CUSTODIANS OF COMMON GROUNDS:
UNIFYING HISTORIC PRESERVATION AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONSERVATION,
1850-2011
Erica Lynn Hague
A Thesis Submitted to the
University of North Carolina Wilmington in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree of
Master of Arts
Department of History
University of North Carolina Wilmington
2012
Approved by
Advisory Committee
Monica Gisolfi
Kathleen Berkeley
T. Robert Hart
Chair
Accepted by
Digitally signed by Robert Roer
DN: cn=Robert Roer, o=UNCW,
ou=Graduate School and Research,
[email protected], c=US
Date: 2012.11.07 13:20:38 -05'00'
Dean, Graduate School
Table of Contents
Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... iv
Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................... v
Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1
1.
—Beginnings: The Nineteenth Century ................................................................................ 14
Early Preservation in the United States ..................................................................................... 15
Role of Women in Preservation ................................................................................................ 19
Early Conservation in the United States ................................................................................... 21
The Suburban and Outdoors Movements .................................................................................. 24
Case Studies: Creek Farm, Orton Plantation, and Poplar Grove .............................................. 27
The End of The Gilded Age ...................................................................................................... 34
Conclusion................................................................................................................................. 37
2.
– A New Departure: The Progressive Era and Beyond ......................................................... 39
How Architects Changed Historic Preservation ....................................................................... 41
The Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities ................................................. 44
Environmental Conservation and the Progressives ................................................................... 48
Tourism and the Management of Nature .................................................................................. 49
Creek Farm, Orton Plantation, and Poplar Grove in the Progressive Era ................................. 54
Conclusion................................................................................................................................. 62
3.
— A Time of Peril Unmatched: 1920 - World War II .......................................................... 64
The Automobile, Preservation, and Conservation .................................................................... 65
The Great Depression, the New Deal, and the National Park Service ...................................... 71
Resource Rights and Dams ....................................................................................................... 75
ii
Case Studies .............................................................................................................................. 78
Conclusion................................................................................................................................. 83
4.
— A Future With Greater Meaning: 1945-1970s .................................................................. 85
The Rise of Automobiles and Suburbs...................................................................................... 86
Deurbanization and Urban Renewal ......................................................................................... 89
Historic Urban Preservation ...................................................................................................... 90
Rise of Environmentalism ......................................................................................................... 94
Silent Spring .............................................................................................................................. 97
Beautification and Environmentalism ....................................................................................... 99
The Changing Use of Creek Farm, Orton Plantation, and Poplar Grove ................................ 100
Conclusion............................................................................................................................... 103
5.
—A New Paradigm: The Past 30 years ............................................................................... 105
Urban Flight and Historic Preservation................................................................................... 106
Conservation & Environmentalism in the Late Twentieth Century........................................ 109
Development of Dual-Movement Sites: Creek Farm, Orton Plantation, and Poplar Grove ... 111
Creek Farm .............................................................................................................................. 112
Orton Plantation ...................................................................................................................... 117
Poplar Grove ........................................................................................................................... 122
6.
Conclusion— Where Do We Go From Here?: The Twenty-First Century & Beyond ....... 126
7.
Bibliography ........................................................................................................................ 131
iii
Abstract
This thesis traces national developments and presents local examples of both the
historical preservation and environmental conservation movements from the late nineteenth
century until today, including tensions and opportunities for cooperation between the two
movements. Focusing on three case studies, chosen for their particular involvement with historic
preservation and environmental conservation groups, this thesis explores recent partnerships that
are emerging between these two movements on a local level and provides suggestions for the
facilitation of future partnerships.
iv
Acknowledgements
I am indebted to many people who helped me make this happen. My first thanks go to my
teachers, Mr. Jack Stoll who taught me to ask questions, Dr. Gordon Young who inspired me to
change my major in undergrad, Drs. Michael Morrison, Nancy Gabin, and Michael Smith who
made me at home in my new major, Dr. Sally Hastings for pushing me when I needed to be
pushed, Dr. William Moore and Dr. Tammy Gordon, who gave me boundless opportunities for
growth. I will forever be indebted to all of you.
Many thanks to my family and friends, my grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles who
all supported me through this work, my brother Evan and his wonderful wife Jenna, my parents,
Mike and Becky, who supported all my decisions, urged me to dream bigger, and have always
listened to my questions and hypotheses with the most rapt attention, my friends and peers who
dealt with my craziness, and tempted me out of my self-imposed hermitage when I most needed
it.
Special thanks go out to the countless archivists, librarians, and media specialists and
library volunteers who I incessantly peppered with questions and who recommended many
excellent books and resources, this thesis would not have happened without you; to the North
Carolina Coastal Land Trust, who hired me as a summer intern and opened up Orton Plantation
and Poplar Grove while showing me what environmental conservation was about; to Will Abbott
of the Society for the Preservation of New Hampshire Forests, who graciously shared much of
his time answering my questions; and to Dr. Richard Candee of Boston University who shared
his knowledge of Creek Farm with me.
v
Many thanks to my thesis committee, Dr. Hart, who took on the role of thesis chair and
shared his time and knowledge with me, Dr. Monica Gisolfi, who graciously stepped into the
role of reader and worked with me even while she was on leave, and last but not least, Dr.
Kathleen Berkeley who took over the position of reader, and gave me fabulous feedback when I
most needed it. Even though I never had the chance to work with any of you before this, I feel
very lucky to have had this committee.
Finally, I would like to thank my Aunt, Dr. Judi Jennings, who when I was little, showed
me the world through her own travels, took me on adventures through her postcards, and has
been a constant source of support and inspiration throughout my life. Regardless of your own
work you spent countless hours working with me, time is such a precious gift and you have given
yours so freely. You are an amazing woman, and have truly been a beacon for me to guide my
life by.
All the merits of this work I claim for the people above, all the faults I must claim for
myself. I hope you enjoy reading this work even more than I enjoyed researching and writing it.
---Erica “Iron” Hague
Spring 2012
vi
Introduction
In North America there are over 4,500 different historical societies and preservation
organizations.1 It is more difficult to find an estimate of the amount of environmental
conservation groups, mainly because of the myriad of different causes that groups under this
umbrella heading endorse. It is likely, however, that the number is also quite high as there are
over 100 organizations that have opted into the North Carolina Conservation Network alone.2
Both types of organizations have repeatedly called for building partnerships with each other on
local, state and national levels, but have failed to follow up on this goal.3 Environmental
conservation and historic preservation are sister movements, sprouting as separate and distinct
movements during the mid-nineteenth century, but often nurtured through national policies as
joint ideologies. The following chapters will trace the emergence and development of these
important movements and the policies that shaped them at three sites. Case studies of Poplar
Grove and Orton Plantation in Wilmington, North Carolina, and Creek Farm in Portsmouth, New
Hampshire, contextualized within each chapter will exemplify the problems and the importance
of cooperation between environmental conservationists and historic preservationists. These case
studies were selected because they provide some of the few sites managed by environmental and
historic preservation groups that have recently begun to work with their sister organizations.
Taken together, the overview of the movements and the three case studies reveal the challenges
1
Tim Cannan, “Welcome,” PreservationDirectory.com,
http://www.preservationdirectory.com/HistoricalPreservation/Home.aspx (accessed Jan 5, 2012).
2
“2010 annual report,” North Carolina Conservation Network,
http://www.ncconservationnetwork.org/documents/2010AnnualReport (accessed Jan 5, 2012).
3
The 1991 conference held by the National Trust for Historic Preservation officially put increased cooperation and
communication with the environmental conservation movement as one of their major goals for the following 25
years, as seen in Antionette Lee, ed., Past Meets Future: Saving America’s Historic Environments (Washington:
Preservation Press, 1992). Similarly, Conservation groups can be seen to be dedicating themselves to increased
communication, such as the North Carolina Conservation Network, previously cited, which has one of their three
major goals in their 2010 annual report as increased communication with likely and unlikely partners.
that both historical preservation and environmental conservation face in becoming upstanding
custodians of common grounds.
This thesis addresses key questions in public history such as, what can a shared history
and common language do to help facilitate the cooperation of these organizations? When
cooperation takes place between environmental conservationists and historic preservationists,
does it result in adequate stewardship of historic properties? What can cooperation between these
two movements bring to society? What are the benefits of working through the problems that
naturally arise from such a partnership?
A special focus of these chapters pays attention to three case studies that illuminate the
collaboration between the movements as a positive effort to encourage increased and improved
cooperation. These three cases will be woven throughout the narrative of the growth of
preservation and environmental conservation movements to show similarities and differences in
specific locations and groups. Poplar Grove, Orton Plantation, and Creek Farm are three sites
that have the interest and protection of both movements. While these sites vary in locale, size,
and focus, they do have important similarities. All three sites have environmental easements,
have been the focus of historic preservation efforts, and visited frequently by locals and tourists
alike. While the use of the structures and land vary, all three places have found ways to preserve
and make useful the land and buildings.
