Interior Secretary Norton Announces the Designation of 24 Sites Important to the Nation’s History as National Historic Landmarks
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Secretary of the Interior Gale A. Norton announced the designation of 24 new National Historic Landmarks (NHL). The designated sites were recommended to the Secretary by the National Park System Advisory Board for their national significance in American history and culture.
NHLs are recognized by the Secretary of the Interior as nationally significant properties of exceptional value in representing or illustrating an important theme, event, or person in the history of the Nation. All National Historic Landmarks are included in the National Register of Historic Places, the official list of the cultural resources and historic properties worthy of preservation. The Historic Sites Act of 1935 authorized the Secretary of the Interior to recognize historic places judged to have exceptional value to the nation.
The newly designated landmarks range from Meadowcroft Rockshelter, a Paleo-Indian rockshelter used by Native American peoples as early as 18,000 years ago, to Auburn Cord Duesenberg Automobile Facility, an example of an independent specialty automobile company that made hand-assembled rather than mass-produced automobiles. Four sites connected with African American history include Bethel Baptist Church, associated with one of the first organized groups of the modern civil rights movement, Howard High School, linked with the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, Foster Auditorium, significant for its association with desegregation of public higher education, and Mount Pleasant Historic District, important for the role it played in the antislavery movement and the Underground Railroad.
Additional information on the National Historic Landmark program can be found on the NPS website at http://www.cr.nps.gov/nhl/
The new National Historic Landmarks are as follows:
Meadowcroft Rockshelter, Jefferson Township, Pennsylvania
(16,000 BC to AD 1800): This site contains evidence of some of the earliest human occupations in Eastern North America. Meadowcroft Rockshelter demonstrates that humans have been in the Americas since at least 16,000 years before the present. The site was periodically utilized and reoccupied from the earliest Paleo-Indian times through the Archaic and Woodland periods by Native American peoples and during the Historic period by European Americans. It has provided one of the longest, if not the actual longest, stratified sequence of cultures in the United States and evidence for some of the earliest domesticated crops in the northeastern United States. Meadowcroft has revolutionized how archeologists view the peopling of the New World.
Radburn, Borough of Fair Lawn, New Jersey
(1928-1936): This community embodies the internationally acclaimed model of community design known as the “Radburn Idea,” was designed in 1928-1929 by the planner-architects Clarence S. Stein and Henry Wright. Known as “The Town for the Motor Age,” Radburn’s design principles have influenced generations of community planning, including the three Greenbelt towns of the New Deal, many Federal Housing Administration-insured large-scale rental communities of the 1930s to 1950s, and new towns of the 1960s. Radburn was the product of the Regional Planning Association of America (RPAA) with the goal to promote social reform and improvement in the housing of moderate income Americans based on the principles of English Garden City planning.
Chatham Village, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
(1929-1956): Internationally acclaimed model of community design based on Garden City planning, innovative methods of cost analysis, and pioneering efforts to reduce housing construction costs. Designed by local architects under the supervision of master planner-architects Clarence S. Stein and Henry Wright, as a philanthropic project by the Buhl Foundation to provide high-quality housing in a suburban, garden setting for clerical workers in Pittsburgh, PA. Building upon earlier work at Sunnyside Gardens, New York, and Radburn, New Jersey, Chatham Village is one of the most celebrated and influential projects to result from Stein and Wright’s highly creative, ten-year collaboration and the efforts of the Regional Planning Association of America (RPAA) to promote social reform and improvement in the housing of moderate income Americans in metropolitan areas of the United States. Immediately acclaimed as an ideal demonstration of neighborhood planning and cost-efficient housing, Chatham Village influenced the development of design standards used by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) to approve large-scale, rental housing in suburban areas for federally-insured mortgages. It helped to shape the design and construction of the first federally-funded public housing projects under the Public Works Administration in the 1930s.
