 Good afternoon. Welcome to the on-demand content at Pass Forward 2022. I am Lauren Cohen, Associate Director of Government Relations at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and I'm pleased to welcome everyone to today's session. Support telling the full American story through efforts to reauthorize the Historic Preservation Fund. Today, we'll hear from five speakers. First, you'll hear from myself and my colleague Hannah Stark from the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Then, we'll hear from three dynamic leaders in Historic Preservation about their recent success stories in securing grants to tell the full American story in their communities and states. Now, it's my pleasure to introduce my colleague Hannah Stark. Hannah is the Policy Communications Coordinator at the National Trust. Hannah, can you kick things off and provide an overview of the Historic Preservation Fund? Thanks, Lauren. It's really hard to overstate the importance of the Historic Preservation Fund to communities across the country. I'm going to provide you with a little bit of background on its history. Congress established the Historic Preservation Fund in 1976 to support the initiatives mandated by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966. This act laid out the basic framework of the preservation field that we all know today. It created a partnership between the federal, state, tribal, and local governments to preserve historic properties and cultural resources. It called upon governors to appoint a State Historic Preservation Officer and tribal leaders to appoint a Tribal Historic Preservation Officer, shippos and tippos, respectively. The Act also established the National Register of Historic Places and National Historic Landmark Programs, which designate historic properties of national, state, and local significance. Many of you are probably familiar with Section 106 of the Act, which requires federal agencies to take into account the effects of their actions on historic properties by identifying them, assessing adverse effects, and resolving those effects. The Act was the catalyst to formalize and professionalize the historic preservation field for all of us. A decade after the Act's passage, Senator Henry M. Jackson of Washington State sponsored an amendment to enhance the Act. One of the key provisions was the establishment of the Historic Preservation Fund, a dedicated funding source to carry out the provisions of the 1966 Act. Until the Historic Preservation Fund was established, the mandates of the Act were unfortunately severely underfunded. The amendment also coincided with our nation's bicentennial, which brought a heightened sense of pride and desire to preserve our nation's heritage. The HPF is a trust fund in the U.S. Treasury funded by Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Lease Revenues. Since 1980, $150 million has been deposited annually within the fund and is available for congressional appropriations. The idea was to use revenues generated through the exploitation of one non-renewable source, oil and gas reserves, to fund the protection of another, our nation's heritage. The HPF is uniquely structured and does not use taxpayer dollars. Originally, the funding was intended just for shippos, but later grew to include local governments in the 1980s and tribal governments in the 1990s. The program's authorized level has remained constant at $150 million since its inception, although adjusted for inflation, $150 million in 1980 is the equivalent of more than $537 million today. The Historic Preservation Fund has guided federal investment and engagement in historic preservation activity for almost 50 years now. I hope you can see that its contributions to our nation's fabric are far-reaching and long-lasting. I'm now going to provide you with an overview of HPF's grant programs. The National Park Service administers the HPF on behalf of the Secretary of the Interior. Funds are dispersed through an apportionment formula and as competitive grants. State and tribal Historic Preservation Offices receive annual block grants using an apportionment formula to assist in expanding and accelerating their historic preservation activities. These appropriations provide essential operational funding for these offices to fulfill their duties in the National Historic Preservation Act. Shippo funding is divided between the 50 states, 5 territories, 3 freely-associated states of Micronesia and the District of Columbia. Shippos are required to provide a 40% match to their awarded funding and at least 10% of each Shippo's funding must be sub-granted to certified local governments or CLGs. CLGs are local governments whose preservation programs have been endorsed by the state and the National Park Service as meeting National Historic Preservation Standards. These grants leverage local matches to support preservation projects such as surveys, national register nominations, preservation education, and community planning. The National Park Service Tribal Preservation Program designates tribes that have signed agreements with the National Park Service as approved Shippos. A Shippo assumes the functions and responsibilities of a Shippo on tribal lands to protect and conserve important cultural and historic assets. In addition to the important role of funding state and tribal historic preservation offices, the HPF also supports competitive grant programs to preserve and document diverse histories. Competitive grants are appropriated by Congress from the HPF for specific grant programs. These programs address a wide variety of preservation needs across the country and fund various types of work. In recent years, more competitive grant programs have been created to celebrate the diversity of our nation and the histories of underrepresented communities. This fiscal year, fiscal year 2022, seven competitive grant programs are funded, totaling $84 million. Several of these grant programs focus on specific communities that have been underrepresented in our historical narrative. They are starred on screen, and I'll briefly mention each. You will also hear from three grant recipients shortly of their experiences. One of the largest programs is the African American Civil Rights Grants. Usually 50 or 60 grants are awarded each year. The goal is to document, interpret, and preserve sites related to African American struggle through the transatlantic slave trade all the way until the modern civil rights movement. This grant is also now open and accepting applications until November 8th, 2022. A relatively new and still growing program is the History of Equal Rights. It is a bit of a spin-off of the African American Civil Rights Program. The idea being this grant is instead focused on all American civil rights struggles. Another program focused on diversity with a healthy amount of funding is the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Program. It works to preserve national registered listed and eligible buildings on accredited HBCU campuses. Next is a small dollar program with big impacts across the country, the Underrepresented Community Grant Program. It provides funding to SHIPOs, TIPOs, and CLGs to survey and nominate properties associated with communities currently underrepresented in the National Register and National Historic Landmark programs. It can also be used to amend older nominations that overlook common histories. The HPF is one of the most widely supported and high-performing federal grant programs. It has breathed life into long, untold stories that help communities protect places that form our cultural identities. Again, I want to reiterate, the National Park Service administers these programs. The National Trust is just a committed advocate and supporter of the programs. If you're interested in applying and learning more about program eligibility, please visit the National Park Service Historic Preservation webpage. And Lauren, I'll turn it back to you. Thank you, Hannah. Well, with that excellent background, I'm going to provide an overview of the appropriations process and a brief history of HPF funding levels. So you may have heard the saying that Congress holds the purse strings of the government, and the appropriations process is primarily how that happens. Both the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate have 12 appropriations subcommittees, funding everything from defense, rural development, homeland security to the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Park Service, and the Historic Preservation Fund. Each subcommittee writes the legislation that allocates federal funds to numerous government agencies, departments, and organizations on an annual