Urgent - Please comment on Soldiers' Home Preservation Plan -- by Monday at 4 pm

From Reyn Anderson:

As many of you know already, the Armed Forces Retirement Home (Old Soldiers' Home) is planning to develop over half of its 272-acre campus with about 9 million square feet of development – that is two-and-a-half times more square-footage than the Pentagon!

Because the Home's campus is of such enormous historical significance - locally and nationally - it was required to prepare a Historic Preservation Plan. Comments to this plan must be submitted by THIS MONDAY, November 20 at 4 pm (the deadline was extended by three days). PLEASE, take five minutes to go to their website scroll down to the bottom of the page and under "Draft Preservation Plan" click on the "Preservation Plan Comment Form."

We urge everyone to make the following three general comments to the Plan:

(1) The Home should nominate the entire campus for immediate placement on the National Register of Historic Places.

(2) The Plan does not adequately address the role of the Home's campus in the life of the District of Columbia, in particular its use as a park by residents and its prominent place in the 1902 McMillan Plan as such.

(3) With respect to Character Area 5 ("The Garden Plot"), the Plan gives insufficient value to its historic significance; these fields were the first sight to greet President Abraham Lincoln as he approached his "Second White House" on the Home's campus.

You should e-mail your comments to tim.sheckler@gsa.gov Please copy the listserv too (HistoricWashington@ yahoogroups.com). If you have any questions, please feel free to pose them to the listserv or e-mail me. An electronic copy of the plan is available on the site given above, and a hard-copy is on the reference shelves at the Petworth Public Library. A thousand thanks to all.

Index Keywords: historic-preservation