Bethel Baptist ChurchParsonage, and Guard House Birmingham, Alabama
(1956-1961): Baptist Church is associated with the first organized movement of the modern civil rights movement that attacked multiple aspects of segregation. While earlier organized movements focused on bus segregation, the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR), headquartered in Bethel from 1956-1961, applied both legal and nonviolent direct action against segregated accommodations, transportation, schools, and employment discrimination. This method would serve as a model for later movements, including the 1963 Birmingham demonstrations that led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The church, its parsonage, and a private residence known as the guardhouse played a crucial role in the 1961 Freedom Ride that traveled from Washington, D.C. to Mississippi and resulted in federal enforcement of U.S. Supreme Court and Interstate Commerce Commission rulings to desegregate public transportation. As the bus ride’s designated point of contact in Alabama, the church and parsonage were places of refuge for wounded and stranded riders rescued by ACMHR members, and where activist Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth coordinated with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Kennedy administration to continue the ride onto Montgomery.
United Mine Workers of America Building, Washington, DC
(1937-1952): Beginning in 1937, this building served as the headquarters of the United Mine Workers of America union (UMW) that was associated with the rise of organized labor following the Congressional passage of pro-labor acts in the mid 1930s. Before and after World War II, the UMW was able to negotiate for higher wages, safer working conditions (including the Federal Mine Safety Act in 1952), and the creation of industry-funded health and retirement benefits between 1945-50. These goals became standard in contract negotiations between unions and management and served to lift millions of blue-collar workers into the middle class. This building was also home to the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) (1937-1940). This federation of unions, funded by the UMW in its formative years, covered the previously unrepresented mass-production workers, a segment of the work force that became the labor movement’s most important constituency during the 1950s and 1960s, when working-class Americans made their largest economic gains. From this building, formidable labor organizer, John L. Lewis, oversaw the UMW for more than two decades and founded and presided over the Congress of Industrial Organizations (1937-1940). The increase in union membership that Lewis promoted, his leadership in charting the paths of contract negotiation, and his presence in Washington influenced relations between labor, capital, and government during the country’s post-WWII economic boom.
Howard High School, Wilmington, Delaware
(1953-1954): Howard High School is associated with the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education that found racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. The decision overturned the “separate but equal” doctrine the Court had endorsed in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 that gave legal sanction to Jim Crow. Howard High was the black high school cited in Belton v. Gebhart (1953), one of five cases combined under the Brown case. In Belton, parents of black children bused to Howard sued to allow their children to attend the white high school (Claymont High School). The Delaware case represented the intent of the U.S. Supreme Court that segregation went beyond the South.
Foster Auditorium, Tuscaloosa, Alabama
(1963): The University of Alabama’s Foster Auditorium is nationally significant for its association with the historical movement to desegregate public higher education, and the federal government’s efforts to eliminate racial segregation in the United States. As the site of the 1963 “stand in the school house door” by Governor George Wallace, Foster Auditorium marks a significant victory in the desegregation struggle, where federal authority was used to remove state resistance to desegregation. Here, on June 11, 1963, Vivian Malone and James Hood were able to complete registration at the University. This event compelled President Kennedy to appeal to a national sense of fairness during a nationwide address on June 11, and on June 19 the President submitted civil rights legislation to Congress that dealt with public accommodations, school desegregation, and equal employment.
William Rotch, Jr. House, New Bedford, Massachusetts
(1834-1935): It was the first house built to a design by Richard Upjohn, one of the most prominent nineteenth century architects in the United States. In addition, it was constructed for the head of the nation’s premier whaling family in the nation’s premier whaling town and, after his death, was occupied by one of the most successful whaling agents during the industry’s golden age. This house represents the wealth and status gained from the nationally significant American whaling trade just as the mansions of Newport, Rhode Island, represent the wealth and influence gained by their owners from the late nineteenth century industries of railroading, steel and finance.
Wesleyan Grove, Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts
(1835-1901): American phenomenon, religious camp meetings were open air revivals which lasted several days. Wesleyan Grove served as the prototype for the community form of permanent camp meetings and resorts that were common across the country after the Civil War. An. The participants needed a place to stay at the revival site because they were far from home. Wesleyan Grove’s plan and many of its architectural characteristics were emulated by many other camp meetings in the United States. The district includes over 300 contributing resources within its 34 acre area.
Santa Barbara County Courthouse, Santa Barbara, California
(1926-1929) The Santa Barbara County Courthouse is nationally significant for its architecture. In The City Observed: Lost Angeles (1984), Charles Moore called it the “grandest Spanish Colonial Revival structure ever built.” In addition, the courthouse was a prime early catalyst for the community in its quest to remake itself to more fully reflect its Spanish roots. The building’s exterior has had few changes since its construction during the mid-1920s. The interior has received some modifications and alterations to spaces, but still retains its Spanish feeling and design.
