector.

Preservation Proliferates
When Old-House Journal first appeared in 1973 it was partly a response to a growing segment of homeowners who loved old houses but they lacked the know-how of building restoration methods and architectural background and the know-where to finding historically appropriate products and services. Thirty years later, in addition to OHJ, there are now a host of popular TV shows and publications supplying everything from initiation to aphrodisiacs in support of America's continued love affair with old houses. What's the future for historic preservation? Here are some trends I see:

• Our definition of what's historic will continue to broaden. OHJ has been a forerunner in bringing understanding and appreciation to the residential styles of 20th century. Soon we will fawn over 1950s ranch houses and post-war developments like Levittown in New York. Los Angeles recently designated a mobile-home park as historic, and the National Register of Historic Places added a historic post-war landfill dump. The range of the built environmentÑfrom the places that embody popular culture (think Graceland), to working-class tenement houses, to atomic-age relics (such as Nike-missile silos now being converted to houses)Ñwill be seen as worthy of preservation.


• The burgeoning restoration industry will expand. Phrases like, They just don't make that anymore, or You can't find people who do that work today, will disappear. Trade schools with restoration curricula and college historic-preservation programs will continue to proliferate. It won't be long before restoration products for the mid 20th-century modern era will find a market.


• We'll see the value of preserving entire historic environments as more cost-effective than isolated buildings. With neighborhoods, heritage corridors, and cultural landscapes, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. There will be more emphasis on conserving, for example, the agricultural landscapes of historic farmsteads or the traditional mixed usesÑmom-and-pop corner stores and neighborhood schoolsÑin a historic residential community.


• Historic preservation will become more cross-disciplinary, and it will play crucial roles in the environmental movement, smart-growth initiatives and policies, and urban, rural, and regional planning efforts. Along with open-space conservation efforts, historic preservation will become a cost-effective alternative to the sprawl that is devouring this country's rural and exurban environments. Reinvesting public and private dollars to our existing traditional communitiesÑoften located in older city neighborhoods or so-called first-ring suburbsÑwill help redirect growth away from the wastefulness, inefficiencies, and characterless-ness of sprawling new development. Traditional, older communities, with their built-in advantages, will become hotbeds of restoration and historic preservation activities.


• Preservationists will become more sophisticated as advocates. The us-versus-them battles, though necessary at times, will be replaced by proactive and savvy preservation activism that partners with local government, civic groups, businesses, and real-estate developers.