Historic Preservation

Annual tour of Historic Florence returns for another year

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[Source: Gold Canyon Today]

Florence will celebrate its 26th Annual Tour of Historic Florence on Saturday, February 12, 2011 from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm.Image

Eleven historic homes, commercial buildings, and public buildings dating from 1868 to 1930 will be featured on the tour. Florence is noted for its collection of Territorial period architecture with over 120 buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The heart of the downtown commercial district retains much of its original western character with old adobe homes, graceful Victorians, and early 20th century commercial structures. The tour not only focuses on the town’s architecturally significant buildings, it also gives visitors a glimpse of Florence’s colorful past. The stories that shape Florence’s history run the gamut from old west gun fights to politicians and movie stars.

In addition to the tour, visitors and residents alike will not want to miss the grand re-opening celebration of McFarland State Historic Park at 10:00 a.m.  Special guests Renee Bahl, Executive Director of Arizona State Parks; Marshall Trimble, Arizona’s Official State Historian; Jim Garrison, State Historic Preservation Officer; and Florence Mayor Vickie Kilvinger will all speak during the event. The park recently opened after being closed for more than two years thanks to a partnership among Arizona State Parks, the Town of Florence, and Florence Main Street Program. The park now houses the Florence Visitor Center in addition to the museum.

Among the other activities happening that day, the Pinal County Historical Society Museum will present
“The Southwest Table” at 2 p.m. where they will have a demonstration of cooking with cactus and other desert plants by Jean Groen, author of “Foods of the Superstitions” and “Plants of the Sonoran Desert and Their Many Uses.” The museum will have a special display consisting of American tableware of Southwest design from the 1940’s and 1950’s.

After the tour, stop by the Florence Aeromodeler Park to see the Fun Fly & Swap Meet just two miles south of Florence on Highway 79. The Blue Adobe Meeting Center will feature their weekly History Hub Matinee Shows at 12 p.m. and 2 p.m. for a separate fee not included in tour admission.

The self-guided Tour of Historic Florence begins in downtown Florence at 291 N. Main Street, at the corner of Main Street and 8th Street. Admission for adults is $10 in advance or $12 on the day of the tour, children under 18 are free. Trolleys will provide transportation to tour sites at no additional cost. Proceeds from the tour support downtown revitalization activities of the Florence Main Street Program.

Feds Threaten Major Cuts to Historic Preservation Grants

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[Source: Ryan Holeywell, Governing.com]

President Obama and the GOP don’t tend to agree on much these days. But they’ve found common ground in one unusual place: Both want to cut millions of dollars in historic preservation grants.

This week, Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Tex.), a GOP deputy whip and member of the Republican Study Committee’s steering committee, introduced a bill that would cut $150 billion over five years through nearly 50 types of spending reductions across the board.

Some of the cuts are politically charged, like rescinding voluntary payments to the United Nations and eliminating the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Others are common-sense proposals taken from the president’s fiscal commission, such as requiring the sale of excess federal property and reducing federal travel costs.

A little-noticed proposal was a plan to eliminate two programs that fund historic preservation grants: Save America’s Treasures and Preserve America.

According to a House-issued breakdown of Brady’s proposal:

This amendment would eliminate funding for the Save America’s Treasures and Preserve America Program, as called for by the President who said both programs are duplicative and underperforming.

The Preserve America Grant Program was established in 2003 (as) a grant program within (the Department of the Interior) to provide ‘planning funding to support preservation efforts through heritage tourism, education, and historic preservation planning.’

The Save America’s Treasures Program in Department of Interior awards grants to preserve historically significant properties. This account is also heavily earmarked. $4.6 million is appropriated for Preserve in FY 2010 and $25 million is appropriated for Save. The Department of the Interior oversees multiple, overlapping historic preservation programs. Additionally, every federal agency is required to maintain a historic preservation program and must appoint a historic preservation officer and comply with the National Historic Preservation Act. In addition, there are numerous other federal grant programs and tax provisions aimed at historic preservation.

But Patrick J. Lally, director of congressional affairs for The National Trust for Historic Preservation, said Brady is downplaying the grants’ significance. Save America’s Treasures is the only federal grant dedicated exclusively to physical restoration of nationally significant sites, and it represents a significant portion of all federal funding for historic preservation.

The historic preservation fund, which is part of the Department of Interior, is usually funded at about $75 million to $78 million, and Save America’s Treasures usually makes up about $25 million to $30 million of that total. Eliminating it would be a huge blow to federal preservation efforts, Lally tells FedWatch. “It’s not like when lawmakers propose elimination of these funds they go to another account within the historic preservation fund,” Lally says. “They go away.”

Save America’s Treasures has provided funding to restore the Montgomery bus where Rosa Parks made her stand, the workshop where Thomas Edison created his inventions and the cottage to which President Lincoln retreated during hot Washington summers, among other projects. Since its 1998 launch, it has provided nearly $294 million to more than 1,100 preservation projects.

While Save America’s Treasures focuses on physical work, Preserve America grants provide funding for things like marketing, research and digitizing records — ancillary work that helps to promote “heritage tourism” to cultural and natural sites. For example, Honolulu was awarded $150,000 to develop programs to showcase its Chinatown, and Oxford, Miss. received $75,000 to fund exhibits about the life of Supreme Court Justice L.Q.C. Lamar in his historic home. Preserve America has provided more than $17 million in grants to more than 225 projects.

