John Lennon Slept Here: Looking for Fans in Public History

02 June 2020 – Nicolette Rohr

As I stood in a small room on Menlove Avenue in Liverpool, England, that had belonged to John Lennon, I bopped my head along to the Del-Vikings song playing, looked out at the blue suburban skies, and imagined John Lennon there, doing his dreaming, in this room at his Aunt Mimi’s. Read More

“What Could It Have [Been] Then?”: Reflecting on the origins and historiography of a plantation historic site

12 May 2020 – Noah Janis

A big house. Stately trees. Curious outbuildings. In 1905, Pennsylvania-born tourist Matilda Kessinger marveled at the landscape before her, “something one always reads about but never sees.” After 18 years of traveling the South, Kessinger had finally found the one place that lived up to her romantic ideals of an antebellum plantation. Read More

Community-driven mitigation: Murals, canal stones, and a walking tour

04 July 2019 – David Rotenstein 1

Jack Schmitt has mixed feelings about the way that the Pennsylvania Route 28 project turned out. On one hand, the longtime Pittsburgh historic preservation advocate beams when he talks about how he successfully convinced the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) to replicate historic Pennsylvania Canal lock stones in a retaining wall in the urban highway corridor. Read More

My community’s history is racist. How can I correct it?

27 November 2017 – David Rotenstein 1

This is an exciting and anxiety-producing moment in the United States. It is a time when professional historians are stepping outside their classrooms and consulting practices to push for the removal of Confederate statues and for greater public dialogue about the roles that white supremacy played in the past and how it persists in our communities. Read More

PastForward: Places, voices, and livability

18 April 2017 – Priya Chhaya

This past fall in Houston, the National Trust for Historic Preservation gathered for its annual conference, PastForward. One of the key features of the conference is a series of marquee presentations called TrustLive. TrustLive presentations often feature a single speaker followed by a short panel discussion on a topic relevant to today’s preservation movement. Read More

In praise of multistory places

13 April 2017 – Donna Graves

Editor’s Note: This is the last of a series of posts reflecting on G. Samantha Rosenthal’s article, “Make Roanoke Queer Again: Community History and Urban Change in a Southern City,” published in the February 2017 issue of The Public Historian, and on how the Roanoke project relates to other LGBTQ public history projects. Read More

The fifty-year stumbling block

22 September 2015 – Carroll West

Editor’s note: This post continues a series commemorating the anniversary of the National Historic Preservation Act by examining a past article published in The Public Historian, describing its significance and relating it to contemporary conversations in historic preservation. 

Assessing properties for listing in the National Register of Historic Places is rarely an easy process. Read More

Building the public trust: Preservation’s middle age?

05 May 2015 – Rhonda Sincavage 2

Editor’s note: This post continues a series commemorating the anniversary of the National Historic Preservation Act by examining a past article published in The Public Historian, describing its significance and relating it to contemporary conversations in historic preservation.

When Madeline Cirrillo Archer published “Where We Stand: Preservation Issues in the 1990s,” she sought to assess the challenges facing a movement that was a quarter-century old. Read More

Harvesting the romance of the past

21 April 2015 – Joe Watkins 1

Editor’s note: This post continues a series commemorating the anniversary of the National Historic Preservation Act by examining a past article published in The Public Historian, describing its significance, and relating it to contemporary conversations in historic preservation.

Growing up as an American Indian boy in Oklahoma, I struggled every April 22nd with “89er Day,” an elementary school mini-holiday that celebrated the 1889 opening of central Oklahoma to white settlement. Read More

Above ground, below ground, on the ground: CRM in practice

03 March 2015 – Natalie Perrin

Editor’s note: This post continues a series commemorating the anniversary of the National Historic Preservation Act by examining a past article published in The Public Historian, describing its significance, and relating it to contemporary conversations in historic preservation.

Locations speak to multiple generations, cultures, and time periods. Read More