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DHR Register Program Updates

June, 2019
Greetings!
This newsletter format is our latest iteration of the DHR Register Program Updates. We hope you like it. Meanwhile, our goal remains the same: to share the latest news about DHR’s Virginia Landmarks Register (VLR) and National Register programs to keep consultants, CLG staff, university faculty and students, and other interested parties abreast of the latest developments both in Virginia and beyond. If you do not wish to receive these updates, please unsubscribe in the footer below. On the other hand, if you like what you see, please forward this email to anyone you feel may be interested in our programs. Thanks!
Lena McDonald
Historian, DHR Register Program

Update: Proposed Changes to Federal Rules

for the National Register

According to the National Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers (NCSHPO), a report that accompanies the Department of Interior Appropriations bill (passed by the House Appropriations Committee in May), bluntly questioned the purpose and validity of proposed rule changes that would fundamentally alter how the National Register of Historic Places program operates. Please remember that bill reports, unlike actual bills, do not have the force of law. NCSHPO passed along this passage from the bill report:
Proposed Rulemaking.—The Committee is concerned with the Service’s proposal to modify long-standing procedures to nominate properties to the National Register. It remains unclear to the Committee what problems the Service is trying to solve by its proposal. The Committee does not believe that the proposed changes are required by the minor amendments that Congress made to the National Historic Preservation Act in 2016. Further, the Committee is troubled that the Service failed to consult with other federal land management agencies, state and tribal historic preservation officers, and other key stakeholders during the proposal’s development or conduct required consultation. The Committee urges the Service to withdraw the proposed rule and consult with key stakeholders on the underlying issues the Service is trying to resolve. Such stakeholders should include other federal land management agencies, including the Department of Defense, state and tribal historic preservation officers, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The Committee also expects the United States to enter into meaningful government-to-government consultation with affected tribes prior to finalizing any changes to the regulation.

DHR thanks everyone who submitted comments on the proposed rules, and those who reached out to local and state lawmakers to either submit comments or send letters to the Department of the Interior. The comment period closed on April 30, 2019. Based on the large number of comments that the Department of Interior has received, NCSHPO anticipates that the process of establishing a final rule is expected to be lengthy.
DHR will continue to provide updates about the status of the proposed rule changes whenever I hear anything new. As a NCSHPO Board of Directors member, our director, Julie Langan, also will receive updates. In the meantime, you’re always welcome to contact DHR with any questions you have.

Joint Quarterly Board Meeting Draft Agenda,

June 2019
Photos of buildings for listing in the Virginia Landmarks Register
The Virginia State Review Board and the Board of Historic Resources are next scheduled to convene on Thursday, June 20. The boards will meet in Rooms A&B at the Florence Elston Inn and Conference Center, Sweet Briar College, 450 Sweet Briar Drive, in Sweet Briar, VA. Please note that the draft agenda is subject to change as the review process is still under way. All draft nominations (except one, to protect archaeological resources) and PIFs have been posted on DHR’s website at https://wordpress-851339-3533967.cloudwaysapps.com/boards.

Nominations:
Eastern Region
Northern Region
Western Region
Preliminary Information Forms (PIFs) for State Review Board:
The draft agenda for PIFs to be evaluated by the State Review is robust once again, and always subject to change before the meeting.

Western Region
  • Williams Farm, Pittsylvania County, DHR #071-5475, Criteria A and C
Northern Region
Eastern Region

DHR’s 2019 CLG Workshops: Just One More to Go!

DHR’s final CLG 2019 workshop takes place on August 8 in the Town of Smithfield, Isle of Wight County. Training topics include historic tax credits and the Secretary of Interior’s Standards; CLG roles in the Section 106 review process; historic masonry and what to do with it; and a new update to DHR's style guide for post-World War II architecture that’s being coupled with an ongoing Modern architecture survey DHR is managing with the Virginia AIA chapter to identify major Modern designs across the Commonwealth from the 1930s to the late 20th century. There also will be break-out sessions with mock reviews of various scenarios that ARBs often encounter so that everyone can practice applying the SOI standards. If you have any questions about the workshops, please contact Aubrey at aubrey.vonlindern@dhr.virginia.gov. But as of this date, the workshop is full.
AA at CW3
Colonial Williamsburg’s
First African American Living History Interpreters Recall Their Experiences
In May, three of Colonial Williamsburg’s first African American living history interpreters discussed their experiences at the "African American Interpretation: Past" panel discussion. Christy Coleman, CEO of the American Civil War Museum, Rex Ellis, associate director emeritus for curatorial affairs at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, and Dylan Pritchett, an actor-interpreter, participated in the moderated discussion at Colonial Williamsburg. On July 5, the series continues with “African American Interpretation: Present.” That event is followed by “African American Interpretation: Future” on Oct. 18. All the events start at 5:30 p.m. and are free and open to the public. The panels are held in the Hennage Auditorium inside the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg.
Christy Coleman’s work at the American Civil War Museum also recently was prominently featured in an article of the Smithsonian Magazine.
Online Gateway Now Available to
Certified Local Governments
In May, the National Park Service’s State, Tribal, Local, Plans & Grants Division (STLPG) launched the CLG Gateway Web Application, which shows the connections among Certified Local Governments, National Parks, federal lands, and historic resources. The GIS-based tool is designed to facilitate resource management conversations among park staff and community stakeholders undertaking historic preservation efforts. A small suite of tools and resources have been created to guide users on how to access this new application:
DE Archives
Historic preservation symposium to take place in Delaware on June 26, 2019
The Delaware State Historic Preservation Office invites the public to attend a special historic preservation symposium. As part of the day’s activities, speakers from the National Park Service and the North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office will discuss National Register of Historic Places nominations, disaster preparedness and issues regarding elevating historic properties in flood-prone areas.

