Since 2021, I have been involved in the research and writing phases of Washington, DC’s first Asian American historic context statement. Funded by a National Park Service Underrepresented Communities Grant, the context statement represents an endeavor to combine public history and historic preservation methodologies to identify significant sites related to Chinese and Korean Americans in Washington, DC for nomination to the US National Register of Historic Places. Led by the 1882 Foundation with support from the DC Office of Planning and DC Preservation League, the project faced several challenges, including the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on local communities, a revolving team of part-time researchers and graduate students, and difficulty identifying the best way to organize research and combine methodologies.
After reviewing Asian American historic context studies published in other US cities for guidance, our team also found that these context studies required varying approaches to research, organization, and scope of the project depending on the city’s history, availability of extant and non-extant sites, and availability of resources. For Los Angeles, a series of historic resource surveys, collectively known as SurveyLA, provide historic contexts for five Asian American communities: Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, and Thai. The SurveyLA Chinese American historic context statement served as an excellent guide while I was drafting the DC Chinese American historic context statement. I also referenced historic context statements providing overviews of Chinese American communities in San Francisco and Boston.
In consideration of similar ongoing research of AAPI communities in other cities, the recent completion of the DC Asian American historic context statement has led me to consider a couple of questions:
- What research approaches and methodologies are most effective for this multidisciplinary type of work?
- What do context studies across various cities reveal about the relationships between place and Asian American communities? Are there national and transnational connections that can be made through these resources?
- How can research from these context studies be adapted to reach public audiences?