basis. The subcommittees who hold jurisdiction over the Department of Interior, and thus the National Park Service and the HPF, is the subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies. I've listed the current members of those subcommittees in both the House and the Senate here. Take a moment to review this list, and if you have a member of Congress listed here, know that they hold a good deal of power when it comes to making early decisions on funding levels for the HPF. Advocating to all members of Congress is important, but if you are represented by one of these members, your advocacy for the HPF is key. We'll talk about ways to advocate a little bit later. To give you an idea of how the appropriation cycle carries out, here is what a typical year looks like, and I say typical with a pretty big asterisk. You honestly never know how the appropriation cycle is really going to play out, but this is what we typically see. So in January and February of each year, the process really starts with the administration. So federal agencies provide a budget proposal to OMB, or the Office of Management Budget, and then the President's budget request is released. Now, I always like to note that the President's budget request is just that. It's a request. It's what the President and the rest of the administration would like to see in the budget for the coming fiscal year. It is not exactly what we see for the fiscal year. As a reminder, that privilege is held by Congress, not by the administration. So in March and April, the U.S. House subcommittees receive testimony from outside organizations. They hold hearings and they write that initial legislation with those initial numbers of what they would like to see each agency or department or program funded at. In May and June, the U.S. House Full Appropriations Committee votes on the subcommittee legislation. So now we've gone from subcommittee to full committee. In July, the entire U.S. House votes on appropriations packages. So this would mean that every single member of the United States House of Representatives, so all 435 members, actually get to vote on these appropriations packages. That also means that any member of Congress can propose an amendment to these packages. Sometimes we see amendments that could be harmful to funding for the HPF, but sometimes we see amendments that can be helpful from someone who doesn't serve on the appropriations committee and wasn't able to offer that amendment early in the process. Also in July, we start to see the U.S. Senate subcommittees receive testimony, hold hearings, and write legislation. So the U.S. Senate starts their process later in the summer, whereas the U.S. House starts it early in the spring. By September, the U.S. Senate Full Appropriations Committee votes on subcommittee legislation, but it's important to note here that the end of the fiscal year is on September 30th. So if you don't see all of this wrapped up by September 30th, which it rarely is, we'll see something called a continuing resolution or a CR, and that's triggered to be able to finish this work. So when you see a CR, that really means that they haven't had the time to finish the work before September 30th. And if they were to not have a CR, that would mean that the government would technically run out of money or shut down, basically. So they need to have a CR triggered to make sure that they can finish that work. By October and December, understanding that we're probably in a CR period at this point, the entire U.S. Senate votes on the appropriations packages. Final past House and Senate bills are then sent to conference. Usually House and Senate bills for appropriations dollars are a little bit different. They're not always exactly the same amount of money for each program or department or anything like that. So they have to go to what we call a conference, which means that those differences are hashed out. When that's completed, final passage by both chambers needs to happen and then the president signs that appropriations bill into law. Also, something that can happen in the appropriations process is report language is included. You may have heard this term before. And really what this means is that appropriators are providing some policy direction in addition to how much money to spend. Report language shows how they would prefer the money to be spent. So they're able to put in a little bit of policy direction there. Now, again, as I said, all of this comes with a lot of caveats. Some years no CR is required since both chambers finished their work before September 30th. This unfortunately is exceedingly rare. In fact, it's only happened four times since 1977. So if no funding bill is passed before the end of a CR, the government shuts down. And many of you are probably more familiar with a government shutdown than an appropriations package that is passed by September 30th. Now, I'll also note that CRs are less than ideal in terms of continuing to fund the government because it keeps the funding from the previous year intact, which if you've seen an increase in funding during the appropriations process, that means that you're under that lower level of funding for longer. This is especially worrisome when rumors of a full year CR start to crop up. Now, for the past several years, the National Trust has produced an appropriations report detailing the agreed upon asks from a coalition of national historic preservation organizations for the coming fiscal year. We deliver this report to every single congressional office on the Hill, including committee staff, to provide a clear justification for increases and other needs from the field. This report has become a key advocacy tool to demonstrate the incredible work happening across the country and the ways in which increased funding could further that work. On the right is a listing of all of the recent funding levels for various programs as well as the field's FY 2023 ask. I know that's very small there and you can't read it now, but I do encourage you to check out the appropriations report for yourself because it details so much incredible work that's happening across the country and across so many different programs. Now, let's take a little closer look at the recent funding history for the HPF. As Hannah mentioned, $150 million is deposited annually into a fund at the Treasury, but only the current fiscal year has the funding for the HPF ever even been met and then exceeded that $150 million mark. It's important to note that the $150 million mark is not a cap. It's certainly not a cap. It's just the amount that's deposited each year. Frankly, as I said, so many years have passed where we have not reached $150 million for the HPF. So we're well under that the amount that could be appropriated for the Historic Preservation Fund. The steady growth in funding and continued need among SHIPOs, TIPOs, and the competitive grant programs yielded our ask for fiscal year 2023 to be $200 million. You can see that there. You'll note here that the final enacted level for FY 2020 was $118.6 million and compare that to just two years later for a final enacted level of just over $173 million for the current fiscal year. This is a huge amount of growth showing that we have excellent advocates who have connected with true congressional champions on Capitol Hill. Here's a look at the full trajectory of funding for the HPF since FY 1968. You'll notice several periods of steady growth along with some peaks and valleys, often corresponding with periods of recession in our country as well. But you can see that we are on a steady climb up and we hope to continue that trend in the next several years. But now we'd like to hear from a few recipients of various historic preservation fund competitive grant programs. First up is Judith Wellman, a principal investigator at historical New York Research Associates and a professor emerita at the State University of New York at Oswego. She is currently the president of the 1816 Farmington Quaker Meeting House Museum. Judith, can you provide us with some insight on the recent History of Equal Rights grant that you received? Thank you so much, Lauren. It is a delight to be here to support the historic preservation fund. We absolutely could not do this work without you and thank you so much for doing this panel. The 1816 Farmington Quaker Meeting House looked like this in 2007. Next slide. And in spite of that awful condition, a small group of local people decided they wanted to save this building. Why would anyone looking at this building think it was worth saving? And it's because it is so important to the national story of equal rights for all people in this country. Next slide. So this