This time, the programs are being targeted by a House Republican. But a year ago, it was President Obama who proposed cutting the programs in his 2010-2011 budget. White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer wrote on the White House blog that they “lack rigorous performance metrics and evaluation efforts so the benefits are unclear.”

That decision was especially unusual, given that the White House has previously been a supporter of the programs. In March 2009, Obama signed legislation that permanently authorized them, and in December of that year, First Lady Michelle Obama touted Save America’s Treasures as a way to “empower communities all over the country to rescue and restore this priceless heritage.”

Lally says he believes Obama’s proposal to cut the programs last year was an oversight. Congress ultimately preserved funding for the programs, largely due to the fact that Save America’s Treasures has a record of creating jobs (16,000 since its inception), Lally says. The White House’s budget will be released next month, and preservations are anxiously waiting to see whether it will against target the two programs, like Brady has already done. And given that deficit reduction has been the theme repeated ad nauseum by the new House Republican leadership, the future of the programs could be in jeopardy.

The fact that the two programs are fighting for their survival is especially ironic, considering the $29.6 allotted to them is a pittance of the overall federal budget. Nancy Schamu, executive director of the National Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers, tells FedWatch she doesn’t know why preservation funding is being targeted, especially since it’s basically “decimal dust” in the grand scheme of things.

“That’s something you’ll have to ask the bill drafters,” she says.

Anthony Tung to be Keynote Speaker at AZ Historic Preservation Conference 2011

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[Source:  PRLog (Press Release)]

© Janet Vicario

Renowned author and international historian Anthony Tung will be a featured speaker during “Valuing Historic Perspectives,” the Ninth Annual Historic Preservation Conference, to be held June 22-24, 2011 at the University Park Marriott Hotel near the campus of the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Author and urbanist Anthony M. Tung has been a New York City Landmarks Preservation Commissioner, an instructor on architectural history at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and a visiting professor on international urban preservation at MIT. He has lectured in Singapore, Madrid, Amsterdam, Istanbul,San Juan, Edinburgh, Athens, Mexico City, Vienna, Kyoto, and across North America—consulting on heritage conservation policy with officials in Toronto, Halifax, New York, and New Orleans.

His first book, entitled Preserving the World’s Great Cities:  The Destruction and Renewal of the Historic Metropolis (hardcover: Clarkson Potter, 2001; softcover: Three Rivers Press, 2001) is a detailed socio-cultural portrait of preservation efforts in eighteen cities across the globe—described by Publisher’s Weekly as an “important contribution not only to the literature of urban studies and city planning but to architectural history and sociology,” by the Atlanta Journal Constitution as “a remarkable chronicle of human spirit and architectural heritage,” by Architectural Record On-Line as “an epic, or rather, 18 little epics packed into one important book,” and by The Washington Post, as “a landmark of creative urbanism . . . Tung’s breath of vision and rapid-fire insights recall Lewis Mumford at his best.” (more here)

“Valuing Historic Perspectives” held jointly by Arizona State Parks, the State Historic Preservation Office, Main Street / Department of Commerce, non-profit Arizona Preservation Foundation, the Arizona Historical Society, and the Arizona Archaeological Council will bring together more than 300 people and organizations interested in current topics and program management best practices in preservation, drawn primarily from architectural, archaeological, historical research, consulting, real estate development, construction, general contracting, Tribal, legal, and state and local government organizations from across the Southwest.

Sessions at the 2011 Conference will include:  Folk Baroque: the Art & Architecture of San Xavier del Bac – National Historic Landmark, built 1783-1797; Preserving the History of Arizona and the West in the Levi Strauss & Co. Archives; Introduction to Prehistoric Analyses in Arizona; Doing the Business of Archaeology in Arizona: Integrating AZSITE, the State Historic Preservation Act and the Arizona Antiquities Act into Arizona Archaeology; and The Basics of Historical Period Artifact Identification.

“Valuing Historic Perspectives” will be based out of the University Park Marriott Hotel, just outside the campus of the University of Arizona.  Registration information is available online at www.azpreservation.com. Conference registration begins at $225 per person; member and early registration and professional affiliation discounts are available.  Full-time undergraduate and graduate student rates are available.

Conference underwriters include: Arizona Department of Commerce; the National Park Service; the National Trust for Historic Preservation; Arizona State Parks; the City of Tucson; Desert Archaeology, Inc.; Statistical Research, Inc.; Archaeological Consulting Services; the Tempe Historic Preservation Foundation; the Arizona Historical Society; Local First Arizona; HistoricStreetscapes; Baker Custom Photo; the Arizona Archaeological Council; and the Arizona State Museum.  More information about Arizona Preservation Foundation, its goals and mission, is available at www.azpreservation.org.

Council to act on contracts to reopen McFarland Park

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[Source: Mark Cowling, Tri-Valley Central.com] – Agreements are near which will allow the town to move its visitor center to McFarland State Park, reopening the county’s first courthouse to visitors after more than a year, and making all four corners of a key historic intersection open for business again for the first time in over 30 years.

The Florence Main Street Program, which operates the visitor center under contract with the town, will move the visitor center to McFarland State Park, perhaps next month. Main Street will further work with Arizona State Parks and their archivist to bring displays and exhibits to the building.