National Council on Public History

jENNIFER bETSWORTH, New York State Historic Preservation Office

Proposal Type

Working Group

Seeking

• Seeking Additional Presenters
• Seeking General Feedback and Interest

Related Topics

• Consulting
• Government Historians
• Preservation

Abstract

National Register nominations are often foundational documents in a community’s effort to preserve important sites or neighborhoods. However, these nominations are often outdated by the time we celebrate the National Register listing.  Older nominations, many of which were prepared for very significant sites and historic districts, can be desperate cases, providing stumbling blocks at best and roadblocks at worst to grant and tax credit applications, researchers, and local preservation commissions. As the historic preservation field matures, the need to update nominations is ever-present amid the struggle to balance time, funding, and priorities. What best practices, policies, and strategies can we use to guide our way forward?

Description

Soon after starting at the New York State Historic Preservation Office five years ago, it became evident to me that my future as a millennial historic preservationist at the agency would be to balance repairing and updating old nominations with shepherding through new ones. Old historic districts, many of which include minimal information, have periods of significance that end before World War II, or have poor mapping, directly affect property owners and communities who work with our programs on a daily basis. In many cases, the challenges we face are the result of applying our diverse and technical uses to documentation that may have been cutting edge for its time but did not anticipate current needs. All SHPOs face staffing and funding constraints, making updating this information while balancing the needs of stakeholders requestingnew  designations for historic resources associated with previously underserved communities or buildings that will be the focus of a key tax credit project a challenge.

I am seeking additional facilitators who have dealt with this issue from different perspectives; staff from other SHPOs are welcome, but I would also appreciate leadership and input on this issue from those outside of government as well. I am also interested in suggestions for thoughtfully approaching this subject with minimal commiseration, and to hear from any potential discussants. Through this working group, I would like to bring together representatives of other SHPOs, consultants, members of historic preservation commissions, community groups, educators, students, and others who have worked to update National Register nominations – especially those for historic districts – or who have struggled with insufficient documentation. While every case will have its own particularities, I suspect that there is much that we can learn from approaching them in the aggregate. The group will grapple with these challenges and share strategies that have resulted in as a stopgap or full fix (and what has not). What can SHPOs and the National Register program do to simplify the process? When has collaboration worked, and how can local groups and municipalities obtain the tools to lead the way? Through the efforts of this working group, I hope to be able to create a list of best practices and strategies that SHPOs and communities can follow as we confront, use, and update old documentation to achieve contemporary preservation goals in our daily work.

If you have a direct offer of assistance, sensitive criticism, or wish to pass along someone’s contact information confidentially, please get in contact directly: Jennifer Betsworth, [email protected].

All feedback and offers of assistance should be submitted by July 1, 2018. If you have general ideas or feedback to share, please feel free to use the comments feature below.

Discussion