presentation will talk a bit about why this meeting house is important nationally, how it got to be in the shape that it's in, and how this all volunteer local group is saving this building for the future. Next slide. It's important both architecturally and historically. As you can see, it's a traditional Quaker Meeting House with a broadside to the street, two front doors, one for men, one for women. This one is exceptionally large. It was designed to hold a thousand people for what Quakers called their annual meetings in June for 25 Quaker Meetings across western New York and Canada. It's probably the largest pre- canal building in western New York. Farmington is located near the Erie Canal built in 1825 and the railroads in 1840s. And these new transportation systems created a revolution in bringing people into this area, which was both rich in agricultural lands and rich in industrial sites. Farmington was at the epicenter of what people called the burned over district or the psychic highway of upstate New York, because so many religious and reform movements emerged in this period. Next. Movements for equal rights, especially focusing on African Americans, Native Americans, and women flourished amidst this turmoil. These movements were rooted in both secular and religious traditions. Next. As Americans, people believed in the Declaration of Independence. They knew it by heart. They heard it recited every year on the 4th of July. We hold these truths to be self-evident. It said that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Next slide. Many reformers also rooted their belief system in religious traditions, in this case Christianity. And they often quoted biblical verses such as the one from Galatians. In Christ there's neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female. Quakers especially were susceptible to equal rights movements because they believed that there was that of God and everyone. And as George Fox, the founder said, walked cheerfully over the earth answering that of God and everyone. Farmington Equal Rights focused on three basic groups, African Americans, Native Americans, and women. Next slide. African Americans came to the Farmington area as part of the larger abolitionist movement and also on the Underground Railroad. And there were dozens and perhaps hundreds of people who came through the Farmington area on the Underground Railroad, including some well-known African American leaders such as Austin Stewart, William Wells Brown, the Edmundson sisters, Frederick Douglass. Native Americans came to Farmington with a request that Quakers become allies in the fight they had to maintain their homelands in western New York. They were determined not to have a trail of tears for the Haudenosaunee people as the Cherokee Choctaw creaks had had that same summer. They were fighting against the Treaty of Buffalo Creek, which mandated that all Haudenosaunee people move west of the Mississippi. Seneca people, the largest and the westernmost part of the Haudenosaunee nations refused to leave. And at their request, they had many councils with Quakers, both at the Farmington Meeting House and Caterogus and elsewhere. The work that they did resulted in keeping three of their four major homelands. Women also found a haven in Farmington and support for equal rights. There were among Quakers a tradition of women being treated with respect and having political as well as individual, personal, spiritual power. That led them to become helpful when Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the catalyst in Seneca Falls, decided she wanted to create a convention solely to discuss the rights of women. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was the catalyst, but the Quakers were the real organizers. And at that convention, they adopted a document called the Declaration of Sentiments that was patterned after the Declaration of Independence. Except saying all men are created equal, this document said all men and women are created equal. Of the 100 people who signed that declaration, about a quarter of them were Quakers affiliated with the Farmington Quaker Meeting House. Next slide. So what happened to this building? Such an important national center for equal rights for people of color, Native Americans, women? Why did it get into such terrible condition? Well, like many people in rural upstate New York after the Civil War, Farmington Quakers went west or they went to urban areas for better jobs and new opportunities. So the people associated with this meeting house began literally to leave town. Next slide. In 1927, the remaining Quakers sold this meeting house to John Van Lair, a local farmer, who decided to turn it into a barn. And to do that, he took out every other window. He raised the first floor to create a second floor. He took the dividers that had separated the men's and women's meetings, made a little room upstairs. So he kept the original pieces of the meeting house, but he put them all in different places. And further, he moved the meeting house 325 feet east down the road. Next slide. By the late 20th century, this meeting house was clearly falling into extreme disrepair. It was so bad after a woman ran her car into the post and cracked it and the whole wall bay fell off that the Farmington Town Board mandated that it be demolished. Next slide. This local group decided that that was not going to happen. And they went every meeting to the Farmington Town Board and convinced the Farmington Town Board to support trying to save this building because of its historic importance. We had a lot of support from the town of Farmington, Farmington Friends Church, town historians, county historians, landmark society, Finger Lakes tourism. And statewide we found support from the Historic Preservation Office and the Preservation League of New York State and Humanities New York as well. Next slide. We also had some clear guidelines for ourselves and they dealt with our mission. They dealt with authenticity and research to carry that out with knowing our audiences with developing some methods that helped reach those audiences with our mission message and with finding the resources to carry out this enormous project. Next slide. We stick to our mission in spite of changing political context. And we think about what do we want to convey to the world. We decided that we wanted to maintain and preserve and interpret this building as a national site of conscience, a cornerstone of historic movements for equal rights, social justice and peace, including rights for Native Americans, African Americans and women. And we invite visitors to explore these issues of equality and justice in their own lives and in our own world. Next. This is the value of authenticity. This site as all historic sites are unique. We try very hard to be true to the reality of what actually happened here. To do that we did serious research, extensive research in primary sources, published in 2017, a historic structure report, which really outlines the basic importance of this building historically with an echoes in our own time. Next. We pay particular attention to our audiences. And we attract people of all ages from kids to senior citizens. We attract most people from European American backgrounds, but some native and African people of African backgrounds. And our programs always deal with people of color and with the reform movements that allied all three of these groups together. We try when our audiences arrive to meet them where they are and to create a space of safety where they can feel free to talk to other people who may not look like themselves to learn to think and to begin to shape the world that we'd all like to live in. Of respect and justice for everyone. Next. To do this we do two basic kinds of work. One is arms and we have been extraordinarily grateful to Humanities New York for funding programs over many years. All of them deal with equal rights. We focus especially on Native Americans, African Americans and women both past and present to carry out our mission. And they also help us expand our audiences because we don't have an appropriate meeting place at the moment. The building is unrestored. We have made links with local historical societies and museums and historic sites. And we meet with them to help expand our own audience and also expand their audience. Next. Our second major focus has been on restoring this building. About 85% of the original fabric of this building still exists. With help from our architects, John G. Wade Associates, we have stabilized this building. We've repaired its framing structure. Next. We've moved it across the road. And we had a celebration that included Peter