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Interior
Department Announces 24 New National Historic Landmarks
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Designations
recognize places that
depict a broad
range of America’s rich, complex history
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Washington,
DC – January 2017 / Newsmaker Alert / As the National
Park Service enters its second century of service and strives to tell
a more inclusive and diverse story of America’s history, U.S. Secretary
of the Interior Sally Jewell has announced the designation of 24 new National
Historic Landmarks.
The
National Historic Landmarks Program
recognizes historic properties of exceptional value to the nation and promotes
the preservation efforts of federal, state, and local agencies and Native
American tribes, as well as those of private organizations and individuals.
The program is one of more than a dozen administered by the National Park
Service that provide states and local communities technical assistance,
recognition and funding to help preserve our nation's shared history and
create close-to-home recreation opportunities.
“These
24 new designations depict different threads of the American story that
have been told through activism, architecture, music, and religious observance,”
said Secretary Jewell. “Their designation ensures future generations have
the ability to learn from the past as we preserve and protect the historic
value of these properties and the more than 2,500 other landmarks nationwide.”
If
not already so recognized, properties designated as National Historic Landmarks
are listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
“As
the National Park Service kicks off its second century of stewardship of
America’s natural and historic treasures, we look forward to connecting
new generations of Americans to the places and stories recognized as National
Historic Landmarks today,” said National Park Service Acting Director Michael
T. Reynolds.
The
24 national historic landmarks announced Wednesday (January 11) are:
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The assassination
of Medgar Evers on June 12, 1963, in the carport of the Medgar and Myrlie
Evers House in Jackson, Mississippi, became one of the catalysts for
the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. His assassination also forced
Myrlie Evers into a more prominent role for the National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Both Medgar and Myrlie were
major contributors to advancing the goals of the civil rights movement
on a national level. Medgar Evers was the first nationally significant
civil rights leader to be murdered.
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The Wyandotte
National Burying Ground (Eliza Burton Conley Burial Site) in Kansas
City, Kansas, serves as tangible evidence of the consequences of federal
American Indian removal policy to a tribal population and its identity
during the nineteenth century. The property is also associated with Eliza
(Lyda) Burton Conley who was the first attorney to raise the legal argument
that American Indian burying grounds are entitled to protection by the
Federal Government and to claim that the descendants of treaty signatories
have the right to sue to enforce treaty provisions.
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The Schomburg
Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City represents the
idea of the African Diaspora, a revolutionizing model for studying the
history and culture of people of African descent that used a global, transnational
perspective. The idea and the person who promoted it, Arthur (Arturo) Alfonso
Schomburg (1874-1938), an Afro-Latino immigrant and self-taught bibliophile,
reflect the multicultural experience of America and the ideals that all
Americans should have intellectual freedom and social equality.
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As one
of the three New Deal greenbelt towns built by the Federal Government,
the Greenhills Historic District in Greenhills, Ohio, shaped the
federal response to the Great Depression and represents highly important
aspects of New Deal policy, an important period in the evolution of the
American suburb. The village is an outstanding representation of the American
Garden City movement and a nationally significant historic residential
suburb.
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On April
20, 1970, community residents occupied Chicano Park in San Diego, California,
in an ultimately successful effort to prevent the construction of a California
Highway Patrol substation on land where the City of San Diego had promised
the neighborhood a community park. Representative of the Chicano Civil
Rights Movement, Chicano Park has become a cultural and recreational
gathering place for the Chicano community and is the location of the Chicano
Park Monumental Murals, an exceptional assemblage of master mural artwork
painted on the freeway bridge supports.
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Casa
José Antonio Navarro in San Antonio, Texas, was the home of
Tejano statesman and historian José Antonio Navarro (1795-1871),
a political leader whose prolific career as statesman and defender of Tejano
rights shaped the destiny of Texas as an independent Republic and as part
of the United States of America. His commitments to both American ideals
and to the rights of Texan Mexican Americans make him one of the leading
figures of the American Southwest under three sovereignties.
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The Neutra
Studio and Residences (VDL Research House) in Los Angeles, California,
is associated with Richard Neutra, a nationally and internationally seminal
figure of the twentieth century Modern movement in architecture. During
the 1940s, as Neutra’s work evolved, he also became the well-recognized
founder of mid-century “California Modern” architecture. The VDL Research
House is the only property where one can see the progression of his style
over a period of years and is among the key properties to understanding
the national significance of Richard Neutra.
