An introduction to the work of Beyond Integrity in King County. To read the origin story of this sub-committee of 4Culture's Historic Preservation Advisory Committee (HPAC), click here.

In the United States, historic preservation rules and regulations drive about three-quarters of the field’s work. A particularly common area of this practice focuses on the official designation of historic buildings and places. It is now common knowledge that these registers (local, state, and national) over-emphasize the contributions of wealthy, White men while severely under-representing the contributions of women and people with non-dominant racial or ethnic identities. Addressing this problem, however, needs to move beyond simply recognizing and documenting the histories of marginalized people to how the policy environment sustains this injustice. Specific areas on which this presentation will focus include:

- One of the most serious issues in the preservation field is that the vast majority of people who work or volunteer in policy-related preservation endeavors or who study in historic preservation degree programs are White. There is a significant lack of representation from African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinx people, or Indigenous people (among other possible groups with non-dominant identities) in policy-driven preservation work or in educational programs related to this work.

- Landmark designation policies help to sustain the erasure of the place-based history of people with non-dominant racial or ethnic identities and is used as a paternalistic tool to force marginalized groups to adopt racially-biased historical narratives. These policies make it more difficult to document the lives and places of people associated with non-dominant racial or ethnic identities.

- How historical integrity, as promulgated by rules and regulations for the National Register of Historic Places, is biased against people with non-dominant racial or ethnic identities.

- Landmark designation policy supports placation and tokenism in its public “engagement” requirements related to planning efforts; there is too much emphasis for this work to be an objective, check-the-box endeavor.

- Preservation workplaces that primarily exist for the purposes of regulatory compliance suppress innovation and dissent, including efforts around diversity, inclusion, and equity.

Using this discussion for context, this presentation will then focus on ways to solve some of these issues in order to support people-centered changes to historic preservation policy, including more flexibility around what have often been dogmatic approaches to significance and integrity.

Public housing of the twentieth century is a significant historic and cultural resource in the United States. It represents the homes of tens of thousands of people, housing and social reform in America, the evolving practices of services for the poor, and histories of segregation and displacement. However, less than 0.2% of constructed public housing sites have been listed in the National Register of Historic Places. I assert that this lack of recognition in preservation is a result of the intersection of devaluing spaces associated with poor people of color and the erroneous conflation of architectural significance with physical integrity.

While several public housing sites are applicable to this presentation, I will primarily focus on Barry Farm Dwellings’ evaluation of historic significance. Through community engagement and organizing, Barry Farm Dwellings, a site that was originally determined not eligible for historic designation, was successfully designated as a District of Columbia Historic Landmark. I explore why historic preservation has undervalued public housing and how the tools for evaluations are failing to address complex sites. Grappling with how historic preservationists evaluate historical significance and integrity with regard to public housing, I seek to demonstrate how a values-centered approach can bring more holistic and defensible methods to public housing evaluations. Ideally, this could result in the preservation of historic public housing, or at the very least, result in mitigation measures if the housing is demolished.

Public housing is an exceptionally important historic and cultural resource, yet many preservationists and agency reviewers have failed to apply the criteria for evaluating significance and integrity in a good faith effort. I believe the integration of values-centered preservation methods will yield more robust, transparent, equitable, accessible, and legally defensible preservation practices. Ultimately, the integration of values-centered preservation into the determination of eligibility process will produce a preservation practice that fosters community empowerment, a critical component to equitable preservation of public housing.

Historic preservation is an aspect of American culture that is sacredly remembered as one of the core tenets of American identity and exceptionalism. From beautifully persevered National Parks to countless plaques adorning street corners, history is memorialized for many various reasons. For example, at times, historic preservation has also been used as a form of activism to halt redevelopment. In 2019, a group of tenants and community organizers fought to save Barry Farm Dwellings, a public housing complex in Southeast D.C., from the looming threat of demolition. Unfortunately, the case fell short due to a lack of “historic integrity,” or a physical embodiment of certain historic attributes within the remaining buildings. This undergraduate thesis investigates why historic preservation failed the Barry Farm community and questions its ability to preserve and commemorate a community in general.