Jemison, Seneca and reenactment of Susan B. Anthony and Quakers. Next. And we restored its North Bay in 2018 so that it now has its full size that it originally had. Next. The resources to do this have not been easy as you can imagine to find. We have been so reliant on local people and private donations, but there is no way that a project of this size could be funded without federal and state money. New York state helped us in the early years with an environmental protection fund of $330,000. We had to match that with private and federal monies. Private donors included the National Trust for Historic Preservation with an emergency grant early on, 1772 Foundation, the Rochester Area Community Foundation and many, many private people. But we could not do this without help from federal sources. The National Park Services Network to Freedom helped with two key grants early on. And the Historic Preservation Fund with the Equal Rights Program is going to help us finish this restoration. It would not be possible to do this kind of work without the Historic Preservation Fund. And that allows us to use federal monies also then for state and local and private matches. We've raised so far $1.2 million. Next. Thanks to all this support, this meeting house stands today protected on its site, covered with T111 siding to protect the clapboards, ready for full restoration, which we will do with this Historic Preservation Equal Rights grant money. Thanks to everyone who has faith in this project, and it seems almost like a miracle to us that we are able to do this and that we are going to put it over the top with the help of the Historic Preservation Fund. So thanks to the Historic Preservation Fund. Thanks to you all for coming. Thank you so much, Judith. Next, we're going to hear from Nicholas Van, the Deputy State Historic Preservation Officer for Washington State. Nicholas, we're excited to hear details on the underrepresented community grants the Washington Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation has received. So I'll pass it all to you. Excellent. Thank you so much, Lauren. And thank you also for having me on this panel. It's really a pleasure to share all of these stories with all of you. So as Lauren mentioned, I'm Nicholas Van. I'm the Deputy State Historic Preservation Officer for the Washington State Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation, which is the SHPO in Washington State. And I first wanted to start by explaining a little bit about myself because I feel like my identity and my lived experience are a primary motivator that explains the perspectives that I'm going to describe today. I'm a Chinese American and I've had to teach myself much of that history because it wasn't taught in school. That's another story for another day. My family's been here for multiple generations. My family's roots are all over the rural western towns. However, I think we can do a better job at reflecting my family's history, Chinese American history, and the often difficult immigrant history as well in the historic built environment. The history resulted in prolific legacies and increased acknowledgement and understanding of such is fully supported by the underrepresented communities grant program, which is part of the HPF funding. I know a lot of people feel the same way and we share this kind of sentiment with the importance surrounding the URC grant program. In general, I'd say such resources are definitely a risk of full erasure. That's for a number of reasons, which I won't get into right now. But I know that we have to document and understand before we can preserve and protect. And if we fail to act now to document these places and connect the people living today in these places to the history and significance and the presence of the people that came before us, then we're going to lose them. And they're not renewable resources, which is really important to keep in mind when you're putting on a preservation lens and understanding the importance of doing the things that we do. This is one of the many things that motivates me and helps facilitate that sense of belonging that I feel like everybody deserves, no matter where you live or who you are, but especially for people of color like me or people with hidden identities and so on. I want to speak about the impacts overall of the underrepresented communities grant program has had. Not so much on the content. I definitely encourage you to explore further. If you hit next, we can start cycling through and it'll start playing some images of some of the places that we've been able to find through this program. One of the most important things about the underrepresented communities grant program is that it puts people first. In my view, this is the way that it has always been and should always be people centric. Government and public service, I also strongly believe should be this way and it is in a lot of cases. And I'm also very lucky and I'd say proud to work in a place that aligns with my personal values on this. We've taken full advantage of the underrepresented community grant program offerings. We've been able to do a lot of outreach and survey for the Latino community in both rural eastern Washington and in the Seattle area. We're currently working on a statewide surveying context for Filipino-American history with the Filipino-American National Historical Society. And that encompasses also a huge amount of agricultural and labor history. We also have an ongoing project for black creators to survey and document the vast contributions of black and African-American architects, engineers, artists, builders, et cetera. That project is being led by Monat Hearn from Guided Methods and Ellen Mira with the Johnson Partnership. And now we're just beginning to work on documenting the fragile existence of historic places from the Chinese Exclusion Area, if Chinese Exclusion Area, which obviously is very near and dear to my heart. So excited to start undertaking that work. For the Washington SHPO, this grant program is really always transcended simply documenting the history of many marginalized communities and increasing the representation and survey in national register nominations. I think that the real long-term sustainable impacts of a grant program like this go well beyond the deliverables, which are really important, obviously. But I feel like the long-term goals and relationships that are established really transcend the program and kind of take it to that place where it has this really important meaning for a lot of folks. It goes beyond simply increasing representation in the natural register. Through all of our grant-funded work, we've really intended to set the table for everybody we have begun to interact with. We want to bring them in, but also listen to understand how preservation may be approached differently from various perspectives. Personally, I've gotten tired of hearing things like, well, we don't know that history is asking us for help. And I also got tired of government saying to someone that's bringing forward a nomination that we can't acknowledge that history and significance because of something that might have changed over time. Maybe somebody totally unrelated to that history covered up the building with vinyl siding or replaced the windows 20 years ago, or the inside got remodeled a dozen times. We've seen it all with buildings that have been around for quite a while. Of course, things are going to change. Things always change and buildings continue to evolve. But that doesn't take anything away from the cultural or historic significance of the community of people that affected that building and are part of that history and ingrained into the actual fabric that composes them. So what, in my opinion, are the true outcomes of the underrepresented community's grants, particularly in Washington State? Again, I think that they really transcend increasing numbers on the National Register. And I think that the quantitative data is not quite a true barometer of reaching equity and preservation. Because if people don't feel like their stories and places are fully represented in the National Register or in the recognition of historic significance through historic preservation, then I think we have a real problem. People need to feel like they belong. Like their places and their story and their history matters, because it does. Everyone is entitled to feel like they belong wherever there are. Whether they've been there for five minutes or five generations. And the grant program really truly facilitates this. It helps us build relationships with the people and the organizations that haven't necessarily been included in the past or maybe they have been