challenge design history pragmatic historian preservation

From Notre Dame to Yogurt Cups: Toward a Grand Unified Theory of Preservation

This is a post I’ve spent years thinking about. When it comes to historic preservation, the focus tends to be on buildings and structures that are historically or architecturally significant. Through the National Register of Historic Places, there are 4 criteria under which a structure can be nominated: Those … A. That are associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of our history; or B.That are associated with the…

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A Response to “Representation and The National Register in Minnesota”

This past week I read an interesting analysis of the National Register of Historic Places in regards to ethnic representation of Minnesota sites on the Register. The article appears on the Minnesota Local History blog and was written by Julia Larson. It is called “Representation and The National Register in Minnesota,” hence the title of my blog post. Julia analyzed the Minnesota listings on the National Register to determine which of those listed under the…

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Can We Have Historic Preservation Levels, Too?

As so often happens with blog posts, a number of little things come together to make a much bigger topic. Such is the case with today’s post. It started with a National Register nomination I was reading, was further reinforced by the mention of a local building in a city document, then developed into a full-fledged puzzlement followed by a really big question. Historic Structures with Non-Historic Additions I sit on the Minnesota State Review…

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