My research features a mixture of interviews with both tenants and key stakeholders of Barry Farm, as well as a multitude of National Park Service documents and a Historic Preservation Review Board legal hearing. An analysis of these sources culminates into an understanding of how in the case of Barry Farm, historic preservation functioned as a narrowly defined entity steeped in respectability politics, ultimately costing so many tenants their homes and tight-knit community. Furthermore, this thesis argues that preservation of the past neither encapsulates nor protects the identity of a current community.

Washington, DC has one of the country’s strongest preservation laws. It is possible to designate a historic site over owner objection. It is possible to protect a property even after it has a pending raze permit. But is it possible to designate a site purely based on its cultural history?

Sometimes.

For more than three years I worked as the Outreach and Grants Manager for the DC Preservation League, where I led preparation of 12 National Register nominations and managed the local designation process, including delivering testimony before community groups and the DC Historic Preservation Review Board (HPRB). Many sites, such as the American Theater, had important cultural history (often related to Black, LGTBQ, and/or women’s history), but compromised integrity. In most cases, we were able to successfully advocate for local designation by the HPRB. In a handful of cases, including the case of a historically Black church, our efforts failed – and that church was demolished.

Using several past landmark efforts as case studies, I will explore the major factors that indicated whether designation efforts would succeed or fail, in order to provide a basis for others to successfully advocate for culturally significant sites in their communities. In my experience in Washington, those factors were:

• Having a local preservation law that requires landmarks and historic districts to possess only one of seven criteria for significance (events, history, individuals, architecture and urbanism, artistry, work of a master, archaeology), four of which are cultural.

• Requiring properties to have sufficient integrity to convey the qualities for which they are judged significant – this gives culturally significant properties greater flexibility in achieving “sufficient integrity.”

• Community engagement and support – especially for culturally significant properties, if the HPRB did not see community interest in their preservation, designation was less likely.

• Testimony that educated and explained to the HPRB why it is important to designate a site based on its cultural history, and not penalize it for diminished integrity as a result of being connected to a historically underrepresented group.

Then, instead of a Q&A session, there will be an audience discussion where participants are invited to share their own experience protecting culturally significant sites, and the factors they believe impacted the success or failure of sites to be protected through the conventional policy process. We can also discuss ideas for making changes to preservation ordinances that make the process more inclusive, as was recently done in Denver, CO.

This presentation will be a case study of the successes and failures of my work to document and preserve culturally significant properties in the City of Cincinnati. Through my role as a Community Surveyor with the Ohio History Service Corps, I have added 200 properties (as of June 1st, 2021) to the Ohio Historic Inventory. The Ohio Historic Inventory is a statewide list of documented historic properties. This list is utilized by SHPO staff for project reviews, such as Section 106, and can prevent the demolition/alteration of significant properties that do not appear significant by a simple windshield survey of the Area of Potential Effects on a project. The properties I have documented were selected for addition by community survey, only including properties that community members found significant. I will discuss the methods I utilized to garner this community input. My partner, Deqah, and I will then discuss additional steps towards preservation which have been taken since listing, including National Register of Historic Places nominations, rehabilitation projects, walking tours, social media opportunities, podcasting, and Ohio Historical Markers.

I will also discuss the losses that have occurred to my surveyed properties, including the recent demolition of a Green Book site, to emphasize the importance of documenting sites before they are gone. We will also discuss how we are using these listings to update older National Register listings which only mention the architectural significance of properties that have cultural significance as well. Documentation is the first step to preservation and needs to be done on a more proactive basis across the country. In addition to the potential for saving these properties from demolition, this documentation can also serve as important archival evidence of properties which do end up demolished or significantly altered. Each form includes two photographs of the property, which can help to identify proper materials for future restorations. This session will teach others how to document properties in their own localities and how that documentation can lead to large scale preservation of previously unknown significant properties.

