Bravo.
I chair our local historic preservation commission. Lincoln/Douglas debate was held here etc.
Have you gotten local/state/fed landmark status for any structures?
Hi Mr. H: Bravo and applause for you for being a hero for historic preservation!! Yes, the entire district is a federal landmark under the National Registry for Historic Places. But we are at risk of losing the last 10 houses that characterize the district, because a prominent private developer is pressuring the owners and City to sell to them to remove the houses.
We have lost too many historic structures within the district that way, because of private developers having dominance in such a conservative city and state as Houston, Texas, where this Freed Slave district happens to be located.
We could register these 10 houses if we could buy them first, and the owners have waited several extra years, paying taxes and fines, trying to give the churches and nonprofits every chance to raise the money to buy them. But the City keeps bullying us instead.
Can you please help me? I tried to contact Preserve America and also the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, but both groups will not intervene with private owners and will not overstep what the City, County and State preservation commissions are allowing to go on. So if those groups don't back up preservation, the federal groups are not going to impose.
I have written a letter pleading for help from people and communities across the nation, even appealing to the President and White House to accept and apply the $5 million dollar offer from Trump to help the nonprofit coalition of churches to buy the houses for Vets.
May I send this to you by email? Can you please help me circulate it before the houses
are removed? The City is bullying the owners again, by threatening them with fines for the boarded up houses this family has been trying to save, and is giving the community more time to raise the money to buy the land if they City doesn't bully or bulldoze them over first.
I think you will like the letter. It needs some editing if you can please advise me!
Thank you SO MUCH
I will never take for granted again what enormous work that historians and preservationists like you do for the country, given that the trends and pressures are so great to demolish history and build over it. (The construction crews working on a Grand Parkway near West Houston were planning to build over a site of PREHISTORIC remains, already identified as qualifying for the national registry, but doing the very minimum of asking Native Americans for permission to REMOVE the burials instead. This is Texas!)
I learned the hard way what an uphill battle it is, so thank you for your service
to the history of your state and our nation. I hope I can do something with this project
that will honor the work and sacrifices of our heroes and historians too often uncredited.
Yours truly,
Emily Nghiem
Historic Commission member
who hasn't done anything yet but wants to, please help!
emilynghiem at hotmail.com
I can post a new thread if you want to see the letter that way, but it needs editing...