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The Keim
Homestead in Oley, Pennsylvania, is an exceptionally intact example
of early German American domestic vernacular architecture. Constructed
ca. 1753, the main house and the ancillary building (which served in effect
as an extension of the main dwelling under a separate roof), together represent
methods of construction, elements of architectural decoration, and patterns
of dwelling and domestic outbuilding layout and design that were characteristic
of the German American tradition of the mid-eighteenth century.
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Constructed
in 1758, Schifferstadt is an outstanding example of a Georgian-period
house influenced by German American cultural and construction traditions,
located in Frederick, Maryland. With its exterior Georgian architectural
style and many ethnically Germanic features on the interior, the house
embodies how German immigrants chose to retain much of their cultural heritage
within their houses while exhibiting their social and economic status on
the exterior.
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This massive
early-twentieth century enlargement of New York’s canal system was an embodiment
of a Progressive Era emphasis on public works. The New York State Barge
Canal was built explicitly to counter the growing monopoly of railroad
corporations over the American economy. The spine of the canal is a direct
descendant of the Erie Canal, which opened the interior of North America
to settlement and commercial agriculture, transforming the Atlantic economy.
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The Kimball
Village Site (13PM4) in Plymouth county, Iowa, is an exceptionally
well-preserved, circa CE 1100-1250, Plains Village site. This site embodies
all of the distinctive characteristics of early indigenous farmers, settlements,
and material culture that typify early Plains Village sites. This was a
transformative chapter in North American mid-continental history when people
switched from hunting and gathering and small-scale crop production to
a nucleated sedentary lifestyle based on intensive maize horticulture and
compact villages of substantive timber lodges.
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Our
Lady of Guadalupe Mission Chapel (McDonnell Hall) in San Jose, California,
connected the Mexican American civil rights movement, Catholic ministry
to ethnic Mexicans, and ongoing efforts to organize ethnic Mexican migrant
farmworkers. The chapel was the home for the Community Service Organization
(CSO) whose work helped to spur the emergence of César Chávez
as a community organizer, civil rights leader, and labor rights leader
between 1952 and 1962. The work carried out at the chapel ultimately helped
shape modern American Latino identity.
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As headquarters
for Petrified Forest National Park in Apache County, Arizona, the Painted
Desert Community Complex is the largest and the most fully articulated
expression of the decade-long Mission 66 program which addressed postwar
national park needs for up-to-date facilities and improved visitor experiences,
while limiting impacts to natural resources. Designed by renowned architects
Richard J. Neutra and Robert E. Alexander in the International Style, the
complex contains the many park headquarter functions including a new property
type—the visitor center.
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W.
A. Young & Sons Foundry and Machine Shop in Rices Landing, Pennsylvania,
is an outstanding example of a small, family-owned, twentieth-century foundry
and machine shop. “Job shops” like W. A. Young & Sons, which did custom
jobs for a variety of clients, were an important component of the American
industrial economy facilitated by the development of machine tools and
line-shaft power systems in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries.
The property includes perhaps the finest collection of machine tools found
in a small job shop.
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The Davis-Ferris
Organ, built for a New York City Episcopal church in 1846-1847, is
an example of the technical and mechanical achievements in the pre-Civil
War American organ-building industry. Forty years later, the organ was
sold to the Round Lake Camp Meeting in Upstate New York to accompany the
popular Methodist summer gatherings. It eventually anchored a transition
to a Chautauqua-style institution of culture, education, and enlightenment.
This organ is a record of American music-making covering both sacred and
secular genres.
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The Pauli
Murray Family Home in Durham, North Carolina, is associated with ground-breaking
civil rights activist, lawyer, educator, writer, and Episcopal priest Pauli
Murray. She served as a bridge figure between social movements through
her advocacy for both women’s and civil rights. Her efforts were critical
to retaining “sex” in Title VII, a fundamental legal protection for women
against employment discrimination. After decades of work for black civil
rights, her vision for a civil rights association for women became the
National Organization for Women (NOW).