In my presentation, I will give an overview of development of Bay Street Beach Historic District National Register Listing and Belmar History + Art. Both are social justice projects that reclaim and reconstruct the erased historical African American experience of the South Santa Monica Beach neighborhoods which contributed to the bay city’s development and cultural life from the 1900s into the mid-twentieth century decades. The stories of people, places and events showcased in the projects are an outgrowth of my research, some of which is included in my recent book, Living the California Dream: African American Leisure Sites during the Jim Crow Era. I will discuss how these projects recasts the significance of the African American experience in national and Southern California history, the Santa Monica urban landscape of intangible and tangible heritage sites, and heritage conservation efforts in contemporary times. I will also discuss innovative public programming partnerships between various groups I have been a part of that facilitates remembrance of African American voices at these Santa Monica historic sites.

On January 21, 2021, the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission voted to approve two Historic-Cultural Monument (HCM) nominations for properties associated with the Chicano Arts Collective of Highland Park: the Centro de Arte Público and the Mechicano Art Center. These two properties played a pivotal role in providing a space for Latino artists to showcase their creative work in a welcoming environment. Despite well-documented significance and identification in a City-led context statement, securing approval for the nominations was not straightforward. Nomination presentations involved educating the commission on the larger history of the Chicano movement and couching these properties into that context, while also providing a platform for community comment and support. With the threat of erasure due to ongoing city development, there’s a dire need to preserve the spaces that served marginalized groups. This presentation explores the nexus of commission education, historic contexts, and the strength of community support in heritage conservation.

This presentation would detail a recent project undertaken by the King County Historic Preservation Program to identify and update existing landmark nominations which lacked important information about significant and typically underrepresented people or communities relevant to the landmark’s history. Building on an analysis by 4Culture’s Beyond Integrity working group, and using Certified Local Government funds offered by the Washington State Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation, KCHPP hired a preservation graduate student to assist staff in nomination research and development of (3) existing landmark nomination forms. The Hotel Redmond, the Fall City Hop Shed and the Newcastle Cemetery, all designated landmarks in King County, were missing key elements of their social and cultural narratives within their historical contexts. The Nomination Inclusion Project was focused on documenting a more accurate and more dynamic record of each resource.

Inclusive thematic framework studies and historic context statements are credited with increasing equity in the identification of historic properties. These official histories provide new perspectives to guide future documentation and listing of significant places that have been actively excluded in the past. They are intended to invite a broader range of people to see themselves as important actors in the past. The goal is to broaden the narrow standards of what, and whose, history is important. But do they work?

This presentation will take a critical look at national thematic frameworks and historic context statements targeting Civil Rights heritage. It will discuss the impact they have on building equity in practice. Heritage sites in Montgomery, Alabama, reveal a wide range of preservation methods on the ground that can help us evaluate where thematic framework studies work well for inclusion, and how they fall short. The speaker brings experience working on multiple Civil Rights heritage sites throughout the South, including the Frank M. Johnson Courthouse in Montgomery. The rich Civil Rights heritage sites in Montgomery will be a jumping off point to discuss the following issues: How can national thematic frameworks and local historic context statements help make nominations more inclusive? What happens when we clean up sites with ugly, or negative, heritage? How do we affirm the living heritage of the Civil Rights struggle? And what is the importance of seeing oneself in history in order to continue the struggle today?

Since 1966, over 700 resources have been listed in the National Register of Historic Places within the city of Portland, Oregon. The overwhelming majority of these resources were listed in the National Register for significant association with the city's white-dominant history and/or representation of the works of prominent designers. Because Oregon law requires local governments apply demolition review to listings in the National Register, many property owners and tenants have pursued federal recognition primarily as a vehicle to protect the city's most architecturally meritorious resources from loss. While five decades of nominations have protected large areas of the city from demolition, largely absent from Portland's roster of National Register listings are resources associated with Black, Indigenous, and other Portlanders of color, as well as resources important for LGBTQ+, immigrant, and social history.

