Less than 8% of sites on the National Register are associated with women, Latinos, African Americans or other minorities. [...]
The reason for this underrepresentation is an overly technical, legalistic approach to determining what merits designation.
— Los Angeles Times
Sara Bronin, a University of Connecticut Law School professor specializing in historic preservation law, penned an LA Times op-ed about the technical hurdles that have hindered many non-white historic sites to be designated for the National Register of Historic Places.
"Preservationists have started to see past the formalities that have too long prevented us from recognizing diverse histories," writes Bronin. "But we must go further to tackle the legal structures that devalue the stories we all need to hear."
Read also V. Mitch McEwen's latest op-ed on Archinect: Form Follows Fascism Redux.
1 Comment
First, the NRHP is relatively new in history. Most buildings that survived the ravages of history to even be around by the 1960s when the National Historic Preservation Act was enacted, much of these buildings were that of the 'well to do'. This inventory of historic buildings that weren't destroyed by development were usually those of the 'well to do' and social elite. A lot of damage and destruction of history had already happened by the 1960s when it comes to the types of buildings that were associated with minorities and women. It was also around the 1960s when we had these major civil rights laws enacted.
Some call this process legalistic. It's more about validity of historic information that determines if a building is significant. Now, lets remember that a lot of this is guidelines with room for interpretation. My education involves studies in historic preservation.
The standards and process does not negate submission but you can't just submit buildings to be on the national register merely and solely on folk tale. You must be able to substantiate the importance. The problem is there was a significant period of time in history where women and minorities were not written about or talked and for a period of time in U.S. history, would not be taught how to write so there is so little first hand research materials like diaries and other resources to give much information about. Already, many places throughout the U.S. that were neighborhoods of minorities were being bulldozed over by development throughout history so these places were lost.
In general, the buildings have to still be existent when they do the research and nominate said buildings to the register. Now, I would love to see also a database of buildings that may no longer exist but still researchable with material that can be found including photographs and post cards where we can research them and have that information documented.
I really would love to see more research on historic minority based communities and the buildings. This idea that I mentioned in the preceding paragraph, can perhaps be an enabler of that including neighborhoods because really, that's the mission behind this research.
There is a lot to the history but I don't think it is the 'guidelines' about how to do national register nominations and the process that bars researching buildings, structures, and sites that are associated with minorities and women.
I don't think the lack of diversity has to do with these processes. It's not. In fact, the national register only represents a smaller portion of the inventory of existing buildings and there are a lot of buildings that are by terms of age is 'historic' that isn't on the NRHP. This is because the process requires high quality research. There are a lot of tales which researchers needs to sift through to get to the truth and what is b.s. Yeah, bullshit exists then as they do now. I do think other more contributing factors to lack of diversity. There could simply be a lack of diversity because the inventory of historic buildings with substantive measure of architectural integrity that were associated with minorities and (perhaps women) were lacking and limited due to historic gentrification practices and neighborhood redevelopment (often to push out those that the social 'elites' disdainly called 'riff raff' and other like terms).
There's no simple answer but there seems to be a lack of historic structures associated with minorities in the first place to even be researched to be nominated. We have to look at the broader history of events and their impact. How many historic places owned by minorities that we could be researching today had they not been erased by historic gentrification practices, eminent domain, etc. How many of them still exist that are still intact with integrity and not altered beyond recognition?
I think we have a lot more factors. In the course of the next 100 years, there will be many more buildings we can see nominated on to the NHRP that are owned by women and minorities when they become historic. Today's newly built buildings are potentially future historic buildings.
I would encourage more research in the underrepresented and vernacular buildings. It might not need to be on the NHRP but other associated databases of buildings. In this information age, we can do this!
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