How can DC preserve history that’s more than a building?

DC’s historic preservation system is well set up to preserve historic buildings and properties, but ill prepared to formally recognize other types of history. A simple reform could go a long way to resolve that.

The District’s historic preservation law has something of a dual-mandate: 1) record and celebrate the people, places and events that have contributed to our collective history and 2) preserve the city’s notable physical buildings and their architecture.

In many cases, those two things can be done simultaneously. Think about a notable site like Frederick Douglass’s home in Anacostia. Preserving the site where such a monumental figure lived, worked and died brings his story to life in a more vivid way than just reading about him would. In cases like these, the law works as intended, preserving a physical site and thus helping memorialize the history associated with it.

But there are plenty of cases where those two goals don’t pair together. Many sites are associated with notable people, but aren’t particularly related to the events that made them notable. And many important chapters in history aren’t well told through specific physical sites at all.

Unfortunately, DC historic officials’ current interpretation of the law leaves them without many answers for how to formally preserve these kinds of history that aren’t tied to physical sites. In addition to putting that history at risk, that gap creates real political problems for the system.

This tension has become visible in multiple cases before DC’s Historic Preservation Review Board (HPRB) in recent years as grassroots community advocates have submitted applications for historic designation that rest mostly or entirely on the strength of relevant social history rather than on the notability of the physical buildings themselves. These cases have generally focused on the history of Black communities in DC, which is underrepresented among currently designated sites and raises important questions about equity and racial justice.

Social history before the board

In the case of Barry Farm at the end of 2019, residents submitted an application that argued for designation in part based on stories of how their public housing community had survived and thrived despite decades of discrimination and neglect. But Historic Preservation Office (HPO) staff recommended against designation, in part because they did not think the nominated housing dwellings were associated strongly enough with some of the cited historic events, and in significant part because they found the physical integrity of the buildings to be below the necessary standard for designation. (The Board ultimately designated a select portion of the dwellings in something of an awkward compromise).

The following year, when the board weighed expanding the Kingman Park historic district, applicants argued that the original boundaries were too narrow and had left out blocks home to significant historic members of their community. Again, in that case HPO staff argued that the notable people did not rise to the level of significance usually required by the law and that the associated properties were not tied closely enough to the events that made them notable. However, HPRB ended up disagreeing and voted in favor of the application.

Most recently, last fall an ANC commissioner in Ward 7 filed a nomination for the A. Loeffler Provisions Company building (most recently home to the DC Eagle bar) off Benning Road. While the context of the application makes pretty clear it was connected to a larger campaign to block the pending transformation of the site to a transitional living facility for returning citizens, the application itself appeals to the site’s association with the history of the meatpacking industry in DC to make its case. In this case, the board agreed with the staff report that the building lacked sufficient integrity to merit a nomination, but they were eager to find a way to recognize and preserve the social history in question.

During the hearing, Board member Outerbridge Horsey specifically asked HPO staff member Tim Denee about alternate tools the office could use to accomplish this goal. Denee suggested that an interpretative marker, a heritage trail, a documentary, or digital resources are all the kinds of projects staff have contributed to and supported. (For a great example, see the digital story maps HPO created for the aforementioned Barry Farm Dwellings and Kingman Park historic district this year).

But, Denee also confirmed that work has generally been done in partnership with third-party community groups and not as a response to a particular rejected landmark application. When Horsey followed up to ask specifically if HPRB has the authority to require such efforts as part of a resolution (even if the resolution denied the nomination), Denee replied that he did not think the board had that power. The board’s final resolution to deny the Loeffler application was left only “encouraging” an effort to do something in this vein.

Why shouldn’t the board have these tools?

The relevant regulations do seem fairly clear about the process for resolving a nomination, and don’t lay out an opportunity to create a legal mandate over a property the board declines to designate. But they also include a topline description of the HPRB as performing “other functions and duties relating to the protection, preservation, enhancement and perpetuation of the historic, architectural, cultural and aesthetic heritage of the District of Columbia as the Mayor may from time to time assign” and the power to “delegate any of these functions or authorities to the Historic Preservation Office.” It does not seem equally explicit that the board could not make a separate motion concerning what staff should do in the public space fronting a property or as a digital resource. An interested board may be well served by asking the District’s Office of Attorney General for an interpretation.

But even if such action would be precluded by the law, this seems like an opportunity to improve it. While certainly not costless, the expense of such tools is unlikely to be excessive. In a case responding to an application, the time-intensive research has already been done by both the applicants and staff. Adapting that research into some sort of physical signage or media for the handful of relevant cases should be only a low-to-medium lift requiring a relatively small budget outlay. Existing third-party groups like Cultural Tourism DC, DC History Center, DC Preservation League, or many others would likely be interested in partnering on these kinds of projects.

Just because a particular site may not meet the historic designation criteria does not mean that there is no history worth preserving or that the relevant community is of lesser merit than others. A binary choice only to designate or reject sets board members up to add insult to injury when they deny an application. Hopeful applicants may come away not only empty-handed in terms of a policy outcome, but further scarred by the experience of being rejected. While board members are not supposed to be influenced by arguments outside the scope of the historic criteria, it is difficult to ignore the political pressure these dynamics place on them at the least.

Providing a way for the board to help those communities celebrate and preserve their history even if a site does not merit designation could help prevent board members from being placed in such a political bind and preserve the integrity of the historic process.