DC questions for National Historic Preservation Month

The Hill Rag has run a piece, "May is National Preservation Month," stating:

As we celebrate National Preservation Month each May, there is no better time to reflect on why historic preservation matters to us as a community. Perhaps you are already an enthusiast due to your passion for architecture or your interest in community history. Maybe you are the devoted steward of a home here that you wish to see protected, or perhaps your interests are even broader, applying to such issues as city planning, zoning and transportation. It is possible – I concede – that historic preservation would not top your list of priorities at all if asked. However, in this age of global awareness, most everyone is concerned about the environment. And if you care about the environment, then you care about historic preservation.

The hottest topic in historic preservation today is undoubtedly sustainability, with experts and enthusiasts presenting the valid argument that an existing building is the greenest building of all...


So here's my chance to reflect on the issues facing historic preservationists in Washington, DC. And thanks to the Hill Rag for writing something to begin with...

I disagree that the hottest topic in preservation is sustainability, even though that is all that Pres. Moe of the National Trust for Historic Preservation seems to talk about at conferences.

1. The conflict over property rights issues vs. historic preservation, in a variety of respects is the number one issue, and will continue to be for some time.

2. the protection of buildings and neighborhoods that are eligible for designation but are not designated and won't be any time soon. This conflict has many dimensions: building up (pop ups) and out, inappropriate design of new construction, teardowns for extranormally large (and usually ugly) houses, no protections against demolition.

3. Dealing with preservation issues where development pressures are extremely high, which is partly related to #2 but important in and of itself.

For most center cities, preservation is the only long term sustainable strategy for resident retention and attraction. As far as the Central Business District goes, DC is an outlier. Pressures for office space and redevelopment mean that preservation, while essential in most other cities, such as Philadelphia or Baltimore, takes a back seat to development in the core of the City of Washington.

Also see as resources:

-- Affordable Housing and Historic Preservation: The Missed Connection
-- Economic Power of Historic Preservation (Paper)
-- Profiting Through Preservation (report/NY)
-- Contributions of Historic Preservation to Quality of Life in Florida
- Research Report Executive Summary
- Research Report - Technical

4. Related to this is the stewardship of the DC Government with regard to the properties it manages in trust for the Citizens of the District of Columbia, and the pressure to deaccession buildings and sell them off for new development.

5. Dealing with the whole "recent past" question. (i.e., Christian Science Church, MLK Library, etc.)

6. Institutions and others desiring exemptions from the preservation laws: i.e., the church question (RLUIPA), the Mt. Pleasant debacle, etc. (This is also related to #1)

7. The height restriction. I am a hardcore preservationist, I think people know that. But looking at the height restriction objectively, there is no question that continued demand for commercial space downtown, and the inability to build up, means that developers build outward instead.

So what you have happening is the "reproduction of the space" east and southeast of the Central Business District. We're losing historic building stock in what were once neighborhoods.

Soon enough M Street SE and NoMa will look just like K Street NW--an onward spread of 12 story boxy glass buildings. Even the H Street NE corridor is under threat, depending on what happens with the Dreyfus project at 200 H St. NE.

8. Local preservation organizational capacity, communications, and the need to attract the next generation of people to the movement. Most of DC's citizens groups have leadership that came to prominence during the time when the city was shrinking, and stabilization of neighborhoods was the most important goal. Now the city is growing, how do we as preservation activists, and how do our preservation organizations respond to this fundamentally different condition and situation?