included. But there haven't been equitable outcomes because we haven't exactly examined the overall processes with an inclusive and fully representative lens towards equity. So we have a lot in that arena and because we're able to forge these relationships with many communities, I think that we're building a much stronger movement in terms of relevance and meaning of historic preservation practice in this country. Some of the most recent success that we've had were spurred by two rounds in documentation for Washington's Latino community. Through that work we were introduced to Jesus Sanchez. He's a prominent figure in the Latino community here in Washington. But we were also very clear at the beginning of that project and assertive that Latino farm labor history in particular in the Yakima Valley was important and significant and it matters in Washington state history. So we were able to raise awareness around resources previously ignored and taken for granted by ourselves and even by the Latino community. And now Jesus actually serves the chair of our state advisory council on historic preservation. So building that relationship has in fact had a sustainable impact by having him chair our advisory council and it's been great to be able to work with him over the week, over the years. We've also listed two critically important sites as part of the survey work. El Centro de la Raza and chief self high school in Seattle. El Centro is really fascinating to me. It started as Beacon Hill elementary in Seattle but it was later occupied by civil rights activists and then it was transformed into El Centro in the early 1970s. Now we all see elementary schools in our communities are super important and vital community gathering places in our neighborhoods, in our urban landscapes. They often times have architectural significance as well but they're fairly common resource type. To me what sets this apart though is that there's only one El Centro. There's only one El Centro de la Raza and there's many El Centros in other cities and places and states but what sets this place apart was that later history that occupation by civil rights activists and the stories that it had to tell and the continued relevance that El Centro still has today in Seattle and its significance and its place in Seattle and Washington state history and even in the nation's history for that matter I'd say it rivals any other landmark. We've learned a lot with all of our underrepresented communities grants and also that they're truly endangered species as I mentioned before. I think that they're endangered because of ownership issues and the fact that many communities of color were specifically unable to own property in the past. We've identified countless resources with historic integrity that's tied to setting feeling and association and I think this really speaks to the fact that every building has a story to tell every district, every neighborhood every place and we need to know from the community what's significant. I often refer to the phrase nothing about us without us because you can't tell someone else's stories you know you can't tell someone that their stories don't matter you need to know what someone's story is through their voice and that's really critically important to inject into projects like this so that we're not just surveying the built environment trying to understand and gain a deep understanding without the community involvement as well and because we're able to partner with community and to develop these narratives and document these places and that's what builds a sustainable relationship. We've also learned that using a people-centric approach to our relationship building and project management resonates really loudly with the communities we serve. We keep hearing feedback over and over about how important a project like this is how important it is to survey to build a context statement to identify places of significance on to that community's terms has a lot of meaning to them. People have emotional attachments to place we all know that as preservationists that's what we've been saying for decades since the modern preservation movement was born and it's so incredibly true and a lot of people have emotional attachments to place and it doesn't matter who you are it can exist anywhere it's pretty fairly ubiquitous thing but in our view the places that have the significance exist and they wouldn't have the character in the soul without the people themselves. So places have been able to convey their history their soul their culture for generations and our ability to capture that through these grants has been really really rewarding because we're learning so much about our people and our diverse history and it just adds so much layers and value to everybody that we're able to serve. So I just wanted to leave briefly with some closing thoughts that we need to be able to continue doing this work because it's so important and because it matters so much to people and there's also so much that we need to learn still and to help continue facilitating that sense of belonging in all communities that we have as we grow these relationships as we create trust acknowledgement understanding particularly with underrepresented communities we start to understand that we've only just scratched the surface and that there's an endless amount of things that we continue to learn. I'll also say that the competitive grant program is very competitive people are very hungry for this type of work because of how important it is the the underrepresented communities grants have been transformative in Washington and I think as long as they're available we're going to keep applying for them because it's a priority for us it's one of those things that I value the most about my job because it's so incredibly rewarding but I think it also importantly asserts that the SHPO cares about the people that we serve and that the people that history we're documenting is significant it is legitimate and it belongs in that full true American story. We still have a lot more work to do in order to continue being fully inclusive we have to listen first bring people in everybody deserves to be able to participate in preservation. As a public servant, I feel like it's my duty to serve all Washingtonians and that is regardless of how you identify if you call yourself a Washingtonian, you are who I serve specifically through these grant programs we've begun serving our Filipino Americans our black Washingtonians our Latino, Latino, Latinx Washingtonians people with disabilities, things that are further on the list in the future because the wish list continues to grow and will continue to grow as long as we're able to do this work people with varying socioeconomic status, LGBTQ Washingtonians, etc, etc it's my duty to serve them as Deputy SHPO and it's our duty as a SHPO to serve the people that we do it's also important to learn the hard truths about those lived experiences so that we can get an authentic picture of what that history actually is that's also what makes everybody's respective community unique and vital and so with all that being said just really appreciate having the opportunity to be able to document these stories to be able to cultivate these relationships and it's all made possible through the underrepresented communities grant program but also just HPF funding in general which funds a good chunk of operating for all the SHPO's and territories throughout the country and we wouldn't be able to do any of this work if it weren't for the HPF fund Thank you so much Nicholas I really appreciate that and for those final thoughts as well now we'll hear from John Franco Archimede the Director of Historic Preservation for the City of Patterson, New Jersey and the Executive Director of Patterson's Historic Preservation Commission John Franco can you discuss the African American Civil Rights grant recently? First let me start by saying thank you to the National Trust for inviting this presentation to happen today it's definitely a pleasure and an honor to follow up on the two wonderful projects that were just presented by my co-panelists and also for the City of Patterson to be a grant recipient of this wonderful program that has been so vital to assisting with this project in Patterson, New Jersey so I'd like to tell you a bit about the project and the significance of the site and of course the grant and the grant program but as you'll see as I go through with you this is a very large project and I've been working in the City of Patterson for 18 years and I've been working on this project the whole time and it's just in the past couple of years that the project has gotten underway, full