This session will explore recent experiences in Portland, Oregon, listing resources associated with underrepresented histories in the National Register. Presenters Brandon Spencer-Hartle, Kristen Minor, and Don Horn will describe efforts to work within National Register criteria to advance listing of resources significantly associated with the African American and LGBTQ+ experiences, despite integrity changes that would otherwise render such resources ineligible for the National Register. Specifically, the presenters will describe the opportunity and utility of developing National Register Multiple Property Documents (MPDs) with bespoke registration requirements that address integrity specific to unique themes of resources. While primarily addressing integrity in the context of nominating unrepresented resources to the National Register, the presenters will briefly describe how the City of Portland applies protections to resources exhibiting significance beyond integrity.

The Cayton-Revels House was officially designated a City of Seattle landmark on April 7, 2021. Born enslaved in Mississippi, Horace Cayton moved to Seattle, later joined by Susie Revels, the daughter of the first Black American elected to the U.S. Senate. Together with their children, Horace and Susie Revels Cayton were one of only three Black American families living in today’s definition of Capitol Hill before racial restrictive covenants barred non-white residents in 1927 and, together, they published one of Seattle’s most-read newspapers of the period, the Seattle Republican.

Given the historic significance of the Caytons and their contributions to Pacific Northwest heritage, why was the Cayton-Revels House landmarked only now and not decades ago? This presentation will provide a brief case study on the landmarking of the Cayton-Revels House but will primarily focus on the outlying factors that contributed to the successful designation. Key findings come together to advocate for and affirm conditions that contribute to why the “time is ripe” now for the preservation and recognition of Black American sites of historic and cultural significance.

The Cass Gilbert Historic District located in Waterbury, Connecticut was nominated in 1978 to the National Register of Historic Places. Significantly covered under Criteria C, the Chase Dispensary located at 43 Field Street meets an additional area and period of significance. This resource meets Criterion A in the category of Health and Medicine for its role, and the Chase family’s philanthropic influence, in women’s health care serving as a free medical center and maternal health care clinic to residents of Waterbury during the years 1923-1940. The Connecticut Birth Control League used the property as the Waterbury Maternal Health Care Center from October 12, 1938 to June 13, 1939. From the Chase Dispensary physicians prescribed and provided women with contraceptive materials defying the 1879 Barnum Act that made distributing contraceptive materials illegal. Police raided the Chase Dispensary in 1939 and the Connecticut Supreme Court trial that followed in 1940, State of Connecticut v. Roger B. Nelson has since been cited in landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases such as Poe v. Ullman in 1961 and Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965.

There is only one other historic structure with significance related to the American Birth Control Movement and that is the Margaret Sanger’s Clinic building located at 17 West 16th Street in Manhattan, New York City. The first Bush Administration delayed the buildings National Historic Landmark Nomination due to fears that acceptance of the clinic would indicate support of the abortion movement, though Sanger herself was not a proponent of abortion. The Clinic was designated in 1993 following the Clinton Administration’s appointment of Bruce Babbitt as Secretary of the Interior.

Gilbert’s last project for the Chase family, the Chase Dispensary completed 1924 is one such structure within the district with a story waiting to be recorded for public recorded. A more complete understanding of the June 1939 raid on the Chase Dispensary offers insight into the development of women’s reproductive rights and access to contraceptives in Connecticut. The simplest of the five buildings financed by the Chase family and designed by Gilbert: The Henry S. Chase Memorial Dispensary played a role in shaping local and national history and is a place harboring deep feeling and association to historical events. Historical context reveals each building’s stories. The reason for a building’s construction explains the purpose of who the building was meant to serve, what message is meant to be conveyed by its design, and how the building impacted the individual and collective lives of the landscape it continues to dwell upon. Merely recording architectural style and detail voids the structure of interpretation and fails to reveal relationships between the past and the present.