Orton Plantation, built in 1735, is also located near Wilmington, North Carolina, and was
a functioning historic garden for the past several years, although a recent change in ownership
has shifted the focus of the site. The North Carolina Coastal Land Trust holds about 2900 acres
of this site under easement, and the Historic Wilmington Foundation has had a close relationship
2
with the property in the past.4 Currently the site is being reimagined by the new owner, Louis
Moore Bacon, who plans to revive the historic rice plantation and reverse the changes that were
made to the forests, gardens, and house during occupation by the Sprunt family.5 Although the
original house on the site was built in 1735, the house has been expanded several times
throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including a second floor, the iconic
white Doric Columns, and wings on either side of the original structure.6
Poplar Grove, the main house of which was built in 1850 by the enslaved plantation
workers, is located near Wilmington, North Carolina, and is a functioning historic house museum
located on roughly 15 acres of land.7 The North Carolina Coastal Land Trust holds easements on
the land surrounding the house.8 This guarantees that the land will be safe from the encroaching
suburban developments that are pushing out of the city and closer to the historic house. The
house is under the protection of the Friends of Poplar Grove, a group dedicated to the running of
the entire site as a historic house museum that presents a history of southern farming before and
after the Civil War. Even though the site has seen some development by its current owner, it still
remains an active place in the community, used by both locals and tourists.9
4
Details of the size, location, and justification for this easement can be found in, Easement, Orton Plantation File,
NCCLT, Wilmington, NC. A basic digital file of this information is accessible electronically, “Conservation
Registry”, North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, http://ncwrc.conservationregistry.org/projects/18939
(accessed April 5,2012). HWF had held Gala events at Orton in the past, and in 2008 Orton and the Sprunt family
were presented with the James and Rosalie Carr Memorial Plaque by the HWF.
5
The detailed plan for the site has not been revealed to the public, but the most recent release looks at these changes,
Cassie Foss, “Orton’s Old is New,” Star News, March 23, 2012.
6
All these expansions were listed in the National Register Nomination, National Register of Historic Places, Orton
Plantation, Southport, Brunswick Co., North Carolina, 73001294.
7
National Register of Historic Places, Poplar Grove, Scotts Hill, Pender Co., North Carolina, 79003346.
8
Details of the size, location, and justification for this easement can be found in, Easement, Poplar Grove Plantation
File, NCCLT, Wilmington, NC. A basic digital file of this information is accessible electronically, “Conservation
Registry”, North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, http://ncwrc.conservationregistry.org/projects/99784
(accessed April 5,2012).
9
The National Register listing has none of the currently standing outbuildings surrounding the house. Aside from
the house tours that are conducted on a daily basis, the site is also used by the surrounding community as a farmers
market on a weekly basis during the spring, summer, and fall.
3
Creek Farm, built 1887-1888, is located in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, is under
easement through the state of New Hampshire, and under the ownership of the Society for the
Protection of New Hampshire Forests (SPNHF). The historic house sits on 30 acres of the
original summer retreat of socialite Arthur Astor Carey, and was used to house the delegates of
the Treaty of Portsmouth that ended the Russo-Japanese War in 1905.10 The SPNEF originally
planned to demolish the house, but due to an outpouring of local support for the preservation of
the building, the society decided to repurpose the building.11 The site functions as a public park,
which is maintained with the money earned from renting the buildings on the site to Shoals
Marine Laboratory which houses student researchers on the site.12
The following chapters examine the developments and challenges of the historic
preservation and environmental conservation movements since 1850. As explored in more detail
in chapter one, the conservation and preservation movements began in the mid-nineteenth
century, building grassroots support as more upper and middle class women became active in a
variety of causes. At first these movements focused on rural places. Widespread natural settings,
such as Yellowstone Park in 1872, and manor houses of socially elite men, such as George
Washington’s Mount Vernon estate in 1860, were among the earliest places saved by their
respective movements.13 These early successes would become models for future conservation
and preservation groups to emulate. In the period of national expansion following the Civil War,
parks appeared across the nation, connected to major cities by rail, being developed into ‘natural’
oases from the urban sprawl, complete with hotel accommodations. Likewise, historic house
10
“Boston University Full Report on Creek Farm” (Presented to the SPNHF, Boston University, 2002).
Will Abbott, Interview by author, SPNHF offices, Concord, New Hampshire, May 11, 2011.
12
Ibid.
13
Carolyn Merchant, American Environmental History: An Introduction (New York: Columbia University Press,
2007). Patricia West, Domesticating History: The Political Origins of America’s House Museums (Washington:
Smithsonian Institution Press,1999), 29.
11
4
museums focusing on presenting American culture and tradition opened their doors across New
England in an attempt to instill patriotism and educate immigrants about the heroic forefathers of
their new nation.14 Despite these movements having similar organizational approaches, and
being run by people with similar socio-economic backgrounds, there is little evidence to suggest
that they sought partnerships with one another in this formative period. This is most likely
because of how the movements’ leadership emerged. As the nineteenth century came to an end,
preservation and conservation groups included paid staff and held local and regional power. With
the professionalization and politicization of historic preservation, women who had helped initiate
the movement began to be steadily displaced from their positions as keepers of cultural
heritage.15
Chapter Two explores how, during the Progressive Era, the conservation and preservation
movements became more professionalized and gained new leadership. While the preservation
movement gained the backing of architects, the environmental conservation movement’s
utilitarian strategy was backed by railroad companies and important politicians, such as Gifford
Pinchot and President Theodore Roosevelt. With the creation of the Antiquities Act of 1906 and
the National Park Services Act of 1916, the preservation and conservation movements were tied
together with national policy.16 These ties would be strengthened with the beginning of New
Deal policies and programs.17
14
James Lindgren, Preserving Historic New England (New York: Oxford Press, 1995) covers several of these
historic houses that were preserved by the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities.
15
Men had always been involved in Historic Preservation alongside women, such as the involvement of
“superintendents” at Mount Vernon who worked the political angles that the lady “vice regents” often could not.
After the nineteenth century though, less women acquired leadership positions in such organizations, and many
women in such positions were pushed out by men.
16
“American Antiquities Act of 1906,” Title 16 U.S. Code, pts. 431-433. 1906 ed. ; “National Historic Preservation
Act,” Title 16 U.S. Code, pts. 470. 1966 ed.
17
While not all New Deal programming was beneficial, even the negative programming (such as damming) brought
local organizational leaders together to argue the negative aspects of the programs.
5
Chapter Three covers the Depression and New Deal years up to World War II. While the
Civilian Conservation Corps worked to recreate natural settings in parks, and build
infrastructure, the Historic American Buildings Survey helped to document and preserve historic
buildings across America. The environmental conservation movement built up its grassroots
network, but became divided over the rights of resources such as water. The preservation
movement continued to focus on preserving individual buildings, but widened its net to include
edifices of architectural interest. Both movements enjoyed an increase in support from the
populace. By the eve of the Second World War, the environmental conservation and preservation
movements were inextricably linked through legislation but still operated largely in their own
realms.18
Chapter Four shows how, after the Second World War, improved communications and
increased scientific study changed how Americans saw and understood the natural and built
environments. For environmental conservation, this meant an increase in battles over control of
rivers, damming and an explosion of environmental concerns due to the run-offs of progress.
Americans, seeing the devastation of events outlined in books such as Silent Spring, began to
better understand the impacts that convenient living had on their neighborhoods.19
Preservationists also saw a boom in interest as Americans began to see preservation of historic
structures as creating permanence, which became important during this time of urban flight and
18
Major legislation that linked these movements is, the “American Antiquities Act of 1906,” Title 16 U.S. Code,
pts. 431-433. 1906 ed.; “National Park Services Organic Act of 1916,” Title 16 U.S. Code, pts. 1-4. 1916ed.;
“Historic Sites Act of 1935,” Title 16 U.S. Code, pts. 461-467. 1935ed. Despite these federal efforts to combine
these cultural resources through legislation, local and state organizations remained largely separate until the late
twentieth century.
19
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1962).
6
urban renewal.20 Preservationists found themselves with a new mission of preserving historic
downtowns as suburbia bloomed and cities were left to crumble.21
Chapter Five begins with the period after the America’s Bicentennial celebrations, a
period marked by government malaise and increasingly radicalized groups. Preservationists
realized that their scope needed to be widened and that buildings needed to find a purpose to
truly be saved. The focus shifted from preserving individual structures to entire city blocks and
communities.22 Environmental conservation moved away from the profitable use of the
Progressive Era, as well as the development of leisure grounds for the upper and middle class
Americans, and even moved beyond the beautification programs of the 1960s. Environmental
conservation and new environmentalism became ideologically connected, but were distinct
movements with different methods and goals. In more recent years, the preservation and
conservation movements have begun to cooperate, since the long term preservation and
conservation of some sites can be economically prohibitive, but the sites that these movements
see as common ground are few and far between. Issues still plague the custodians of these
inherently more complex sites, as teamwork is not always easily negotiated and stable monetary
support is difficult to acquire.
20
While urban renewal did destroy many historic buildings in downtown areas, several cities (New Orleans’s French
Quarter for example) used federal and state money provided for urban renewal to create surveys and management
plans. For more on urban renewal see, Lina Cofresi and Rosetta Radtke, “Local Government Programs,” in A Richer
Heritage, ed. Robert E Stipe (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2003), 117-156.
21
Urban flight during this time was known as decentralization or white flight, for more on the changing dynamics of
cities during this time see, Jon Teaford, The Metropolitan Revolution: The Rise of Post-Urban America (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2006).
7
Key texts shape the overview of the development of preservation and environmental
conservation movements and frame the case studies in this thesis. Charles B. Hosmer Jr., cited as
being the first to write a history of the historic preservation movement in America in his 1965
work, Presence of the Past, incorporated landscape preservation into the narrative of historic
preservation pointing to purchasing of additional land surrounding the Hasbrouck House in
Newburgh, New York in order to “protect the site”.23 While Hosmer tended to mention in
passing the idea of landscape preservation and cooperation between conservation and
preservation efforts, this topic began to emerge as an important idea for the future.
William Murtagh, another early historian of historic preservation, dedicated an entire
chapter of Keeping Time to landscape preservation, in which he points to historic preservations
“curious disassociation from its sister movement [natural conservation]”.24 Murtagh also
acknowledges that efforts to treat the preservation and environmental conservation movements
integrally have proven difficult, and points to a lack of cooperation and vision as the reasons for
the failure of these organizations to work together.25 Murtagh’s contribution to this growing area
is brief, only ten pages, but incorporates several case studies and landscape preservation theory.
