Landslide In Action: Prelude to the Modern Preservation Movement
Empowering the powerless is a key element of the modern historic preservation movement. Ordinary citizens advocating for a shared interest – a cultural landscape, a historic structure, historic property, neighborhood, or a regional expanse – working together can affect change. Milestones in the movement include the enactment of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 (NHPA), and the renaming of the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards from “historic buildings” to “historic properties,” reflecting a shift from being architecture centric to more inclusive (1992). But two events on opposite coasts several years before enactment of the NHPA, which are included in the Landslide 2024: Demonstration Grounds< Washington Square Parkin Greenwich Village; and in Seattle, Washington, the historic Pike Place Market neighborhoodcould have been eradicated. A broad coalition of activists succeeded at preventing both.
Since then, the preservation movement has undergone successive transformations: the National Register of Historic Places was created and as of 2024 includes more than 99,000 sites; the number of advocates and advocacy organizations grew; the use of legislative tools such as Section 106 of the NHPA gave advocates a “seat at the table” and affected policy and designation decisions across the country; the movement expanded to include the history and historic “themes” associated with broader cultural lifeways; and with specific technical assistance developed for landscapes, ensured that they achieved greater recognition with the development the , which specifically applied the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards to this overlooked typology.
However, the term “preservation” has also become weaponized and a pejorative with perceived and depicted as the people of “no” – doctrinaire, intransigent, and unwilling to compromise. While state and local activism grew, the sense of national leadership dissipated. Some question if there is even a preservation movement today.
Three generations of preservation professionals will look at the origins and the successes that galvanized public attention, interest, and buy-in. They will also look at how the movement expanded beyond buildings and landscapes to embrace cultural heritage and cultural lifeways. Most significantly, the panel will look at how a new generation of preservationists is making “preservation” relevant, exciting, and meaningful by focusing on some recent successes that point to strategies for the movement’s future.
The session will be moderated by Charles A, Birnbaum, President and CEO of èƵ.
Birnbaum will be joined by:
Dena Tasse-Winter (panelist) - Village Preservation’s Director of Research and Preservation since 2023, Tasse-Winter is a native New Yorker with a background in architectural and landscape history and extensive experience within the governmental and cultural nonprofit sectors in both New York City and Washington, D.C.
Richard Longstreth (panelist) - Professor Emeritus of American Studies at George Washington University. As a scholar, Longstreth has written extensively on the history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century architecture in the U.S.
Laura Feller (panelist) - Feller has served as a docent, curator, and historian in the National Park Service, retiring in 2007. She is the author of Being Indigenous in Jim Crow Virginia: Powhatan People and the Color Line
Monica Rhodes (respondent) - Working at the intersection of history, architecture and community for the last 15 years, Rhodes is among the 1% of the academically-trained Black cultural preservationists in the country.