swing to the tune of about 35 to 40 million dollars so some of the difficulties of presenting the project in a short concise way, I thought about how to give a timeline with bullet points to show the channeling of funding and efforts from various groups and various funding programs to build momentum to where we are today so I'm going to start with the next slide please Inchliffe Stadium is located in Patterson, New Jersey which was established during George Washington's first administration, we are a very old city and we have a very direct connection to a founding father Alexander Hamilton Alexander Hamilton was stationed here with George Washington in 1780 and they visited this large waterfall you see right in the middle of the screen the great falls of the Pusseic River and he remembered this waterfall at a time when he was the first Secretary of the Treasury and he was pondering about the economy for the new nation water power of course comes to mind when you think of the rushing water over the falls of an entire river emptying its volume crashing 77 feet down to a lower level and this happens to also have the distinction of being the largest waterfall east of the Mississippi River I'm sorry, largest waterfall east of Niagara Falls and only rivaled closely by Rochester Falls and upstate New York You can see on the slide in front of you that Inchliffe Stadium is situated right above the falls with a park in front of it between the stadium and the falls and the lower part of the slide right you'll see another park area clearly this has been a destination not only after the establishment of Patterson in the past 250 years but also for tens of thousands of years previous for indigenous peoples as well so this slide I can also tell you that the school above Inchliffe Stadium, school number 5 built in the 1930s will also become important in our later discussion next slide please so we have a lot of layers of designations and significance that were established by our community and recognized by the National Trust I'm sorry the NPS and by, lately by Congress on the slide to the left there's a dashed red line that designates the Great Falls an historic district which was established in 1970 and entered onto the National Register at that time after the discussion of a generation in 2009 the green boundary within the red boundary you see on the left is our National Park designated or authorized by Congress in 2009 the 397th unit of the National Park System called the Great Falls National Historical Park it consists of about a 50 acre footprint within the larger 115 acre historic district and as you can see on the left the green boundary does not incorporate Inchliffe Stadium when it was first designated not only did the Great Falls Historic District not go around Inchliffe Stadium but so the designation of the National Park also did not just changed recently in 2015 I'll tell you about that in a little bit on the right hand side you'll see a more distinct boundary to let you know about the federal lands that are donated the two park areas directly on either side of the waterfall the north and south sides and adjacent to Inchliffe Stadium the blue boundaries designate state park lands in fact on the upper part of the map the northern point of the map is the Patterson Vista's Great New Jersey state park we're working to establish that and develop it presently next slide please so I'd like to tell you about the stadium itself the stadium that you can see on the upper part of the slide here is a photo taken in 1932 essentially the opening year of the stadium you can see the stands are filled with people we estimate that in these stands there's also wooden bleachers in the foreground that were built to hold everyone to watch this high school football game it's the approximately 10,000 spectators to attend this opening game November of 1932 the stadium project really began in 1929 and 1930 through the efforts of the mayor at the time John V. Hinchliffe who was following up and made it his business to bring to fruition a decades long discussion in Patterson about the need for a civic stadium you can see at the bottom left a game is being played on a new field before any of the concrete superstructures were formed and on the bottom right of the slide you can see that the unique topography of the site that was chosen starts from a very high elevation and then tapers to a low elevation the stadium or the area was eked out or dug out right from the embankment of the earth and even before any other of the improvements were made here they had already laid out a gridiron and built a temporary seating to be able to watch football at the stadium you can see directly to the north and left of that photo school number five had not yet been built school number five was a WPA project built in 1935 just on the other side of this 1930s stadium so the two of them together are a really beautiful preservation example now in the center is a model of Hinchliff stadium that was created by a local artist Guy Attano Federici and you can see kind of faintly in that photo the baseball diamond at center plate pretty much centered toward the end of the horseshoe of the stadium this will become important in the next couple of minutes now the next slide please just to recap some of the significance of the stadium was constructed in 1932 as a municipal stadium a center for Patterson's residents hosting a variety of recreational cultural and social events for the city's diverse working population these included baseball football, track and field soccer, boxing, wrestling motorcycle racing, midget car racing and entertainment events a distinctive major attraction though was the Negro League baseball here are some on screen some of the programs from some of the local events that I just mentioned especially the football games and many of these football games like the one on the upper left central versus east side will demonstrate that the stadium was largely conceived as a place for our students and young athletes to develop and be engaged in their athletic programming which was a very important part of the development of our public education concepts at the turn of the century and at this time there was a great desire for high schools in large cities like Patterson to have facilities that were significantly large enough to host these a variety of different sporting programs and the overall athletic programs for high schools now on the bottom left there's a bronze plaque also that was done by Gaiatano Federici celebrating Eleanor Egg and this is an example of some of the high school athletes that went on to not only break national high school records but also went on to compete nationally at the left we have the beginnings of Larry Dobie or Patterson who is a native son who I'll talk about in terms of national significance but who also played at Angel of Stadium was a star athlete in Patterson High School and played on a diverse number of sports and later was soon recruited by the Newark Eagles to play baseball to begin his career next slide please so going on with the significance other than the local significance that I mentioned that was recognized by the establishment of the stadium on the register individually in 2004 the stadium is nationally significant for its attraction to Negro League Baseball from 1932 through 1944 Hinchliffe was an important venue for Black Baseball both for independent Black teams and for the Negro National Leagues the New York Black Yankees were an important draw of crowds for the stadium and served as a home field for the New York Black Yankees the teams of the New York Cubans and the Newark Eagles the home teams and their opponents brought with them Negro League Baseball star players including Gib Johnson Oscar Charleston Leon Day Cool Papa Belle and many others James who were later inducted to the National Baseball Hall of Fame Local Hall of Famers Larry Dobie and Matthew Irvin were scouted by the New York Eagles at Hinchliffe within a national context Black Baseball played an important role in Black America in the early 20th century as part of a greater movement to establish race-owned businesses in a segregated society and by mid-century as an important contributor to the advancement of civil rights throughout this period the Negro Leagues provided the nations African-Americans with a sense of pride and ownership which they could permanently display their equal if not superior abilities within this context the game and business of Negro Leagues Baseball was a prime example of both segregation on the one hand and African-American cultural distinction on the other while the nation made gestures toward desegregation prior to 1947 the