Milwaukee City Hall, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
(1895-1917): Milwaukee City Hall is nationally significant as the most outstanding extant example of German Renaissance Revival architecture in the country and for its central role in the history of Socialism in the United States prior to World War I. The building also has symbolic value as the “capitol building” of the city most associated with German immigrant culture in the United States. One of the largest city halls in the country, with a Common Council Chamber that likewise eclipses in size that of larger cities, Milwaukee City Hall is unique in its architecture. The property retains a high degree of integrity both on its interior and exterior. Recent rehabilitation projects have replaced the few exterior design elements that had been lost over time.
Frederick Ayer Mansion, Boston, Massachusetts
(1899-1901): The Ayer Mansion is the only known surviving example of exterior ornamentation designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany and is one of his most intact and complete residential interior designs. A master of surface ornament and color, Tiffany was a pioneer of the interior design profession. As the “most fashionable purveyor of taste” during America’s Gilded Age, Tiffany created apartments and homes for America’s most influential families, including a White House renovation under President Arthur in 1882.
Willard Memorial Chapel–Welsh Memorial Hall, Alburn, New York
(1892-1894): A distinctive and highly intact representation of the Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company. Fixtures, windows, and furnishings in the Chapel were executed by the Tiffany Company. Louis Comfort Tiffany was among the most important American tastemakers during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This chapel interior highlights the early phase of Tiffany’s career and demonstrates his approach to interior design. This property is generally considered by historians and decorative arts specialists to represent the last completely intact Tiffany-designed ecclesiastical interior in its original location in the United States.
Quincy Homestead, Quincy, Massachusetts
(1686-1904): The Quincy Homestead is a remarkable example of New England architecture and its transformations from the late seventeenth century to the late nineteenth century. The surviving elements of the architecture of the seventeenth century, early and late Georgian period, late Victorian period, and Colonial or Georgian Revival found in the Quincy Homestead provide a unique opportunity to see with remarkable clarity the changing forms and styles and preferences of more than three hundred years of American and New England architecture. The house represents an early use of the gambrel roof in the region and domestic architecture, and its restoration in 1904 represents one of the earliest efforts at restoration of a domestic site in the Boston region by a heritage preservation group.
Rosedown, St. Francisville, Louisiana
(1836-1865): With its “great house” (complete with Grecian wings) at the head of a 660-foot oak allée, its extensive pleasure gardens ornamented with summerhouses, and the remaining archeological resources, Rosedown embodies the lifestyle of the antebellum South’s wealthiest planters in a way very few other surviving properties can. The property exhibits important components of the personal world of the great planters; both house and garden survive in their original context. The designed landscapes of the Southern plantation represent an important chapter in the history of design in America, and Rosedown’s gardens are extremely important for their size, sophistication, surviving documentation, and overall integrity.
Longue Vue, New Orleans, Louisiana
(1935-1952): Stellar example of Country Place estate in which architecture and landscape architecture are designed to be interrelated, with architects, landscape architect and patron all working closely together over more than two decades. Longe Vue represents the most intact work of leading woman landscape architect Ellen Biddle Shipman. The property is an unusual Southern example from the Country Place Era by two of the leaders in the movement, architects William and Geoffrey Platt.
Amalik Bay Archaeological District, King Salmon, Alaska
(5600 BC - AD 1750): Amalik Bay was a gateway for the widespread exchange of ideas and technological innovations, including ground-slate tools and Norton-style pottery, hallmarks in the development of coastal Eskimo economies across the far northern reaches of the continent. The lowest cultural levels found at sites in the district are particularly significant in answering questions about early coastal vs. interior migrations as the site is dated precisely to the cusp between the Paleoarctic (mostly interior) and later traditions. The Amalik Bay sites, located in a position between the Bristol Bay side of the Alaska Peninsula to the northwest (linguistically Yupik Eskimo) and Kodiak Island (Alutiiq Eskimo) to the southeast, are significant for their potential to shed light on provocative questions concerning Alutiiq ethnogenesis. The Mink Island site, one of 28 contributing properties to the Amalik Bay district, plays a pivotal role in understanding the breadth of early (ca. 6,000 years BC) coastal technologies from the Aleutians eastward along the entire southern coast of Alaska.