The symposium will take place on Wednesday, June 26, 2019 in the Delaware Room of the Delaware Public Archives located at 121 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. North in Dover, Del. Admission is free, but, due to limited seating, reservations are required by calling the Delaware State Historic Preservation Office at 302-736-7400. The office is open between 8 a.m. and 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday. Reservations are due by June 19, 2019. A draft agenda for the one-day event is attached.
SNP_map
New Research Tool for Skyline Drive/Shenandoah National Park
NPS has announced an online map that shows all of the parcels with the names of historic owners that were purchased by the Commonwealth and Federal government to create Shenandoah National Park and Skyline Drive. “Exploring Shenandoah National Park History – One Tract at a Time (EPH)” is a new web-based interactive map that provides the public with historic land tract boundaries “linked” to information about the tract including land ownership, acreage, houses, structures and land use. This information was previously published in “A Database of Shenandoah National Park’s Land Records” (Engle, 1997).
The historic map is displayed with the current park boundary, roads and trails. To retrieve information about a specific parcel, zoom in on the map view and click within the parcel boundary.

In the early years of the project, the Commonwealth of Virginia purchased land and transferred it to Federal ownership. The improvement of the park was funded by the Federal government and many of the owners who lived in the mountains were moved by various Federal agencies to new settlement areas. The New Deal-era Resettlement Administration was a key player in this process.

The new website is the culmination of a several year project led by a multi-disciplinary team of park staff and largely shaped by students and researchers at North Carolina State University’s Center for Geospatial Analytics.
Evaluating Reliability of Online Sources
Nowadays, online research is often the default approach for many types of projects. Although the internet has made available millions of historical records, it also has become a morass of misleading and erroneous information. When conducting research for any project, including Register nominations, it’s important to know what to look for to determine if information you’ve found is accurate and reliable. The Council of State Archivists, the Chief Officers of State Library Agencies (COSLA), and the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS), have collaborated to create a handy infographic that highlights common pitfalls for online users and offers five tips for avoiding them
ASLAH
Registration for the American Association for State and Local History Meeting Conference is Now Open
The 2019 annual meeting for the American Association for State and Local History (AASLH) takes place on August 28-31, 2019, in Philadelphia, PA. Early bird registration ends on July 9, 2019. One-day tickets are available. Full-time students who are members of AASLH can volunteer to work for 8 hours during the conference in lieu of paying for registration. All conference sessions will take place at the conference hotel, the Philadelphia 201 Hotel, 201 N. 17th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103. This year’s conference theme is “What are We Waiting For?” with the intent of exploring opportunities for the history community to provide context and information to help make sense of modern challenges.

The African American Civil Rights Network

Expands with New Designation

Recently, U.S. Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt announced the designation of the Shelley House into the African American Civil Rights Network. The Shelley House was the subject of the landmark 1948 United States Supreme Court’s unanimous decision, Shelley v. Kraemer, which is one of the defining moments in the Civil Rights Movement and in U.S. Constitutional law. The Court ruled that the state’s enforcement of racial discrimination in housing violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.
The Shelley House joins five other historic properties that have been designated as part of the Civil Rights Network:
  • Mitchell Jamieson Mural (Washington, DC): “An Incident in Contemporary American Life” depicts Marian Anderson’s 1939 performance at the Lincoln Memorial after she was refused access to perform at Constitution Hall. The mural is located in the Stewart Lee Udall Department of the Interior Building.
  • The Lorraine Motel (Memphis, TN): This is the site of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination in 1968; the property later became home to the National Civil Rights Museum.
  • Kennedy-King Park: Landmark for Peace (Indianapolis, IN): This park is the location of an impromptu speech by Senator Robert F. Kennedy on April 4, 1968, in the immediate aftermath of Dr. King’s assassination by a white supremacist.
  • Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home (Jackson, MS): Civil rights activist Medgar Evers was assassinated in the driveway of his own home on June 12, 1963. The first field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Mississippi, Evers also helped investigate the 1955 lynching of fourteen-year-old Emmett Till. His wife, Myrlie Evers, raised their three children and went on to become a prominent civil rights activist herself.
  • A.P. Tureaud House (New Orleans, LA): Alexander Pierre ‘A.P.’ Tureaud Sr., prominent civil rights attorney and legal counsel for the NAACP, focused on integrating public education systems and public accommodations, in New Orleans.
To learn about African American Civil Rights Network eligibility, review example applications, and nominate a property or program to be part of the Network, visit go.nps.gov/AACRN.

Digitized Architectural Index, 1952-2001

The nonprofit organization U.S. Modernist has published a digitized serial index to all articles in various architectural journals on specific projects from 1952 to 2001. The index provides the author, article title, periodical title, date, and page number for articles about a wide range of architecture subjects, including specific architects by name, state or country of location, resource types (such as schools, hospitals, hotels, government buildings, etc.), and materials. On the webpage, the index is organized by year. A user can click on the year to download the PDF of the entire index, then scroll through it looking for specific topics and architects. Researchers who want to know everything listed for Virginia projects can scroll down the “Virginia” section of the index. Historically, the yearly publication was one of the only ways to easily search for articles across major US architectural magazines. Note that the index does not include hyperlinks to full-text articles. But with the author/title/date information obtained from the index, the full-text article can be searched for online or at libraries.
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