integration of baseball provided to be a dramatic turning point in American history the signing of Jackie Robinson by the Dodgers into the All White National League sent shock waves along the color line drawn by racial segregation in America just three months after Robinson's 1947 debut with the Dodgers Larry Doby a former Patterson resident who played high school football and baseball as well as semi-pro and professional baseball at the stadium broke the other color barrier in the American League among many other outstanding career accomplishments Doby went on to be the first African-American to hit a 400 foot home run in the 1948 World Series resulting in the resonating photograph of Doby and his white teammate a Cleveland Indians pitcher Steve Gromick pressing their heads together in jubilation though on screen is a slide demonstrating some of the graphics for the Negro Leagues period that I just talked about and some of the artifacts that were associated with Hinchlow Stadium to advertise the hosting of the Negro Leagues at the stadium now this is a really interesting story because it was really unknown that it would come about like building the stadium didn't have this particular purpose and on the national scene as we look back toward this story this site really stands out as a place where we can demonstrate in a very large way because of the size of the place and because of the significance of baseball as the national pastime in America the story of segregation and desegregation and the breaking of the color barrier that was mentioned so the national significance becomes important later in the designation of this place as a national historic landmark next slide please so this part of my presentation for you is going to be a timeline of the various preservation milestones over the years and this will demonstrate I think at the toward the end how the grant really helped and assisted in this large-scale long-term preservation project was really difficult to sometimes think about applying for and then receiving preservation grants for such a daunting project because we all knew that it would be a significant dollar value to preserve this place in its entirety and to put it back into operation so sometimes even a one million dollar grant or five hundred thousand dollar grant or twenty thousand dollar planning grant we would be discussing how that could be used in an effective way and in an immediate way to actually demonstrate the communities and the cities and commitment to this project so of course the story begins in 2002 with the well before that I did not mention yet that the stadium was regularly used between 1932 and its opening throughout the period of the Negro Leagues playing there in fact the distinction also of the stadium is one of two remaining stadium of its kind in the nation where the Negro Leagues played in this kind of venue it also has a distinction now of being the only stadium within the boundaries of the National Park which will come up in this timeline so then went into ownership by the Patterson Public Schools in 1963 and then went out of service in 1997 and was serving primarily the Patterson school children and the programs for the athletic program for the city schools until then so in 1997 it went out of operation and started to go fallow and it wasn't long five years later at the Friends of the National Stadium the effort was saved to kind of establish to kind of bring forward the topic of preservation and reuse of the stadium so right away the Friends of Hinch applied for a small grant to the Patterson Preservation Commission and put together the National Register nomination and it was accepted in 2004 and in 2009 another grant opportunity was awarded to the Friends of the National Stadium by the New Jersey Historic Trust for a preservation plan also this kind of spurred on the discussion between the owners the Patterson Public Schools and the city of Patterson to work together toward the preservation project there's some complicated reason why this partnership was so important but I won't get into right now but this city then sort of took charge of leading the preservation efforts to bring forward to lay the groundwork for the stadium's preservation you can see in 2009 the Great Falls National Historic Park was established and in 2010 the Hinch-Liff Stadium Friends Group applied to based on the preservation plan a capital improvements grant to the New Jersey Historic Trust for $500,000 which was granted the NPS legislation designating the park the NPS funded national historic landmark study for the stadium and in 2013 the study resulted in the successful listing of the stadium as a national historic landmark so this is the highest level of designation that a cultural designation that a place can have and this puts it on par with places like the Statue of Liberty or Congress Hall or the White House for example in 2014 the National Trust started to convene with us ongoing leadership meetings in Patterson they had been to the stadium they were invited by the Friends of Hinch-Liff Stadium to come and to bring more attention and national attention to this significant place was successful in bringing the stadium as one of the top 11 most endangered endangered places in the nation on the 2009 list so it was really with the trust involvement with Patterson and convening these leadership meetings that the project really started to take more momentum forward and you can see next slide please that the National Trust also partnered with the city to create a community day, a save Hinch-Liff Stadium day where hundreds of members of the community came out and cleaned up Hinch-Liff Stadium painted it and the city of Patterson, DPW removed all of the trees and vegetation that had been growing up in the stadium you can see in 2015 on this side that the boundaries of the National Park were changed to include Hinch-Liff Stadium by an act of Congress in 2016 the business plan was contracted and developed and through our association with the National Trust in 2016 a private donation our first private donation from the American Express Foundation came toward our pilot project so we were discussing with the National Trust during this period what we could do with $500,000 from the New Jersey Historic Trust and with the grant from American Express this resulted in a pilot project and an actual construction on the facade of the stadium at $1.3 million the city of Patterson bonded funding to also have a demonstration that the community was behind this project the point here was to start rehabilitation on the facade of the building where some of the most significant architectural features existed to show everyone the cities the school districts the national foundations that came to work with Patterson their sort of dedication to moving this project forward and at that time with that momentum was the grant application to the NPS for the African American Civil Rights sites the NHL nomination that I talked to you about specifically designated the stadium as nationally significant for its association with African American Civil Rights which made this grant project this grant application a really key winner we were very proud to be among 50 grant awards in 24 states and of those awards I believe there were only 6 that were awarded the maximum dollar figure which was $500,000 so we're very proud of that as far as the NPS grant to match this $200,000 was brought by the county to create a $700,000 of continuation of the pilot project for the other side of Angel of Stadium the west side of Angel of Stadium I'm going to demonstrate this to you in photos in just a minute this led to awareness and activity as was desired activity around this project really taking off and you can see in 2019 developers agreement was ratified for the overall rehab project throughout 2020 there was sort of a complicated set of compliance that had to be met donation of lands, financing subdivisions, HP compliance reviews also this project was a winner of the national park services national store tax credit program which we're using also very successfully here the groundbreaking for the project the developers by the way were a very unique combination of by Adolfo Wilson, a Pattersonian a Patterson native who played in the stadium went to school in Patterson and a large developer in New Jersey RPM development the groundbreaking came on December 20th, 21st, 2021 and it's currently under construction this project will be ready to go fully rehabilitated as a historic place as many as 30,000 Pattersonians, Patterson children will be able to have the experience of playing in the Angel of Stadium practicing in the Angel of Stadium and participating in the