Perhaps more importantly is how he links the theory and case studies into the following chapter
on rural preservation.
Landscape preservation cannot be discussed without mention of John Brinckerhoff
Jackson, widely acknowledged as the premier writer in the field of landscape studies.26 While
23
Charles B Hosmer Jr., Presence of the Past (New York: G.P. Putnam’s sons,1965), 36.
William Murtagh, Keeping Time: The History and Theory of Preservation in America (New York: Sterling, 1988),
125.
25
Ibid, 125,134.
26
Jackson, of course, does not call himself this, but it is evident to books such as, Chris Wilson and Paul Groth, ed.,
Everyday America: Landscape Studies since J B Jackson (Los Angeles: University of Berkeley Press, 2003) as well
as his lectures and books being in almost every historic preservation book.
24
8
most of his works are theoretical and based on case studies, his ideas of what landscape is, what
purpose it serves, how people mold it to suit their own histories and purposes, are important,
especially when thinking about what and why place should be preserved. Jackson takes Oswald
Spengler’s thought that, “landscapes reflect the culture of the people that were living there,” and
refines it, finds evidence of it in the American landscape, and shows how Americans curate
nature.27 While it is apparent that Americans are selective in what they preserve in historic
buildings, it is less widely acknowledged that the natural areas that Americans have worked to
preserve, have been selected, molded and modified for consumption by the public. Jackson sees
this curation of the landscape as a natural activity for Americans who seek to create a
community, and in the process alter the existing land into a landscape that reflects the culture of
the group.28
Preservationist historians have worked to increase the cooperation with environmental
conservation organizations in recent years. The 1991 conference for the National Trust of
Historic Preservation inspired a book entitled Past Meets Future, which identified the
cooperation of organizations as an area to work on and improve in the next 25 years, ending in
2016.29 The essays from Past Meets Future are insightful, inspiring, and demonstrate that the
gaps still hold true today. Murtagh contributed to this collection, and in his brief history of the
historic preservation movement, notes that, “It is no longer acceptable in our country to
intellectually, verbally, or physically separate preservation from conservation.”30 He also
suggests that Americans should follow the lead of the British who, “use the word ‘conservation’
27
Oswald Spengler, Decline of the West (New York: Oxford, 1991); John Brinckerhoff Jackson, Discovering the
Vernacular Landscape (New York: Yale, 1986); John Brinckerhoff Jackson, A Sense of Place, a Sense of Time
(New York: Yale, 1996).
28
Jackson, Vernacular Landscape, 12.
29
Peter Brink and H. Grant Dehart, “Findings and Recommendations,” in Lee, 17,18, and 22.
30
William Murtaugh, “Janus Never Sleeps,” in Lee, 56.
9
to mean both the natural and built environment.”31 While this argument for the redefining of a
term is a small one, it shows the importance of linking the ideologies of two movements that
have been seen as historically separate, despite their shared goals and methods. Arthur P. Ziegler
Jr., also sees the failure of the movements to work together as a major problem and roadblock to
the future development of historic preservation in his contribution to Past Meets Future.32
Others have continued this effort in their more modern histories of historic preservation.
Norman Tyler, in his introductory book to the topic, looks at rural and landscape preservation as
fields that are still in development and refinement. 33 Despite his deft history of preservation, and
brief history of the National Park Services, he largely ignores the ties to the environmental
conservation movement. Max Page and Randall Mason likewise identify the need for bridges
across the preservation/conservation gap, but they argue that many preservationists are clinging
too tightly to their narrow views of preservation to do much good.34 Finally, Robert Stipe has
also contributed to a greater understanding through editing A Richer Heritage, in which he
includes several essays on landscape preservation that reiterate the recommendations in Past
Meets Future. 35 In his introduction he writes, “We must move beyond the problem of saving
architectural artifacts and begin to think about how we can conserve urban neighborhoods, rural
landscapes, and natural resources for human purposes.”36
On the environmental side there is less of a clamor to embrace historic preservation.
Environmental conservationists typically viewed buildings in natural areas as imperfections and
31
William Murtaugh, “Janus Never Sleeps,” in Lee, 57.
Arthur P Ziegler Jr., “The Early Years,” in Lee, 63.
33
Norman Tyler, Historic Preservation: An Introduction to its History, Principles, and Practice (New York:
Norman, 2000).
34
Max Page and Randall Mason, Giving Preservation a History (New York: Routledge, 2003), 15.
35
Richard Stipe, ed., A Richer Heritage (Raleigh: Historic Preservation Foundation of North Carolina, 2003).
36
Ibid, xv.
32
10
usually removed them. Carolyn Merchant, in her widely used textbook, American Environmental
History, cites several examples of parks which removed all trace of the people who previously
lived there, both American Indian sites and homesteads of rural farmers and woodsmen.37
Despite this desire to have idyllic, unspoiled, wilderness retreats, past park officials have also
sought to develop their own places through which to experience nature, building a massive
network of rail lines, hotels, eateries, and a multitude of other commercial necessities for the
visiting elite.38 Many of these structures remain in the parks today, and most are considered
historic.
Merchant offers important methods of managing nature that have been developed since
the mid nineteenth century, including conservation, preservation, ecology, and also presents
arguments over what the term environment entails. A term that seems so straightforward is not so
easily defined. Merchant inspires readers to look more closely at National Parks as not only
environmental areas, but also as curated places where nature has been altered to suit the current
public.
While Merchant’s overview encompasses most environmental viewpoints and histories, it
is important to look into more modern environmentalism as well. The Greening of a Nation, by
Hal Rothman, identifies the differences in the environmental movement in the Cold War era and
beyond and tracks the influence of other social movements in the environmental movement.39
Other works that cover the development and importance of nature and National Parks to the
environmental conservation movement, such as Selling Yellowstone are also important to note
37
Merchant, American.
While the commercialization of the National Parks will be covered in a later chapter, more information about the
commercialization of Yellowstone can be found in, Mark Daniel Barringer, Selling Yellowstone (Lawrence Kansas:
University of Kansas, 2002).
39
Hal Rothman, The Greening of a Nation?: Environmentalism in the United States Since 1945 (New York:
Wadsworth, 1997).
38
11
since the influences that shaped the National Park Services plays a large part in how federal
policy was created and adapted during different time periods.40
Public History and the Environment, edited by David Melosi and Philip Scarpino is
perhaps the most important work that includes both preservation and conservation.41 This
collection of essays is the first book that is inclusive of environmentalists, environmental
historians, conservationists, historic preservationists, and public historians focused on the
importance of the environment. Rebecca Conard’s essay, “Spading Common Ground,”
effectively presents the differences and difficulties that face the organizations and block their
cooperation.42
Despite the consistently stated desire over the past 20 years for cooperation, few
partnerships have actually emerged. The case studies presented here, represent a few of the sites
that are held by both preservationists and conservationists as common ground. These studies
indicate that when cooperation between environmentalists and historic preservationists does
happen, it rarely results in adequate stewardship of historic properties. This thesis will argue that
the failure of these organizations to become upstanding custodians of common grounds is due to
a disparity between the organizations because they lack a collective history and shared language.
While there has been a lot of talk about needing to bridge the gap between the environmental
conservation and historic preservation groups, few articles and books have attempted to write
their histories as a shared experience. This thesis addresses that gap and examines the
development of these two important movements to contribute to building a stronger future for
40
Barringer, Yellowstone.
Martin Melosi and Philip Scarpino, eds., Public History and the Environment (Malabar, Florida: Krieger
Publishing, 2004).
42
Rebecca Conard, “Spading Common Ground: Reconciling the Built and Natural Environments”, In Melosi and
Scarpino, 3-22.
41
12
both. The case studies presented here provide examples of positive changes that are possible
when collaboration exists between these types of organizations. When preservationists and
conservationists know where we have been, then we will know where we can go together.
13
1. —Beginnings: The Nineteenth Century
“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the
universe.”-- John Muir, 191143
Historic preservation and environmental conservation emerged in the United States
during the late nineteenth century as social movements hitched closely to the changes that were
the hallmarks of modernization. This chapter will delve into how these movements were shaped
by the rise in industrialization after the Civil War, what effect the emergence of the managerial
urban middle class had, and why urban middle and upper classes women were especially
important to the early historic preservation movement. It will also cover how urbanization and
developments in transportation changed the way that people viewed nature and the environment.
During this period of expansion, as environmental historian Carolyn Merchant argues,
changes in the national market economy meant that many Americans began to see nature as
beneficial only for the wealth and status that the resources harvested from it could bring.44
Conservation, as the term is used today, developed from the idea to use and preserve nature, put
forth in the late antebellum era by New England transcendentalists, such as Ralph Waldo
Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, and combined the need to preserve nature, threatened by the
market economy, with the desire to use nature.45 Influenced by the Transcendalists, conservation
then is the thoughtful management of natural areas and resources in order to preserve natural
settings in perpetuity.46
43
John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911), 110.
Merchant, American, 71.
45
Transcendentalists believed in the unity of all things, as such nature was valued as a part of creation. Emerson,
however saw nature as a commodity for human consumption and progress. For more on Emerson’s ideals see, Ralph
Waldo Emerson, The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1903-1904). Thoreau
though, believed in the minimum invasion and destruction of natural areas. For a contemporary biography of
Thoreau and more on Thoreau’s ideals, see, Henry David Thoreau, Walden (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1854).
46
While the wording of this definition is my own, the ideas expressed within this statement come from various
sections of Merchant, American.
