Evolution of a Preservation Agency: Centre County’s Historic Registration Project
Written by Martha Birchenall and Sylvia Carson in the Historic Preservation Feature category and the Winter 1980 issue Topics in this article: Bellefonte, Bellefonte Academy, Bellefonte's Gamble Mill, Bellefonte's South Ward School, Brockerhoff Hotel, Centre County, Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (C.E.T.A.), environment, Environmental Impact Statement, Gregory Ramsey, Henry Brockerhoff, Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service, Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), historic preservation, Historic Registration Project, James Beck Round Barn, Michael Halm, Miles-Hummes House, National Register of Historic Places, Nuri Mohsenin, Penn State University, schools, Union Church (Philipsburg), United States BicentennialThe commemoration of America’s Bicentennial gave birth to numerous community-minded pursuits during its nationwide celebration. Although many of these special endeavors were shelved when the year was over, the administrators of one at least. the Historic Registration Project in Centre County. realized that their work had just begun. Now, four years later, this unique organization is still promoting local preservation.
A combination of factors favored the project’s creation in 1976. Concerned citizens were already rallying to save Bellefonte’s Gamble Mill, an integral part of the community in the nineteenth century. but a candidate for demolition in 1975. To give greater validity to their effort, the citizens’ group prepared an application to list the building in the National Register of Historic Places. To their surprise, they discovered that theirs was only the third Centre County application to the Register. Prompted by this realization, they began to see the wisdom of registering other buildings before they too were threatened. At about the same time, topics for community projects were being explored to incorporate in the county Bicentennial celebration. Through the conjunction of these two unrelated circumstances, the Historic Registration Project (HRP) was born.
Once the idea for such a project had germinated, the means to implement it were explored. Under the leadership of a member of the Bellefonte Historic Site Commission and a member of the county Bicentennial Commission, and through funding by CETA (Comprehensive Employment and Training Act), two full-time positions for a one-year project were established. According to the historic site commissioner, “Centre County’s program may have been the first time Manpower funds were employed in this manner in the country.” Up to this time registration efforts had generally been a part-time occupation of local historical groups, concerned citizens or architectural firms. With the creation of the HRP, a full-time registration agency had been established.
The project began in January 1976 with two staff members, Gregory Ramsey and Michael Halm, who possessed needed skills in research, photography, architectural description and graphic design. Office space was found in the Centre County Library which, appropriately enough, is housed in one of Bellefonte’s fine old buildings, the Miles-Humes House. No better atmosphere could have been found since, in addition to being an inspiring work area, the library held much-needed research material in its historical collection. Because the HRP creates historical records as significant byproducts of its activities, it in turn anticipated contributing to the library’s collection. As with many grassroots organizations, office supply donations were secured from local groups and supplemented by a $1,000 grant from the Centre County Commissioners.
Enthusiasm ran high in those early, struggling days. The goal of the two staff members to register one hundred sites during the year-long effort was ambitious but, they would soon realize, quite unrealistic. Before the application procedure could even be considered, it was necessary to compile a list of potential sites throughout the county. Of course, there were the candidates which were obvious to many Centre countians, such as the Courthouse, the Miles-Humes House, Philipsburg’s Union Church and several other acknowledged county gems. But what of less publicized structures that might also serve to heighten appreciation of the area’s history – homes of early settlers, gristmills, barns, and other forgotten ind us trial remnants? Was a comprehensive overview of local historic structures available? The HRP employees consulted the Pennsylvania Inventory maintained by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission’s Office of Historic Preservation as well as the county Planning Commission’s Historical Reflections of Centre County, a 1970 survey. Although these sources sometimes contained little more information than a name and an occasional date, they did provide the basis for a mailing list. Letters were sent to 186 property owners outlining the HRP and the National Register and solicited responses from those interested in having their properties considered. From this request and publicity about the project in local newspapers, sites were identified and the task of registering properties begun. Staff members were introduced very early to the detective work that was to be a necessary part of their job. Soon the library’s historical collection and the county deed room were to become permanent friends.