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Constructed
in 1860 as the Allen’s Mill Bridge, Eldean Bridge in Miami County,
Ohio, is an excellent example of nineteenth-century covered bridge construction
and its span is a rare surviving Long truss, a highly significant nineteenth-century
timber truss type. Eldean Bridge is the most structurally intact of less
than a dozen surviving Long truss covered bridges in the United States.
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Constructed
in 1876 by J. J. Daniels, one of the nation’s most prolific covered bridge
builders, West Union Bridge in Parke County, Indiana, is an outstanding,
intact example of the Burr truss, a highly-significant American timber
bridge type that was widely used for a century. West Union Bridge is one
of the most visually impressive and structurally intact of approximately
180 surviving Burr truss covered bridges in the United States.
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Built
in the late 1920s, Omaha Union Station in Omaha Nebraska, is one
of the most distinctive and complete examples of Art Deco architecture
in the nation. The station outstandingly expresses the style’s innovative
and diverse surface ornamentation inspired by the machine age. As one of
the earliest Art Deco train stations designed by the Union Pacific (UP)
Railroad, its ultra-modern appearance was a major departure from previous
railroad station designs.
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The George
Read II House was built for the son of a Delaware signer of both the
Declaration of Independence and Constitution. His was a prominent Delaware
family. The house is an exceptional example of Federal style architecture
in the mid-Atlantic region and is especially valuable in understanding
the evolution of American architecture during the early years of the nation.
It is a rare survivor that exemplifies the city of Philadelphia where the
Federal style was first manifested.
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The Biesterfeldt
Site in Ransom County, North Dakota, is an earth lodge village site
culturally identifiable as having been occupied by the Cheyenne Indians
ca. 1724-1780. As the only known representative of that relatively brief
period in their history during which they pursued a horticultural way of
life, the archeological site has the potential to yield critical information
on the history of that tribe and various neighboring tribes. Biesterfeldt
also has the potential to inform us about the development of Plains Indian
culture during a period of intense and dramatic change.
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Walrus
Islands Archeological District near Togiak, Alaska, is one of the few
remaining places with evidence of human occupation of the Bering Sea continental
shelf when sea levels were substantially lower than at present. At least
6,000 years ago, the earliest inhabitants of Round Island, one of seven
islands in the district, were marine-adapted and practiced more generalized
settlement and subsistence patterns, including hunting walrus on the beaches,
than previously recognized by Alaska researchers.
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48GO305,
commonly referenced in archeological literature as “Hell Gap Paleoindian
Site,” located in Goshen County, Wyoming, contains evidence of repeated
occupations by nine Paleoindian cultural complexes in well-stratified deposits.
To date, no other excavated Paleoindian site in North America contains
a record that includes all of the cultural complexes known on the Plains
spanning from between 13,000 and 8,500 years ago. Since its discovery and
initial investigation, 48GO305 has been associated with cutting edge research
in the field of Paleoindian archeology.
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The May
4, 1970, Kent State Shootings Site in Kent, Ohio, is where the Ohio
National Guard shot and killed four Kent State University students and
wounded nine during a protest on the campus. This event affected public
opinion of the Vietnam War, increased the movement against the war, and
engendered prompt changes in military policy for civil disturbances, especially
for the National Guard. Later court trials resulted in a ruling by the
Supreme Court that the executive branch of government does not enjoy absolute
immunity for its actions, establishing a legal precedent.
Along
with these new designations, Secretary Jewell announced updates to several
previously recognized National Historic
Landmarks. These updates include boundary changes, updated documentation,
and/or name changes for: the Indiana War Memorials Historic District, Indianapolis,
Indiana; the Old Salem Historic District in Winston-Salem, North Carolina;
the Virginia State Capitol in Richmond, Virginia; the Hamilton Grange in
New York City; Maison Olivier in St. Martinsville, Louisiana; and Ball’s
Bluff Battlefield Historic District in Leesburg, Loudoun County, Virginia,
and Montgomery County, Maryland.
About
the National Park Service
More
than 20,000 National Park Service employees care for America’s 414 national
parks and work with communities across the nation to help preserve local
history and create close-to-home recreational opportunities. Visit us at
www.NPS.gov,
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Media
Contact:
Thomas
Crosson (NPS)
202-208-3046 |