44
14
As this chapter will show, the suburbanization of the late nineteenth century both
strengthened and challenged the idea of conservation. The increase in industrial manufacturing,
improved and expanded mass transportation, which in turn led to the beginnings of the suburban
growth.47 Upper and middle class families began to seek a way out of the mired air of the city,
and sought out new homes in planned communities on the fringes of the city. These suburbs
were connected to the city through networks of street cars and trolley lines, making the city, and
the department stores that it offered, accessible. The city was no longer just the downtown area,
but a sprawling conglomeration spurred on and made possible by technological advances.48
These suburban dwellers then, thrived through the conquest of nature, but secluded themselves
away from the pollution that was caused by that conquest.
Early Preservation in the United States
These economic and social dynamics changed the status and use of buildings, and land,
which embodied power and influence in the pre-Civil War era. The historic homes, manors, and
plantations of socially elite men from the eighteenth century, many of which were originally on
the outskirts of cities, began to be threatened by developers, speculators, and physical decay.
Places where former presidents and other men who helped to shape the United States lived or
spent time became informal shrines, and impromptu picnicking spots. For example, Mount
Vernon, home of George Washington, inspired so many unwelcome pleasure seekers by 1822
that the owner at the time, Bushrod Washington, had a sign printed and posted warning away the
47
Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1985).
48
Ibid.
15
casual tourists coming by on steamboats that his farm was private property and picnics would not
be tolerated.49
Since preservation did not become a widespread movement until the last few decades of
the nineteenth century, some historically significant buildings were lost in the pre-Civil War era.
Prevalent attempts which failed to either gain popular interest or to raise enough money to buy
the structures included the Old Brick Meetinghouse in Boston, which fell in 1808; the old
Governor Coddington house in Newport, Rhode Island in 1834; the Russell House in Brandford
Connecticut in 1835; and finally the Old Indian House in Deerfield Massachusetts in 1847. 50
These failures paved the way for future successes. Although some of these buildings had the
support of a benefactor, it was not enough to result in a true, long lasting, preservation.
A few early attempts at preservation were also misguided, for example the ‘saving’ of the
Old State House in Philadelphia, better known as Independence Hall, in 1813.51 While popular
interest and patriotism saved the structure, (with the purchase of it by the city in 1818), there
were several arguments by city officials about how the building should be restored, leading to
prolonged and often piecemeal restoration of the building.52 Public outcry against the
renovations done by the city in 1824 prior to the Marquis de Lafayette’s visit of the same year,
led officials to attempt to restore the building. The building was poorly documented, and there
was not an accurate representation of what many sections of the interior looked like for the
restoration of the chambers to be based off of. Workers eventually attempted to mimic the
Supreme Court Chambers paneling and woodwork, adding a misleading detail to the Assembly
49
Bushrod Washington, a printed notice, signed and dated July 4, 1822, Archives of the Mount Vernon Ladies’
Association of the Union, Mount Vernon, Virginia (hereafter cited as MVLA Archives).
50
Hosmer, Presence, 29-34.
51
Ibid, 29-31.
52
Ibid.
16
Room. Other parts of the building were adapted to fit the needs of more modern city officials
through the mid nineteenth century, until the city vacated its offices from the building near the
end of the century. In 1897 the Daughters of the American Revolution stepped in to fund the
restoration of the second floor, which replaced several original embellishments with inaccurate
reproductions. The abuse of Independence Hall continued into the twentieth century as each new
generation took it upon themselves to ‘fix’ the mistakes of the previous generation, each time
ripping away more of the original fabric of the building. By having no long term plan for the
restoration of the building when it was purchased, the city doomed the structure to constant
renovations based on the whims of officials and the public.
While many preservation attempts failed, due to either lack of funds or an apathetic
populace, these pre-Civil War efforts, by both individuals and local governments, set the tone for
the success of later organizations. In the words of the report that saved the Hasbrouck House, in
New Burgh, New York,
“If our love of country is excited when we read the biography… how much more
will the flame of patriotism burn in our bosoms when we tread the ground where
was shed the blood of our fathers, or when we move among the scenes where
were conceived and consummated their noble achievements.”53
This call to preserve places based upon their patriotic value would persist through the rest of the
century, providing the rational for rural, suburban, and eventually urban, preservation. Buildings
that were not fortunate enough to inspire the support of the local or state government usually fell
to the wrecker unless a local group dedicated themselves to its cause.
53
Quoted in, Richard Caldwell, A True History of the Acquisition of Washington’s Headquarters at Newburgh by
the state of New York (New York: Stivers, Slauson and Boyd, 1887), 21-23. The Hasbrouck House is known today
as “Washington’s Headquarters State Historic Site,” and is the longest-serving headquarters of Washington during
the American Revolutionary War.
17
In 1850, after years of effort by state officials, the Hasbrouck House in Newburgh, New
York was preserved and opened as a historic house museum.54 The Hasbrouck House was the
longest-serving headquarters of George Washington during the American Revolutionary War, as
well as the oldest house in the city of Newburgh, and the first property acquired and preserved by
any U.S. state for historic reasons. In following years the land surrounding the site was
preserved, and the size of the lot increased to erect a museum building on the site as well as a
monument, called ‘The Tower of Victory’ to celebrate the centennial of Washington’s stay.
In 1856, a mere eleven years after Andrew Jackson’s death, the state of Tennessee
successfully preserved The Hermitage, his estate outside of Nashville.55 Jackson was a hero of
humble beginnings, not having an impressive genealogy or prestigious education, and this quick
preservation of his home was a by-product of immense popularity and political success. The
Tennessee legislature allotted $48,000 to buy the houses and grounds, citing that, “it is good
policy to… inculcate sentiments of veneration for those departed heroes…”56 The quick
preservation of the site by an entity as powerful as the state proved beneficial, the buildings
remained largely unaltered until 1889 when the Ladies’ Hermitage Associate formed and
received ownership and control over the site.57 While this group was looked after by an all-male
Board of Trustees, the women successfully preserved several historic log buildings, one of which
was a cabin the Jackson family had lived in prior to the manor being built.58
54
Hosmer, Presence, 35-37. The house was designated in 1961 as a National Historical Landmark.
Hosmer, Presence, 37.
56
Mary C Dorris, Preservation of the Hermitage, 1889-1915 (Nashville: Ladies’ Hermitage Association, 1915), 32.
57
Ibid, 14-17.
58
Ibid, 68-69.
55
18
Role of Women in Preservation
In the years before the Civil War, as the nation became more divided over the issues of
slavery and states right, the preservation movement began to emerge as a cohesive movement.
Preservation moved from beyond the local community preserving a local building, to a wide
network of individuals, linked through a highly mobile social network to preserve places they
may have never seen before. One such example can be seen in the Mount Vernon Ladies
Association (MVLA) and the labors of Ann Pamela Cunningham. Cunningham, a tenacious
woman born to wealthy southern planters, was in her late thirties when she first heard of Mount
Vernon’s problems. Crippled in a riding accident when she was a teenager, she was rarely
considered an invalid as she worked within the accepted social boundaries to save Mount
Vernon.59 She found out about the threatening decay of Mount Vernon in a letter from her
mother, Louisa Dalton Bird Cuningham, who, while traveling back to their South Carolina
plantation in 1853, had passed Mount Vernon.60 Her mother lamented the state that the home of
George Washington had fallen into, pondering, “Why was it that the women of this country did
not try to keep it [Mount Vernon] in repair, if the men could not do it? It does seem such a blot
on our country!”61 This statement from her mother sparked a fire in Cunningham to save the
historic house.
59
Diary of Benjamin F Perry, quoted in, Marion R. Wilkes, Rosemont and Its Famous Daughter (Washington: The
Author, 1947), 5,17. I refer here, to her addressing all of her early media releases with the name “A Southern
Matron”, ascribing to the belief that a woman’s name should never appear in the newspaper, excepting her marriage
and death announcements.
60
Ann Pamela added the extra ‘n’ into Cunningham for reasons unknown, but her father, Captain Robert
Cuningham, and his wife, Louisa, seem to have only one ‘n’.
61
Letter from Mrs. George W Campbell to Mrs. S. E. Johnson Hudson, September, 1897, MVLA Archives, ER IV,
p. 1. Sadly the original letter does not seem to exist, which is very difficult for me to believe, but the author of this
letter was read the original, and other claims by Ann Pamela herself seem to substantiate these claims.
19
For Cunningham, Mount Vernon, being in Virginia, a southern state, necessitated only
the protection of “southern ladies.”62 Cunningham called first for southern women to band
together, inciting support from both genders, including influential politicians such as former
Massachusetts Senator Edward Everett.63 Her cries were magnified by other women, such as
Octavia Walton LeVert who rallied other by writing, “…in this great world you [women] have
your social duties, as imperative to your country as the political battles of your husbands and
your brothers.”64 During the height of pre-Civil War sectionalism though, northern women
wanted to become a part of the effort.65 Despite demands by several southerners to disregard the
northerners, Cunningham embraced northern support as a method to influence the sale of Mount
Vernon, changing her addresses from “southern ladies,” to “the Daughters of Washington,” and
reorganizing the association.66 She claimed that, “Woman, in her higher or better nature retained
a sacred reverence for the Memory of Washington.”67 Despite the inclusion of northern women
in the MVLA, sectionalism continued to brew, although creation of a national charter with equal
state representation quelled some of the malcontent.68 While the MVLA was still very much an
antebellum women’s benevolent society, it was immersing itself in the very politics that it
claimed to be morally above.69 In seven years, Cunningham, with the help of several thousand
women and men, from both the North and South, raised the capital to buy the house, and did so
on the eve of the Civil War.