Historical, architectural, geographic and photographic documentation was gathered first, according to Ramsey, “for the obvious candidates. We needed some winners to show that local landmarks could be registered and that we knew how to do it.” Therefore, applications for several of Bellefonte’s most promising structures, among them the Courthouse (NR, Nov. 1976), the Bellefonte Academy (NR, Nov. 1976) and the Miles-Humes House (NR, Oct. 1976), were studied first. The inhospitable winter weather which had restricted research to sites closer to home was subsiding just as project workers were ready to expand their efforts into other parts of the county. By the end of the year, the one hundred-site goal was recognized as a pipe dream, but a most satisfactory number – twenty-six individual structures plus two historic districts – had been placed on the Pennsylvania Inventory of Historic Places. Of these, five had already gained National Register status; the remaining twenty-three were under consideration.
From the project’s inception, funding has been precarious. Until December 1976, there was no assurance that the HRP would be continued after the Bicentennial ended. Reacting to this lack of job security, the staff operated at full tilt, hoping to accomplish various goals before year’s end. Only with the support of the local government, which recognized the project’s value to the county, did funding through CETA again become a reality.
With financial resources committed for at least another year, the HRP was able to map out ideas for future registration tasks. By March 1977, money was made available for two long-requested staff members and by June another three positions we re added. With a work force of seven representing a variety of backgrounds and talents, work was divided according to special interest areas, including graphics and mapmaking, geography, architecture, photography and historical research.
As the Historic Registration Project continued, new involvements developed. While preparing National Register forms remained important, the project added a new educational dimension. An invitation to lecture at a Pennsylvania State University historic preservation course in spring 1977 stimulated the development of an extensive slide collection. Armed with these slides, HRP members were able to present the ideas of preservation to all who were interested. Requests were received from diverse groups, due in part to an inherent interest in local history. Support from the local news media also helped to spread the preservation message to an extensive cross section of Centre countians.
The 1977 involvement with Penn State’s preservation course was a boon to the HRP in another way-it furnished a ready source of volunteers to help in various research topics, for which the students in turn earned academic credit. This mutually beneficial arrangement provided training and education for the students and relieved some of the registration project workload. Through these volunteers, manpower was also available to work on historic-district applications. Previously undocumented districts, such as Lemont (NR, June 1979) and Millheim (proposed district), presented a time-consuming and almost overwhelming task. Deed research, architectural descriptions and photographic documentation were necessary for all historic structures within a district, some of which included over two hundred buildings. With volunteer help, the districts could be subdivided among students and methodically surveyed.
Perhaps without realizing it, the office was becoming, during the second year, the local authority on preservation as it accumulated information from many sources. As a result, the project added another role as a clearinghouse of information. Staff members began lending support and expertise to groups, both within the county and in other areas, who were interested in similar ideas.
Today. after four years of continued operation, the HRP’s list of involvements has in no way diminished. What originally started as a one-year undertaking has become recognized as an open-ended project – not a frivolous or extraneous activity, but a solid part of the historical. architectural and planning community. No one is more surprised than the HRP members themselves. According to Ramsey, “At that time (1976), in no way did I anticipate that the project would be more than just filling out application forms, that it would extend into an education and clearinghouse activity and would somehow become important to the county in a broad sense.”
Statistics easily support the project’s impact on registrations. In 1975, Centre County was one of forty-four counties in Pennsylvania which had fewer than four registered sites. By mid-1979, thirty registrations had been completed, elevating its standing to seventh among the state’s sixty. seven counties, exceeded only by large metropolitan counties, such as Bucks and Chester.
More difficult to measure, but equally important, is the impact of the organization’s less tangible activities. The program has assisted in the unification of the county historically. Ramsey has elaborated on this idea. “It seems that in Centre County, as probably in many other places, people living in one community are perhaps aware of their own heritage, yet if they go across the county to another town, they are not really familiar with its history. So the project fulfills a real need to do things together and represent the historical environment of Centre County from east to west, top to bottom.”
Educational projects, such as slide shows, do more than simply provide data and historical facts. People are introduced to another world and educated to really look at and enjoy their architectural heritage. Again, a county-wide emphasis is maintained by gearing slide shows to a variety of historical and architectural appetites-that of the area resident completely unacquainted with preservation, of U1e grammar school child or of a member of a community historical group.
It is just possible that the Historic Registration Project represents an idea whose time has come. Plans that might not even have been considered ten or twenty years ago are now being successfully carried out. Buildings once seen as run down or standing in the way of “progress” are now often looked upon as targets for renovation. not demolition. Various restoration and adaptive-reuse projects undertaken in the past few years in Centre County may be the most visible indications of a growing appreciation for the area’s older structures and an increasing interest in the goals of preservation.
