Identifying historic buildings

Illustration

Washington Square West is not an ideal neighborhood to use to illustrate historic landmarks and districts because the entire neighborhood is a National Register District and many buildings have been individually listed on the Philadelphia Register. However, to illustrate the concept of how to identify historic landmarks and potential districts, the maps and photographs on the following pages indicate some of the individual landmark buildings in the Washington Square West neighborhood and some of the sub-areas that might be considered historic districts on their own. Each historic site is numbered with the name, address and a brief comment where necessary included in the key.

Exercise 5: Create an inventory of historic landmarks and potential districts

Create two maps of your neighborhood similar to that of Washington Square. On the first map indicate historic resources in the neighborhood that are already listed on the Philadelphia Register. After marking these locations on the map then add other buildings, sites, structures or objects that are not on the Philadelphia Register but are distinctive and important resources to your neighborhood. Also identify locations that may be suitable for historic markers. In the map key, give the name, address, type of landmark for each location and a short explanation of its importance to the neighborhood; it may be necessary to include this list of information on a separate page. Also provide a photograph of each landmark.

Create a second map to identify areas that might be an historic or conservation district and include one photograph of each potential district.The Preservation Alliance hopes you will submit copies of al the exercises in this handbook to the Alliance. However, whether you do or not we ask that you submit the map, listings and photographs from this chapter. This will enable us to add the historic resources and potential districts in your neighborhood to our citywide inventory of historic resources and contribute to our efforts to create a citywide preservation plan for Philadelphia. You may want to nominate some of these landmarks to the Philadelphia Register yourself. The Alliance’s publication, “How to Nominate a Building Site or Object to the Philadelphia Register,” is available online (see below) or a copy can be obtained by contacting the Preservation Alliance. The Alliance can also provide technical assistance with the preparation of a nomination for an individual building, for an historic district or conservation district, or for an application for an historic marker.

Resources

• The Philadelphia Historic Preservation Ordinance http://www.phila.gov/historical/ordinance.html
• How to Nominate an Individual Building, Structure, Site or Object to the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places* www.preservationalliance.com/publications/PA_Nominations_Online.**pdfHistoric Districts in Philadelphia, *An assessment of existing information and recommendations for future actionswww.preservationalliance.com/files/CRCGHistoricDistrictsinPhila.pdfPreservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia, resources and list of National Register and National Register eligible districts in Philadelphiahapter 5***www.preservationalliance.com/advocacy/preservation-in-philly.php
• Preservation Alliance for Greater PhiladelphiaHistoric Districts in Philadelphia, 2007, CCRGContains an analysis of all districts listed on or eligible to be listed on the National Register. http://www.preservationalliance.com/files/CRCGHistoricDistrictsinPhila.pdf
• Conservation District Ordinance, Queen Village www.qvna.org/committees/NCD-Ordinance.pdf
• Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission: Historical Marker Program www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/pennsylvania_**historical_marker_program/