62
Ann Pamela Cunningham, “Letter to the Southern Matrons,” Charleston Mercury, Dec. 2, 1853.
Everett spent several years as a travelling orator, making tours across the eastern United States and speaking in
support of Cunningham’s plan to preserve Mount Vernon. Manuscripts of the 53 papers that he presented can be
found in the, Edward Everett papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Reel 41, Vol. 194.
64
Grace King, Mount Vernon on the Potomac: History of the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association of the Union (New
York: Macmillan, 1929), 31.
65
Cunningham’s call to preserve Mount Vernon was republished in several popular magazines of the day, such as
Godey’s Lady’s Book which published several articles on the developments of the Association.
66
West, Domesticating, 10.
67
Mount Vernon Ladies' Association of the Union, and Ann Pamela Cunningham, To the Daughters of Washington!
An Appeal for Mount Vernon (Philadelphia: Inquirer Print. Office, 1855).
68
West, Domesticating, 11.
69
Ibid.
63
20
Mount Vernon is an extraordinary case that has been explored in several books.70
Nevertheless, it is an important turning point in preservation history, because a private
organization was formed with the mission of saving a historic structure. That this organization,
comprised primarily of women, continued its efforts to raise $200,000 despite sectional issues,
makes this an exceptional example of how important collaboration is to the preservation
movement.71 After the Civil War, the grassroots movement of the Mount Vernon Ladies
Association became a guide for other groups rallying to preserve historic houses. These new
organizations justified the preservation of new historic sites with patriotic sentiments prompted
by the increase in immigration.
Early Conservation in the United States
The idea of conservation did not just appear from the industrialization of the mid
nineteenth century. From the emergence of Jacksonian Democracy in 1828, and the market
economy that it supported, environmental consciousness had been growing across the United
States. Transcendentalist writers were among the first to see the effects of the industrial changes,
and writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau expressed their feelings
about industrialization alongside early environmentalists such as George Perkins Marsh and John
Muir.72
70
See, Hosmer, Presence, 41-62. Or West, Domesticating,1-37. Or Elizabeth R Varon, We Mean to be Counted:
White Women and Politics in Antebellum Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1998), 124-136.
71
It is important to note, that efforts to save Mount Vernon had been brought up before Ann Pamela took it on as her
own cause. Private citizens and Congressmen alike had, for five years prior to Ann Pamela’s efforts, been trying to
find a way to purchase and preserve the structure.
72
While Emerson and Thoreau are strictly transcendentalists, and Muir is strictly an environmental conservationist,
Walsh has his feet in several camps, as he subscribes to transcendental ideas, but advocated for practical and
informed decision making when it came to the preservation or conservation of nature, because many times the
benefits of the taming of nature would outweigh the negatives.
21
The early efforts of these writers were aimed at the preservation rather than conservation
of natural areas and resources. They argued that these spaces should remain untouched and
unused by humans. In Thoreau’s words, “in wildness is the preservation of the world.”73 Elite
easterners began to think about the place of nature in human life.74 Environmental historian
William Cronon argued the role of nature was set in a narrative progression that can be seen in
the artistry of members of the Hudson River School, which enjoyed a second generation of
master painters from 1855-1875.75 In such paintings one can see the progression from the wild,
to pastoral, and urban stages. These paintings, much like the changes brought about by the
Transcendentalists, were part of a culture shift from the market economy and rationalism of the
eighteenth century to the romanticism of the nineteenth century.76 These paintings then depict
not only the changes in the landscape, but their popularity at this time among the elite also stand
as evidence of the increased interest in wilderness.
The conservation movement, found widespread support in 1852, when the “Mother of the
Forest,” a giant sequoia tree measuring 300 feet tall, was cut from the California hills in order to
display it as a carnival sideshow.77 A popular Boston magazine, Gleason’s Pictorial, summed up
the thoughts of many Americans when the editor wrote, ‘it seems a cruel idea, a perfect
73
Henry David Thoreau, “Walking,” The Atlantic Monthly ( Vol 9; 56, 1862), 657-674.
Merchant, American, 77.
75
Hudson River School artists were romantic landscape artists; The first generation was active during the early to
mid-nineteenth century and included several painters including Thomas Cole. The Second generation ran from about
1855-1875 and was a period marked by increased prominence of this school of artistry. Pupils of Cole, such as
Fredric Edwin Church, became celebrity-like and their exhibitions often drew large crowds to see the wonders of the
natural world. Many of these paintings have been reproduced in, New-York Historical Society, and Linda S. Ferber,
The Hudson River School: Nature and the American Vision (New York: Skira Rizzoli, 2009). More historical
information on the Hudson River School can be found in, John K. Howat, American Paradise The World of the
Hudson River School (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1987). For Cronon’s comments see, William
Cronon, “Telling Tales on Canvas,” in Discovered Lands, Invented Pasts, by Jules David Prown et al. (New Haven :
Yale University Press, 1992),45.
76
Merchant, American, 77.
77
United States, A Short Account of the Big Trees of California, Gifford Pinchot, (Washington: G.P.O., 1970), 13.
The area that this tree was cut from later became part of Yosemite Park.
74
22
desecration, to cut down such a splendid tree.”78 This destruction of nature to fuel consumer
speculation prompted a call by philosophers for Americans to think more about their influence
on nature, and what role they should play in future environmental issues. James Russell Lowell,
an influential thinker of the time, called for a society to preserve the forests in The Spectator,
“That is the best government for trees which governs least..." he wrote, "Nature knows better
than any city forester."79
The forces of market economy persuaded businesses to use their power to influence
government in order to increase their holdings and take advantage of land and resource rights. 80
The Federal Government catered to these businesses throughout the mid to late nineteenth
century, passing land use laws, such as the Free Timber and Timber and Stone Acts of 1878,
which allowing for corporations such as mining, timber, and railroad companies to buy massive
tracts of public land.81 These laws often ensured the continued destruction of natural resources,
leading to many environmentalists arguing for private rather than public protection of sites such
as Yosemite and resources such as the giant trees. These earlier acts were the impetus for later
policy, at the end of the century, for the conservation of several large forests in national reserves,
which would later become national parks.
Other prominent thinkers released books, such as Thoreau’s, Walden, which made upper
and middle class individuals think more about the consequences of their actions and inaction.
“By avarice and selfishness, and a grovelling habit, from which none of us is free,
of regarding the soil as property, or the means of acquiring property chiefly, the
78
"An Immense Tree," Gleason's Pictorial Drawing Room Companion, October 1, 1853: 217.
James Russell Lowell, "Humanity to Trees," The Crayon, March 1857: 96. For more on the ‘Mother of the
Forest,’ see, Mark Neuzil and Bill Kovarik, Mass Media & Environmental Conflict (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage
Publishers, 1998), Chapter 3.
80
Merchant, American, 71-72.
81
Ibid, 69-70, 139-140.
79
23
landscape is deformed, husbandry is degraded with us, and the farmer leads the
meanest of lives. He knows Nature but as a robber.” 82
Journalists also published travel journals and memoirs of travels west, such as the editor of the
New York Tribune, Horace Greeley’s, An Overland Journey, and Thomas Starr King, wrote an
eight-article series on Yosemite for the Boston Evening Transcript.83 King wrote in 1860,
“How can I express the awe and joy that were blended and continually struggling
with each other, during the half hour in the hot noon that we remained on the edge
of the abyss where the grandeurs of the Yo-Semite were first revealed to us?”84
While these writings furthered the cause of environmental preservation and conservation, as seen
in the 1864 protection of Yosemite through the state of California, these environmental successes
are still the work of government institutions responding to public desires, and not private citizens
or organizations buying up land. It was not until the later decades of the nineteenth century that
societies, organizations, and associations would be formed by individuals to protect areas or
aspects of nature.
The Suburban and Outdoors Movements
As industrialization created more upper and middle class families with disposable wealth
and leisure time, these families began to seek places to retreat to; places where they could
distance themselves from the city and escape the soot and smog caused by progress. Suburbs
became the solution for many upper and middle class families to the problem of urbanization.
Accessible by street cars, trolleys, and later by car, suburbs emerged outside of major cities and
towns as places for the moneyed to live within a comfortable distance of their workplaces, but
82
Thoreau, Walden.
Horace Greenly, An Overland Journey (Unknown, 1860); Thomas Starr King, A Vacation among the Sierras:
Yosemite in 1860 (Book Club of California, 1962).
84
King, A Vacation, Letter Five.
83
24
without the squalor and problems of the city.85 Houses changed as well, as parlors were left out
of designs in favor of larger family rooms, and large landscaped yards with gardens became
fashionable. Country Clubs, such as the Cape Fear Country Club in Wilmington, North Carolina,
opened in 1896, began to emerge and become popular, and bicycles started to be embraced by
both sexes.86 These suburbanites were spending more time outside in sporting endeavors, and
when local clubs and areas grew stale, they could always escape to their gardens, parks, and even
the countryside.
Outdoor clubs and magazines began to be developed. In the words of environmental
historian Roderick Nash, “Wilderness… acquired importance as a source of virility, toughness,
and savagery—qualities that defined ‘fitness’ in Darwinian terms.”87 The earliest club, which
survives to this day, was the Audubon Society in 1872. Named after the French-American
naturalist, John James Audubon, the society was built with the goal to, “conserve and restore
natural ecosystems, focusing on birds, other wildlife, and their habitats for the benefit of
humanity and the earth's biological diversity.”88 With these goals in mind, several other clubs
and organizations started to form.
The Boone and Crockett Club, organized in 1887, was a major conservation minded
group, dedicated to preserving the habitats and stock of wildlife for ethical hunters.89 The club
roster contains many important names, and it is no surprise that they played an integral role in
85
Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, 118-119.
