Beyond a Boundary: Washington’s Historic Districts and Their Racial Contents

Abstract

Between the mid-1970s and the mid-1980s there was a wave of citizen-initiated preservation activity in Washington, DC, much of it directed towards identifying and expanding neighbourhood historic districts. These efforts were driven by several different events and influences that coalesced in the period: a new sense of local control that came with the establishment of municipal self-government in the District of Columbia after 1975; the expectation that a comprehensive historic preservation law would be enacted in the district; the U.S. Supreme Court’s affirmation of the legality of preservation controls in 1978; and the renewed salience of the idea of place that affected everything from community art and neighbourhood activism to urban design and architectural theory. This paper addresses this moment of intense activity by investigating the ways in which preservation advocates in one neighbourhood, Dupont Circle, sought to expand their historic district. The proposal to add several square miles of new territory to the designated historic area was led by a predominantly white preservation organization, the Dupont Circle Conservancy. The proposal aroused significant opposition from a group calling itself the 14th and U Street Coalition, which styled itself as the representative of African-American interests and historical identity in neighbouring Shaw. They protested that the Dupont Circle preservationists were attempting to annex their neighbourhood and with it, their history. At first glance this conflict appears to be a predictable case of inner city gentrification fought along the lines of racial identity. But when examined more carefully, the series of claims and counter-claims embedded in the conflict exposed a more nuanced set of issues related to skin tone, class, and historical entitlement. The conflict highlighted the absence of any agreement about what constituted the historicity of such a historic area and cast doubt over who might be qualified speak on behalf of the history contained in such an area.

Historic Preservation and Urban Revitalization in the Twenty-first Century

“…Underscoring the ongoing importance of deciphering the racial and class implications of preservation and laying the groundwork for future studies, scholars have examined the architecture of segregation (Weyeneth 2005), conflicts surrounding the Dupont Circle historic district in Washington, DC (Logan 2012) and the siting of the Arthur Ashe statue along Richmond’s Monument Avenue (Hodder 1999). In recent years, scholars have also provided a foundation for research on the twenty-first-century debate between demolition and preservation with Verderber (2009) studying the issue in relation to post-disaster preservation planning and Mallach (2011) focusing on shrinking cities.…”

Historic preservation in declining city neighbourhoods: Analysing rehabilitation tax credit investments in six US cities

“…Scholars broadly address urban preservation, focusing on downtown revitalisation (Ryberg-Webster, 2013), heritage tourism (Carr and Servon, 2009), politics and power (Saito, 2009; Zhang, 2011), race and inequity (Domer, 2009; Logan, 2012) and gentrification (Allison, 2005). Studies demonstrate that historic designation has a positive effect on property values, including a strong spillover effect (Coulson and Leichenko, 2001; Ijla et al, 2011; Zahirovic-Herbert and Chatterjee, 2012), although a few reach the opposite conclusion (Heintzelman and Altieri, 2013; Noonan and Krupka, 2011).…”