A prime example is Bellefonte’s South Ward School (NR. Feb. 1978). The structure, an excellent example of a Victorian eclectic public building, had outlived its usefulness to the community by the 1960s and was nearing a fate of demolition in 1977. Interest shown in the building by the HRP played a part in the borough’s eventual decision not co destroy it, but to seek a buyer who would be willing to renovate the structure and preserve its exterior.
Not far from the school, the Brockerhoff Hotel (NR, April 1977) sat in need of restoration. This grand building, a hub of activity in late nineteenth-century Bellefonte, had elicited negative feelings from many area residents in recent years because of its neglected exterior appearance. The hotel’s owner authorized the HRP to prepare a National Register application for the structure. The owner later applied for and received a matching grant from the Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service to restore the exterior. Since registration is an essential component of the grants program, the HRP helped to initiate the restoration project which began in July 1979.
The hotel’s original owner. Henry Brockerhoff, had a]so owned a large brick mill on the outskirts of Bellefonte. When Mr. and Mrs. Nuri Mohsenin moved to the county some twenty years ago they were immediately taken with the mill’s appearance, “especially its simple lines.” The couple had been interested in the preservation and renovation of buildings which had once served a viable community function, and in 1976 they were able to purchase the mill building. Their long-range plans include renovating it into loft-type apartments, leaving as much open space as possible in order to retain the integrity of the interior. A National Register application was prepared by the HRP in 1978 for the mill and within one year it was accepted. This designation has made it possible for the Mohsenins to explore grants opportunities which otherwise would not have been available to them.
The atmosphere in which these projects have been undertaken is quite different from that of previous decades. Within the last twenty-five years, two of Bellefonte’s fine Georgian structures. one of them listed in the Historic American Buildings Survey, were torn down so that a fast-food restaurant and a gas station could be erected. If the issue were at hand today. it is quite likely that the buildings would not be removed without serious attempts to save them, for there is an unmistakable atmosphere of “preservation-mindedness” beginning to take hold.
The HRP sees in its future other activities which may further encourage an awareness of preservation throughout the county. Staff members hope to place an increased emphasis on educating the public through additional slide shows, photo exhibits and slide/cassette packages which can be used independently by community groups of different age and interest levels. The HRP plans also to provide readily accessible reference materials on such subjects as preservation funding. preparation of National Register application forms and the “bricks-and-mortar” issues of renovation and adaptive reuse. In addition to its continuing registration function. the project feels that through these added tasks, preservation will touch a large number of countians, not only those who live within a historic district or who own a well-known structure.
Ramsey has stressed one factor which plays an important role in determining future work. “Since we are CETA-based and therefore never sure of funding, we need to get our material permanent so that what we do here can be a model and a widely accessible information source.” Several approaches are being taken to fulfill this need. The HRP is focusing attention on organizing its materials for tJ1e permanent library collection so that its research and documentation activities will be available to the general public long after the project has ended. A book about county sites, based on the past four years’ research, has been prepared and will be published early in 1980. Through these measures, the project can be assured that its work will remain within easy reach of interested individuals.
The Historic Registration Project can only speculate at this point as to its long-range effects. In county planning, for example, National Register designations and descriptive information articulated in the application forms may play an important role in the future. The historic districts which have been designated can provide a basis for creating municipal zoning districts. Projects which make use of federal funds may also be involved, for if a National Register site is to be in any way affected by such a project, an Environmental Impact Statement will be required. In this respect, the results of HRP work will be acknowledged for years to come.
The project’s greatest success may one day lie in its role as a model for the development of similar programs. The Centre County organization has proven itself to be a viable and necessary part of the present-day community. Hopefully, it will serve as an impetus to other counties which have no organized registration activities but which recognize their value and timeliness.
The Historic Registration Project welcomes any questions regarding its programs. Inquiries should be addressed to the HRP, Centre County Library, Bellefonte 16823.
Sylvia Carson received her M.L.S. at Western Michigan University and served as Assistant Coordinator of the Historic Registration Project.
Martha Birchenall also holds an M.L.S., from the University of North Carolina, and formerly served as a Research Assistant with the Historic Registration Project. Currently both authors are librarians at the Pennsylvania State University.