Diane Cobb Cashman, A History of the Cape Fear Country Club, 1896-1984 (Wilmington, N.C.: Cape Fear
Country Club, 1987).
87
Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind (New Haven: Yale Nota Bene, 2001), 145.
88
“Audubon Mission Statement,” National Audubon Society, http://www.audubon.org/about-us (accessed Jan 10,
2012).
89
The term “ethical hunters” defines the club members as sportsmen who wished to ensure the longevity of the
species of wildlife that they hunted. In this way they sought the management of wildlife and nature through
environmental conservation to protect their own interests and hobbies.
86
25
the creation of the National Parks. Many of the original members were elite easterners, such as
Theodore Roosevelt, General William Tecumseh Sherman, and Gifford Pinchot, coming from
urban centers such as New York, Philadelphia, and Washington DC, although the club was
headquartered in Montana and most of the lands that they frequented were in the West.90 The
club’s mission was, “… to promote the conservation and management of wildlife, especially big
game, and its habitat, to preserve and encourage
hunting and to maintain the highest ethical standards
of fair chase and sportsmanship in North America.”
91
To this end they became a major influence in
making conservation appear on the federal agenda.
Magazines also focused on outdoor pursuits
and conservation. Sports Afield is possibly the oldest
outdoor magazine, first published in 1887, and was
followed with Field & Stream in 1895 and Outdoor
Life in 1898. These three magazines, delivered the
great and grand outdoors to mailboxes across the
country. Soon families were buying camping
supplies from the expanding department store
catalogues, and catching trains to rural areas to
90
George Bird Grinnell, ed., American Big Game in Its Haunts: The Book of the Boone and Crockett Club (1904),
6.
Figure Part
1-A Sears,
Roebuck and Co., Spring 1896, p 499
91
Language adapted from the, “Certificate of Incorporation of the Boone and Crockett Club,” May 23, 1923,
Washington, D.C., as presented by Theodore Roosevelt, Charles Sheldon, Kermit Roosevelt, George Bird Grinnell,
et al.
26
experience nature.92 One such family sought a retreat from the bustle of Boston at Creek Farm in
Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
Case Studies: Creek Farm, Orton Plantation, and Poplar Grove
Situated on the coast, 60 miles from Boston, Massachusetts, Portsmouth was a perfect
place for elite Bostonians to retreat and build their summer homes. In 1888 Arthur Astor Carey
who had recently purchased the Creek Farm area, employed his former Harvard schoolmate,
Alexander Wadsworth “Waddy” Longsfellow to design and build the shingle style colonial
revival summer home along the Little Harbor area along Sagamore Creek.93 The original part of
the house, seen in figure 1-B above, was completed in 1889 and additional wings were put on
around 1890 to accommodate Carey’s interest in music and for housing guests as seen in figure
1-C.94
Figure 1-B Creek Farm c. 1888
Photo courtesy of SPNHF Archives
Figure 1-C Creek Farm in 2011
Photo by Erica Hague
92
Sears’ Spring 1896 catalogue has an entire section dedicated to sporting and outdoors goods, which includes
firearms, rods and fishing tackle, clothing, sports gear, hammocks, tents, and other outdoor equipment.p453- 505.
See figure 1-A.
93
“Boston University Full Report on Creek Farm” (Presented to the SPNHF, Boston University, 2002).
94
Karen Davis, "Arthur Astor Carey, A Man of Wealth in Colonial Revival New England" (Unpublished Seminar
Paper, Boston University, 1995), SPNHF Archives.
27
Carey wasted no time in occupying his new abode, and although the structure had a
studio for him to paint in, he found hobbies to justify expansion of the house. With a reputation
as a dabbler, Carey’s artistic thread took a musical turn and Longfellow indulged his friend by
designing additions for the original house to allow for a music room.95 Molly Coolidge Perkins,
who was a summer neighbor during her childhood, remembered that, “[Carey] soon decided that
he would never paint well, and would become a musician; so he bought a fine cello and had a
large music room added to his house. He soon decided that his ear was not true enough to play in
tune, and hung his cello on the wall.”96 Although he did not seem to have practiced music for
very long, it was in the music room, dining room, and gardens that the Carey family entertained
other prominent families, thinkers, and artists of this summer community.97 Alida Carey Gulick,
born in 1893 remembered watching guests arriving from upstairs, “The ladies, friends of our
family, summering, as we were, in the neighborhood, in elegant décolletage, the gentlemen in
white tie and tail.”98
Figure 1-D Map of Little Harbor
SPNHF Archives
Figure 1-E Detail of Music Room
SPNHF Archives
95
“Boston University Full Report on Creek Farm” (Presented to the SPNHF, Boston University, 2002).
Mary Coolidge Perkins, Once I was Very Young (Portsmouth: Peter E. Randall, 1960), 58.
97
Cottage is known to have housed and entertained the Russian and Japanese Diplomats, as well as President
Theodore Roosevelt from the Portsmouth Peace Treaty of 1904 that ended the Russo-Japanese War.
98
Alida Carey Gulick (1893-1983),Unknown interviewer, transcript, SPNHF Archives.
96
28
Carey’s choice location was not surprising, given the setting, scenery, and neighbors. The
Portsmouth area has been continually settled since the 1600s, and the peninsula of land called
Little Harbor was no exception with its waterfront views. Carey and his brother had originally
bought Creek Farm for twenty-five hundred dollars in 1887.99 Formerly a working farm, the
land had fair prospects and was rural enough to be quiet, but close enough to good roads and
railways to be convenient. Nearby neighbors were also from the upper class and some, like J.
Templeman Coolidge who owned the nearby Wentworth Mansion, were college classmates. 100
Carey continued to buy up surrounding land in the Little Harbor area, expanding his property to
include land on both sides of the peninsula.101 Creek Farm was meant to be a summer home for
the Carey family as well as an artist retreat, a place to relax, be inspired, and restore the spirits.
A patron of the arts and craft movement, Carey and his neighbors at Little Harbor were
not alone in their pursuit of a summer home. They were some of many prominent men who took
part in the Summer Home Movement in New Hampshire. This movement was led by the state in
order to repurpose abandoned farm land. Due to the industrialization and urbanization that was
sweeping the nation, several farms in New Hampshire were abandoned by their owners.102 The
state advertised these areas as prime real estate for the elite to build summer bungalows and
escape the city.103 New Hampshire natives and out-of-towners responded to the call and soon
retreats like Creek Farm dotted the sea and country side of New Hampshire.
99
Deed Book, New Hampshire, Rockingham co., Book 0502, Page 0453, 0455. Sept 13, 1887.
The Little Harbor area became a hot spot for Elite Bostonians, summer residents included historian Francis
Parkman, author Barrett Wendell, poet Edmund Clarence Stedman, philosopher John Albee, Architecht R. Clipston
Sturgis, and artist Edmund Tarbell. Frequent visitors to the house in the area were Sumner Appleton and Barrett
Wendell. New Hampshire Division of Historical Resources, Inventory Form for Creek Farm.
101
For instance, Deed Book, New Hampshire, Rockingham co., Book 0532, Page 175, July 25, 1892. Carey paid
Sturgis $4,000 for about 36 acres of land.
102
“Topics of the Times: No More Abandoned Farms in New Hampshire,” The American Agriculturist 53 (June
1894), 358.
103
Ibid.
100
29
Figure 1-F Orton Plantation, circa 1840-1890,
Courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Archives and History
Although built much earlier than Creek Farm, Orton Plantation in North Carolina was
also shaped by the late nineteen century preservation movement, nestled in the woods, along the
banks of the Cape Fear River in North Carolina, Orton Plantation is similar to Creek Farm in
several aspects. Although the first floor of the house was built much earlier, a claim of its
original brick structure being built in 1735, the house was expanded in 1840 to the two and a half
story Colonial and Greek Revival house with iconic fluted Doric Columns.104 Originally built by
the prominent Moore family, who came to the Cape Fear area to find new rice fields, Orton was
a thriving rice plantation prior to the Civil War.105 After the Civil War, the house fell through
several hands until it was bought in 1884 by a former Confederate officer, Colonel Kenneth
MacKenzie Murchison, who in the spirit of historic preservation, restored the house and used it
as his winter retreat until his death in 1904.106
104
James Sprunt, Chronicles of the Cape Fear River: Being Some Account of Historic Events on the Cape Fear
River (Raleigh: Edwards & Broughton printing company, 1914), 40.
105
Ibid.
106
Ibid, 348-349.
30
Post-Civil War Orton was very similar to Creek Farm. Both were former agricultural
areas, used as seasonal retreats by the wealthy elite. Murchison was a Cape Fear native, born
near Fayetteville, North Carolina, who had worked in New York for several years as a
businessman before returning South to support the Confederacy.107 When he bought Orton
Plantation, he combined his business pursuits, investing in banks, hotels, building supplies,
insurance and real estate, with his love of outdoors. One of his great joys in life was hunting, and
he owned prime hunting areas across North Carolina.108 Orton Plantation served as one of his
hunting grounds, the expansive forest that was once used to harvest naval stores and timber, now
played host to game.109 The “primeval forests” were saved from the local naval store industry
and timber mills during Murchinson’s life.110
Orton also hosted the local elite community, albeit on a smaller scale than Creek Farm.
Murchison was an older man, and although he entertained local elite frequently, his pursuits were
more solitary than that of the Careys of Creek Farm. Family and friends were repeatedly invited
to the grand plantation house, and although they may not have been entertained musically by
their host, the wildlife in the garden and grounds undoubtedly proved entertaining. Sprunt notes
in his Chronicles of the Cape Fear River that many species of wildlife sought refuge in the
waterways and forests surrounding the home, suggesting that the area was not just populated by
game but also by rare birds.111
107
Sprunt, Chronicles, 348.