same way that their parents did and in some cases also their grandparents next slide please so with all that said, now some photos to take you through quickly this is the stadium in its state in about in 1912 you can see the 1992 original Astroturf field that had replaced the grass field is all torn up and in heaps vegetation is growing everywhere and there's a lot of neglect on this slide please again, various views from the same period please take a look at the view in the upper right corner this is the facade of pilot project area the front of Angel of Stadium it measures 450 feet long it consists of four ticket booths of which you can see one and the project area was the four ticket booths and this entire facade for rehabilitation on the exterior at the lower left you can see the state of some of the custom terracotta tiles at the ticket booth windows and this kind of restoration was also needed during this project next slide please now this is the photo of the stadium in 2014 after the community cleanup day as I mentioned earlier that the community came and painted the stadium our DPW removed the vegetation you can see the dramatic difference in the slides it just showed you from its previous condition to after this one day event only one day event above is school number 5 that I mentioned earlier built as a WPA project in 1935 a great companion to the stadium next slide please here's a view of the pilot project getting started lead paint was removed from the facade and then almost with surgical precision along this wall all of the deficiencies and the rebar and rust jacking areas spalled areas were identified carefully cut out, rebar retreated and then repacked and then the whole thing recoded next slide here's an image of the final product for the wall section next slide please and here's a reminder of some of the conditions in some of the unique terra cotta artwork and features including the loss of the terra cotta of Roman tile roof you can see in the lower right next slide this demonstrates the rest of the restored areas that just showed you many of the tiles and the smaller square tiles in the lower photo had to actually be remade or made from scratch basically to match closely with the original that have a more hazy appearance next slide please of course I couldn't go by without showing you the overall project underway this is the entire stadium it will seats close to 7000 people all of the seating areas will be bleacher style just like it was but they will be up to code in terms of their stairs that can convey people in and out it's completely handicapped accessible with special seating areas available as well as all the conveyance areas to allow for special access so you can see this view is looking again back toward the rear of the seating bowl and school number 5 probably sits at the north end and that would be the front facade the four ticket booths you can see as well identified by their red roofs next slide please another view of the overall construction the building that you see is a parking structure that was built as part of this project as well next slide and just one more view of the concession area you can see the concession area will also be restored to be a concession area again to grab quick snacks during the game next slide in addition at this end of the stadium there was enough space available where a contemporary block utility building was knocked down and this new building approved and constructed that will have an interpretive space on the lower floor I'm sorry on the upper floor and on the lower floor a restaurant that will be permanently open for visitors to be able to get the bite to eat, visit the waterfall and also to learn about this story next please as far as the grant is concerned this is the last section that I'd like to show you this is the western facade of the stadium and the grant application was written to rehabilitate this side and these are some of the conditions that existed when the grant was put in in 2018 the momentum that happened after the grant was made available toward the whole project allowed us to incorporate the grant funding along with the county's funding into the overall project so the developers are actually installing and creating the repairs and rehabilitation on this facade right at this time they're actually doing it our next slide will show that again here's some of the ongoing work that is funded by this grant opportunity this grant was very important to developing the capital stack for the overall project although we had anticipated that the grant would be used as part of our pilot demonstration as a way to continue to show commitment to the larger project as we were working toward finding a public-private partnership that would work for the whole project it worked out that everything moved much quicker and the grant was then held back a bit and then provided as part of the overall funding and was an important part as I mentioned of the developers capital stack in figuring how to fund the entire project next slide another alternative view of the work that's being accomplished with this grant on this facade and this is the another one and my final slide next slide and this is a wonderful view of the proximity of the waterfall to the stadium from the new building actually so thank you very much again for having me it's been really wonderful to share this work with you with our heads down the trenches so much on all the projects that are going on we don't often have the opportunity to demonstrate some of our successes and it's been really great to present this and I hope this was helpful and I would have done this project together without the assistance of this very particular grant program that was a real fit for this historic place thank you thank you so much Jane Franco and for those beautiful photos as well that really helps illustrate the breadth of this project thank you so we've heard wonderful examples of how the HPF is sustaining critical preservation efforts across the country now I'm going to discuss the current efforts to reauthorize the historic preservation fund so federal programs like the HPF need to be reauthorized every so often by the committee of jurisdiction while the appropriations committee designates spending levels for each fiscal year as we discussed earlier the authorizing committee establishes continues or even modifies agencies or programs the HPF is authorized by the House Natural Resources Committee and the corresponding Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee the HPF's current authorization is actually set to expire in September 2023 representatives Teresa Laker Fernandez of New Mexico and Earl Blumenauer of Oregon in the United States House of Representatives introduced the historic preservation enhancement act in February 2022 this legislation would permanently authorize funding for the HPF it would increase its authorization from $150 million to $300 million annually and it would also ensure that $300 million would be appropriated each year so if enacted the legislation would represent the first increase in the HPF's authorized funding level since its inception in 1980 we're so grateful to champions like representatives Laker Fernandez and Blumenauer for their leadership in legislation like this to make sure that the HPF is around for many many years to come we also want to encourage you to encourage your member of congress to cosponsor this important legislation you can ask them to cosponsor the historic preservation enhancement act right there is HR 6589 you can refer to it to its bill number it will need to be reintroduced in the next congress but we do encourage you to reach out to your members of congress and tell them why this legislation is important to you and what the HPF means to you and your community well it seems like we're near the end of our time here but before we wrap up here's some additional information about staying connected to the national trust government relations work you can visit the advocacy resource center on forum and subscribe and there's also a weekly advocacy newsletter to read the latest in advocacy efforts on the HPF and many many other historic preservation priorities my sincere thanks to all of our speakers today Judith, Nicholas and John Franco thank you so much for sharing your expertise, your insight and your successes as John Franco said often times there's not enough space to celebrate these successes so we're so glad to hear from all of you today it's truly inspiring and thanks to you for attending this session if you have any questions about this session please don't hesitate to contact policy at savingplaces.org we'd love to hear from you thank you so much