The Miami-Dade County Office of Historic Preservation (OHP) has begun a shift to center equity in its preservation program. Conversations in the larger historic preservation space during 2020 inspired the County to conduct a review of County-designated historic sites to ascertain what level of diverse representation was included in the designations. Not surprisingly, reflective of state and national trends, the designated sites are not reflective of County demographics and history. For example, Miami-Dade County is 70% Latinx, and only 1% of designated sites reflect this heritage. As part of this effort, OHP also analyzed state level data for Florida, which reflects a similar lack of diversity.

Conducting this review led OHP staff to put together a presentation for the County’s Historic Preservation Board around the issue of diversity in preservation and archaeology, to familiarize the Board with the larger issues around equity and diversity in preservation, the state and local data, and present options for emphasizing equity in the County’s preservation work. OHP has subsequently shared this presentation with municipal preservation officers in the County, which led to a presentation with the City of Miami Beach Historic Preservation Board, and with local nonprofit partner, Dade Heritage Trust. OHP is also leading by example internally, expanding the themes of this work around planning and zoning generally, and will be presenting to the larger Planning Division in an effort to inspire action in other planning sections.

One of the items highlighted in the presentation, and important to equity work in the County, is the flexibility of the County’s preservation ordinance to allow designation of sites for more than just architecture. Since its inception 40 years ago, the County preservation ordinance has allowed for designation of sites based on cultural significance or themes in history. Having this option in place already is a major asset in moving towards a more equitable preservation program.

As part of this session, Sarah Cody, Historic Preservation Chief for the County, will share information around conducting the designation data review, engaging in outreach to the Board and peers in local preservation around equity, bringing this conversation to the table internally with colleagues, and having a flexible preservation ordinance. She will also provide examples of local sites and districts that have been designated based on cultural significance and history and how the staff reports were drafted for Board review.

While the Castro is often recognized as San Francisco’s most iconic LGBTQ enclave, the city’s rich queer histories and living cultures can be celebrated in other neighborhoods as well. The South of Market (SoMa) neighborhood is home to a robust Leather scene dating back to the early 1960’s. While redevelopment, AIDS, gentrification, and more recently COVID, have long threatened its cultural and economic fabric, the rich heritage remains strong. Yet, with nearly 300 city landmarks, less than 10 have LGBTQ associations, and until recently none had Leather histories. The San Francisco Eagle, however, in 2021 became the first SoMa Leather-LGBTQ landmark. This session will discuss the process to landmark this building. Specific topics will include determining historical significance for persons associated with a more underground subculture, identifying character defining features unique to LGBTQ sites, the application of San Francisco’s 2016 LGBTQ Context Statement as a catalyst for LGBTQ landmarks, and collaboration with San Francisco’s renowned Cultural Districts as project partners.

We learn redacted history by design, and thus, we learn to write a redacted history that all too often appears in statements of significance on landmark nomination forms. People have redacted or intentionally erased and hidden parts of history for centuries on purpose - it’s a powerful way of controlling the narrative about the races, a tool of white supremacy. This myth that White people and whiteness are superior, is so subtle a powerful tool that created a world-dominating civilization, that it hides in one of the most invisible, transmittable tools we have as humans - language. Air is to COVID what language is to white supremacy.

Furthermore, the US is in dire need of healing from racial trauma caused by white supremacy delusion - our own trauma, and our intergenerational trauma. One of many ways to heal from any addiction or disease is to be honest about the condition before seeking treatment. Applying this approach to our collective racial equity and healing, we will accomplish this goal by unredacting the facts of history.

Trauma is a continuum. White people arrived to the US as traumatized Europeans who either witnessed or experienced torture methods like lynchings, who, after their arrival in Indigenous land, not only traumatized each other, but also traumatized Indigenous Peoples and Nations and Black people through genocide, chattel slavery, and beyond. White supremacy is a virus/addiction, and to heal/recover from it, we have to unredact the facts of history for racial equity.

To unredact the facts of history such as slavery in the US is to analyze language down to sentence structure and to observe how a bit of sentence alchemy, changing a sentence from the passive voice to the active voice, paints a more complete picture of history for our collective healing. For, we cannot heal what we cannot see.