Ibid.
109
Ibid.
110
Ibid. Murchison’s Son-in-law, Dr. James Sprunt, used this term to refer to the forest.
111
Ibid, 62.
108
31
Figure 1-G Poplar Grove Plantation House
Photo by Erica Hague, 2011
Poplar Grove, also outside of Wilmington, deviated from the pattern set forth by Creek
Farm and Orton Plantation. Located farther away from the waterfront, this plantation house built
in 1850 by Joseph Mumford Foy continued to function in its agricultural capacity after the Civil
War.112 James Foy Jr. originally bought the 628 acre plantation from Francis Clayton, secretary
of the Wilmington Committee of Safety, in 1795.113 The plantation produced mostly peanuts,
although it grew several different crops.114 The house currently on the site was built around 1850
by James’s son Joseph Foy after the original manor house burned in 1849.
The Poplar Grove Plantation Manor is a two and one-half story, twelve room, Greek
revival style house.115 The house was built near the plank road that ran alongside the railroad,
and which is now part of US-17.116 A significant feature of the house is the basement, which is
accessible from the back, but invisible from the front. The inclusion of a basement not only
expands working space in the house, but also reflects a style and layout that was found in
112
Friends of Poplar Grove, “About Us,” Poplar Grove Plantation, http://poplargrove.com/About_Us.htm (accessed
January 10, 2012).
113
“Plantation Opens Thursday,” Wilmington Star News, April 5, 1980. John Moore, History of North Carolina,
(Raleigh: Alfred Williams &co, 1880), 184.
114
Poplar Grove Foundation, “About Poplar Grove Plantation,” Poplar Grove Foundation, www.poplargrove.com
(accessed October 3, 2010).
115
National Register of Historic Places, Poplar Grove, Scotts Hill, Pender Co., North Carolina, 79003346.
116
Poplar Grove House Tour by volunteer, July 20, 2010.
32
Wilmington during the mid-nineteenth century.117 The house follows typical styles of the period;
two parlors a living room and a dining room make up the main floor, while bedrooms occupy the
top floor. The basement was originally used as a kitchen and for indoor workspace.118
The house was built almost entirely from plantation grown or made products. The heartpine that was used to frame and build the house was chosen expressly for that purpose by Joseph
Foy from his timber holdings; enslaved Africans made the bricks used in the building on-site.119
The plantation had sixty four slaves before the Civil War.120 Inside too, enslaved African
craftsmen carved molds by hand which were used to make plaster and horsehair castings to be
placed around the interior of the house.121
Joseph T. Foy, son of the original builder, continued to operate the family plantation after
the Civil War and cultivated peanuts instead of the more typical cotton or tobacco.122 The Foys
were an important family in the community to be sure. Poplar Grove served as the local postal
pickup point for several years, and the family frequently hosted social functions at the plantation
house.123 The family also ascribed to the social responsibilities of the time by becoming involved
in local welfare efforts, donating to several nearby churches.124 However, the function of this site
did not change like Orton Plantation and Creek Farm. The Foys continued to plant peanuts after
the war, with the help of their former slaves turned sharecroppers.
117
Ruth Little-Stokes, "The North Carolina Porch: A Climatic and Cultural Buffer," in Carolina Dwelling, Doug
Swaim ed., (Raleigh: North Carolina State University, 1978), 109.
118
House Tour, July 20, 2010.
119
National Register of Historic Places, Poplar Grove, Scotts Hill, Pender Co., North Carolina, 79003346.
120
Ibid.
121
House Tour, July 20, 2010.
122
Ibid.
123
Ibid.
124
Ibid.
33
The End of The Gilded Age
Untouched land was becoming increasingly scarce in the United States as a result of the
economic growth and territorial expansion of the nineteenth century. In 1893 Fredrick Jackson
Turner published his, now famous, frontier thesis. Because of decades of Manifest Destiny and
thousands of citizens seeking a new life and land, the West was widely settled and cultivated,
with a population density of roughly two people per square mile.125 This increase of population
came as a shock to many of the easterners who spent their free time in the ‘wilderness.’ Turner’s
thesis, paired with the urging of other environmental advocates, like George Perkins Marsh,
made society aware of the boundaries of the nation, and the need for wiser uses of land and
resources. Marsh himself urged settlers to “become a co-worker with nature in the reconstruction
of the damaged fabric… [to] aid her in re-clothing the mountain slopes with forests….”126 Newly
published journals echoed these sentiments as well, creating a surge of literature and outlets for
scholars and advocates. The ideology and the importance of nature was changing in the United
States.
Preservation, which had thrived during the nineteenth century under women’s advocacy,
became a more masculine endeavor as the century turned and their importance increased. As the
last decade of the nineteenth century closed, men began to take over the leadership of wide
ranging preservation organizations in a burst of professionalization. Pre-existing house museums,
running mostly with volunteer crews, continued to be run and protected by ladies organizations,
but larger societies that focused on multiple buildings in a region began to emerge and take
125
Frederick Jackson Turner, The Frontier in American History (New York: Henry Holt and Co, 1921).
George P. Marsh, Man and Nature, or, Physical Geography As Modified by Human Action (New York: C.
Scribner, 1864), 35.
126
34
over.127 The focus of these men remained patriotic, but began to include architectural details due
in part to the need to justify the worth of old buildings not owned by prominent people. More
efforts were made to not only preserve the historic houses, but to scrape away the modern
changes to the buildings in an effort to return them to their original condition.128 In many
instances, this meant large scale demolition of additions and a reimagining of what the original
structure looked like based on journals, sketches and other existing buildings. This was the case
for the Paul Revere House in Boston.
This scrape ideology of restoration is not indigenous to the United States, having been
first endorsed by Eugene Emmanuel Viollet-Le-Duc. A French theorist and Gothic-revival
architect, believed that, “To restore a building is not only to preserve it, to repair it, or to rebuild,
but to bring it back to a state of completion such as may never have existed at any given
moment.”129 Viollet-Le-Duc’s methods were questioned and there were critics of his work. Paul
Leon argued that, “To pretend to restore it to its original state is dangerous and deceitful; we
must preserve buildings as they are, respecting the contribution of successive generations.”130
Similarly, Englishman John Ruskin argued for the preservation of structures and not the
restoration of them into what they once were, he wrote, “The greatest glory of a building is not in
127
The first multi-structure organization that emerged as a competent protector of properties was the Association for
the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities (APVA) known today as Preservation Virginia. Founded in 1889 to protect
properties across the state of Virginia. Today they hold over 160 properties. It is interesting to note, that this first
widespread organization sprouted from the same state that saw the first successful preservation, that of Mount
Vernon by the MVLA a scant thirty years or so before. For more information about the history of Preservation
Virginia see, James Lindgren, Preserving the Old Dominion Historic Preservation And Virginia Traditionalism
(Charlottesville: UVA Press, 1993).
128
Such would be the case for turn-of-the-century restorations at Independence Hall in Pennsylvania and the Paul
Revere house in Boston. See James Lindgren, Preserving.
129
Quoted in, Tyler, Historic Preservation, 19.
130
Quoted in, Norman Williams Jr., Edmund H. Kellogg, and Frank B. Gilbert, Readings in Historic Preservation
(New Brunswick, N.J.: Center for Urban Policy Research, 1983), 16.
35
its stones, or in its gold. Its glory is in its Age.”131 To Ruskin, the very idea of restoration was a
“…lie from beginning to end.”132 These philosophies would be put into practice and debated by
preservationists in the twentieth century and are still debated in preservation circles today. While
the historic preservation movement in the United States developed on its own, it was influenced,
at least in part, by the European movement.
The historic preservation continued to be largely ignored by the United States
government throughout the nineteenth century. The federal government did not perceive the
acquisition of historic sites as one of its role. While a slight breakthrough was made in 1889 with
the designation of Casa Grande, Arizona, a historic Native American structure, as the nation’s
first national monument, little was actually done with the $2,000 allotted for the protection of the
site, except for the construction of a giant pavilion type structure to cover the ruins.133 These
ruins, some of which date back to the fourteenth century, were prone to demolition and looting
by passing settlers. Nearby Mesa Verde was also discovered in 1888, although the government
would not step up to protect the cliff dwellings until the early twentieth century. While these are
admittedly conflicted examples, since the government at this time was dedicated to the
eradication of Native Americans from these and other nearby areas, they are the closest examples
of historic structures that the federal government made commitments to protect.
The conservation field fared slightly better than its sibling, preservation. Land use had
been a topic near and dear to the hearts of politicians for years, due to the economic gains that
could be made through development. During the late nineteenth century, major strides were
131
John Ruskin, “The Lamp of Memory,” in The Seven Lamps of Architecture (London: Hazell, Watson, and Viney,
1891), 353, 339.
132
Ibid, 185.
133
Aside from the construction of this massive shade, little or no policing of the site was done to prevent removal of
artifacts. For more on the early Mesa Verde preservation efforts, see Tyler, Historic Preservation, 35-36.
36
made by the federal government to conserve natural areas. Yellowstone National Park was first
designated as a protected area by the government in 1872 as a tri-state natural area. Efforts by the
federal government to obtain and protect Civil War battlefields were also begun around this time.