Lightfoot Mill, Chester Springs, Pennsylvania
(1749-1830): Lightfoot Mill represents an extremely rare archetypal example of a small, eighteenth century custom grain mill with its surviving, completely intact, power transmission system. Surveys suggest that no other custom mills in the United States survive from this period with intact machinery. The basic technology of this mill dates from the mid-eighteenth century, adapted to make use of several of the automating inventions of the famous American inventor, Oliver Evans, which were appended to the original works. At Lightfoot one can see the impact of automation on traditional milling. Milling machinery requires constant repair, maintenance and replacement of its moving parts. At Lightfoot, this process has occurred using in-kind materials and in original order and forms. The milling system functions today much as it did in the mid-eighteenth century.
University of Wisconsin Dairy Barn, Madison, Wisconsin
(1907-1911): Located on the campus of the University of Wisconsin, an internationally recognized leader in agricultural research, this barn complex was the site of the “single grain” experiment that called into question prevailing nineteenth century “chemical” model of nutrition. This experiment quickly led to discovery of vitamins and their importance in a healthy diet. Designed as a test of the effectiveness of various types of agricultural feed for dairy cows, this experiment helped to establish the new science of nutrition during the twentieth century that had far reaching benefits across the world.
Frederick A. and Sophia Bagg Bonanza Farm, Richland County, North Dakota
(1897-1935): In 1880, according to the Atlantic Monthly, Bonanza farms were “destined to exercise a most potent influence on the production of all food products, and work a revolution in the great economies of the farm.” Bonanza farms, or "farm factories," are significant components of our national agricultural history, representative of the importance of federal land policies, and of technological and scientific advances to American agricultural production, and the impact of American urbanization – concentrated markets for farm products – and transportation development on national settlement patterns. The Bagg Bonanza Farm represents the broad patterns of Bonanza farms, which developed in the great Northwest from the 1880s through the Great Depression.
Port Gibson Battle Site, Port Gibson, Mississippi
(1863): The battle of Port Gibson had a direct and decisive influence on the Vicksburg Campaign. The battle marked the beginning of the final phase of the Vicksburg Campaign, a complex offensive movement which propelled the Union commander, Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, further into national prominence and positioned the Union for final victory. This defeat demonstrated that the Confederates were unable to defend the Mississippi River line. The Federals secured their beach head, and the way to Vicksburg was open. The terrain of the battle retains great integrity. The natural topography and the sunken roadways followed by the troops remain.
Mount Pleasant Historic District, Mt. Pleasant, Ohio
(1804-1875): The historic village of Mount Pleasant was established in 1803 by Robert Carothers, an Irishman from Virginia, and Jesse Thomas, a Quaker from North Carolina, and is important for the role it played in the antislavery movement and the Underground Railroad. Incorporated in 1814, the town became a center for pork packing and shipping and was especially successful in the milling industry. The strong Quaker population in Mt. Pleasant preached and practiced its abolitionist views and published antislavery literature, such as Benjamin Lundy's Genius of Universal Emancipation. A station on the Underground Railroad, the town was a refuge for fugitive slaves and a welcome home for free blacks. Local residents built and administered a school for free black children, and in 1848 established a Free Labor Store which sold no products that were produced by slave labor.
Elephant Hotel, Somers, New York
(1820-1837): Built and owned by Hachaliah Bailey, the first American to tour exotic animals for public entertainment, the Elephant Hotel is associated with early American circus history. Beginning with an African elephant named Old Bet purchased by Bailey, he subsequently added other wild animals to his collection and introduced the traveling “menagerie” as an attraction to the United States. The Elephant Hotel became the meeting place and symbolic center of menagerie promoters and in 1835 the Zoological Institute, a monopoly of menagerie and circus owners, was incorporated at the Elephant Hotel.
Auburn Cord Duesenberg Automobile Facility, Auburn, Indiana
(1923-1936): The Auburn Cord Duesenberg Automobile Facility is nationally significant as one of the few remaining examples of an independent specialty automobile company that made hand-assembled rather than mass-produced automobiles. The Art Deco showroom and administration building, service and new parts department building, and the Cord L-29 building remain as visual reminders of this company’s proud past and achievements in automotive history. Each building represents a different stage in automotive development and construction: from the drafting tables of the initial design stages to the final product display on the showroom floor. Automobiles designed and built here are highly prized around the world.
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