These battlefields, many of which were originally open farm-land or countryside, were not meant
to become pastoral pleasure grounds and parks, but instead left to remain the way they were at
the time of the battle to honor those who died there.134 While the Federal Government was not
yet creating a policy or new service branch to manage these areas, they were beginning to think
about what these places would mean for the future, how these sites could be misused, and the
opportunities that they might have for developing these sites in a way that would benefit the
public and the government. As the nineteenth century and the American frontier came to a close,
the preservation and conservation movements redoubled their efforts to seek out new groups to
enfranchise, find new sources of income, and find political benefactors in order to be successful.
Conclusion
For preservation, the mid and late nineteenth century was a period of grassroots
development. After the Civil War, through failures and successes, middle and upper class
supporters of preservation discovered what arguments worked with the populace or federal
government and exploited their social ties to obtain their goals.135 The increased leisure time that
middle and upper class women enjoyed during the second half of the century enabled them to
play a leading role in the development of the preservation movement and helped to widen the
role of women in areas outside of their own home. Although many of the places that were saved
134
Timothy B. Smith, The Golden Age of Battlefield Preservation: The Decade of the 1890s and the Establishment
of America's First Five Military Parks (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2008).
135
The ladies groups were especially good at this, and seem to have flung the names of esteemed local ladies with
gusto, often with the express consent of the ladies who owned the names. They also went door to door soliciting
donations. For more details see, Varon, We Mean To Be, 128-130.
37
during this time were shrines to heroic national figures, this narrow reasoning to preserve historic
structures spread into a wider movement, moving towards the need to educate immigrants and
see buildings as pieces of art.
For conservation, because of the closing of the frontier, the nineteenth century saw the
end of one era and the beginning of the next. The West was lost as a wild area, though there was
still the lure of the great unknown. But influential individuals and groups successfully displayed
the importance of conservation to the nation. They argued that places, animals, and environments
were important to maintain, to save for future generations. The scenic beauty and clean air
provided by these natural spaces were prime areas for camping, hunting, and a variety of other
outdoor activities. Conservationists had highlighted these spaces and now needed only to
convince others of the importance of those spaces.
Both movements emerged from the early nineteenth century, urged on by similar
developments in United States history, such as industrialization and urbanization, as shown here.
As the historic preservation and environmental conservation movements began to evolve, their
growth was similarly affected by changing social, political, and cultural viewpoints. The
formative developments of the nineteenth century set the stage for the tensions and challenges of
the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
38
2. – A New Departure: The Progressive Era and Beyond
“The growth of this nation … has been due to the rapid development, and alas that it should be
said, to the rapid destruction, of our natural resources.”
– President Theodore Roosevelt, 1909136
During the Progressive Era, widespread social, political, and economic changes affected
the development of both the historic preservation and environmental conservation movements in
the United States. This chapter will explore how these changes influenced the transformation of
the leaders of the preservation and environmental conservation movements, federal policy, and
ultimately the holdings of the movements themselves. This chapter will also seek to answer
questions such as, Why were woman edged out of the historic preservation movement? What
caused the professionalization of historic preservation? How did the ideals of environmental
conservation change during this time? What influence did these organizations hold in the Federal
Government?
While the previous century had perfected the development of national shrines, protected
by grassroots organizations of women, this chapter will explore how the Progressive Era saw the
masculinization and professionalization of historic preservation. These new preservationists
created organizations that focused on the widespread preservation of architecturally important
buildings instead of focusing on individual houses of prominent elite men. This new
organizational structure relied on the same grassroots fundraising and like its forbearer relied on
the interest of wealthy upper and middle class urban families. The rationale behind the
preservation of the buildings shifted slightly though. No longer was it acceptable to simply
preserve a place based on the patriotic feelings it may stir. Instead the new professional
preservationists encouraged architectural analysis and historic research. Women were useful only
136
“President Roosevelt’s Opening Address,” Proceedings of a Conference of Governors (Washington: GPO, 1909).
39
in minor roles to these new organizations because of the lack of advanced training available to
them. Yet, despite these changes, historic preservation, unlike its sister conservation movement,
did not enjoy an increase of federal interest in their projects.
The idea of environmental conservation became politicized and embraced by the federal
government largely through the efforts of Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot. Embracing
the ideals of conservation along with the new study of ecology, the federal government began to
set aside large areas of scenic land as National Parks. Learning from the expensive mistakes
made in order to create urban parks, like Central Park in New York during the mid-nineteenth
century, eastern urban elites endorsed the responsible management of pristine natural wonders by
the federal government as a way to ensure long lasting political and monetary support for these
natural areas.137 These endorsements were also backed by powerful railroad companies, who
wanted to develop natural areas into tourist destinations. While the conservation movement had
been, from the start, an overwhelmingly masculine endeavor, the politicization of the movement
further denied women a place in the organizations. Contrary ideals of conservation and the
development of natural sites stirred the discussion over resource use, and the environmental
conservationists of the early twentieth century began to diverge into two separate groups. This
division came as ‘progress’ began to be the rallying cry across the United States.
137
Colin Fisher, “Nature in the City: Urban Environmental History and Central Park,” OAH Magazine of History 25,
no. 4, (2012): 27-31. In was costly for cities to buy up land and demolish buildings, or move graves to repurpose
land for open park area. To create the pastoral landscapes that the elite sought was also costly and difficult to
maintain. Problems also arose with how people interacted with the space, leading to the development of a park
police force which enforced rules about the use of the space, such as no walking on the grass, no sports, no picking
flowers, etc.
40
How Architects Changed Historic Preservation
Preservation in the United States started at places like Mount Vernon, and the homes of
other politically important elite men, but it evolved during the Progressive Era into saving
buildings imbued with culture. This section looks at architects and city planners becoming more
involved in preservation, especially in the more historic New England cities, and why they
became involved in the historic preservation movement. Many of the buildings saved during this
time were public places such as courthouses, city halls, and state houses, which had been built
alongside the cities that they served. As the cities grew, these revered buildings became
overcrowded. By the beginning of the Progressive Era, several cities had already begun to look
at the choices available to them for expansion.
With rapidly increasing immigration, space for new public offices in cities became rare.
Immigration into these established cities caused a building boom as older homes were torn down
to make way for tenements.138 The ‘new’ wave of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe
came primarily to the cities of the East Coast of the United States in the 1880s. New
technologies, such as the transatlantic steamship, made traversing the Atlantic easier and faster
than ever before.139 The population of Boston tripled from around a quarter of a million people in
1870 to three quarters of a million people in 1920.140 Due to the expense of demolition and
rebuilding, some older cities, Boston for example, began to look at preservation and expansion as
138
U.S Bureau of the Census, Campbell Gibson, “Population of the 100 Largest Cities and Other Urban Places in
the United States: 1790-1990,” Population Division Working Paper No. 27,
http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0027/twps0027.html (accessed February 09, 2012).
139
The first transatlantic steamship to cross the Atlantic was the Savannah in 1819, but the steam engine was used in
combination with the sails, the first steam-only crossing was made by the Dutch Curaçao in 1827. Steamships did
not become the primary mode of transatlantic travel and shipping until the late nineteenth century. Francis
Boardman Crowninshield Bradlee, The First Steamer to Cross the Atlantic: The Record of the Steamship "curacao"
of the Royal Netherlands Navy, (Salem, Mass.: Salem Institute, 1925).
140
U.S. Census, Gibson, “Population 1790-1990,” (accessed February 09, 2012).
41
an economically sound alternative. City officials brought in architects as consultants and asked
them to survey historic structures, and consequentally committees chose between demolition and
restoration. The Bulfinch Statehouse in Boston, designed by Charles Bulfinch and completed in
1798, was the first building where architects rallied behind preservation.141
Beginning shortly after the Civil War, Bostonians began to debate the social value of
preserving the Bulfinch statehouse. The debate culminated in the late 1890s. To many
Bostonians it was a symbol of the crumbling past; the ancient wooden dome and handmade brick
walls were in disrepair and restoration looked to be impossible. “To rebuild the courthouse…”
using long lasting modern techniques and materials, would that not be the ultimate sign of
progress and success?142 Other Bostonians thought that preserving the building and expanding
into additions to accommodate the growing number of civil servants would be a better way to
show their permanence; that, preserving this building would be something for Boston to take
pride in.143 Americans were deciding what role architecture would play in the development of a
uniquely American culture amidst all the European immigrants.
The United States had typically followed European trends and during the early
Progressive Era various new architectural styles were becoming popular one after another. Many
of these styles had become popular again through the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, which
showcased Beaux Arts and Revival buildings.144 For socio-economic elite Americans the ability
to build in the newest style was a way to display wealth and status. Following the 1893 World’s
Fair, several architects reacted against foreign styles and sought to create a new American style
141
Michael Holleran, Boston’s Changeful Times (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1998), 143.
Massachusetts General Court, Hearings… Concerning the Bulfinch Front, 1:21; 2:36.
143
Ibid.
144
William Walton, Art & Architecture: Paul V. Galvin Digital History Collection, Illinois Institute of Technology,
Paul V. Library Digital History Collection, 1999. Originally published in 1893 for the World’s Fair, this book covers
the architectural styles and their histories.
142
42
of architecture. Across the states, this resulted in a revival of many different styles of historic
architecture, as well as the creation of a few new styles.145 For the Boston architects, the
Bulfinch statehouse was a shining example of an original architectural style that had become
popular once again.
Architects had been sought out by city planners and committees to provide
recommendations on historic public structures before the Bulfinch statehouse and had typically
recommended that the old structure be razed.146 The value placed on progress, which gave this
era its name, often resulted in a revolving door of new trends from clothing to architectural
styles.147 The statehouse though, proved to be different. It was architecturally sound, the bricks
that made up the building were well made and the walls were a staunch four feet in width.148 The
wooden dome was damaged, having only been covered by a tin roof, but the building could
easily support an iron replacement.149 Despite the statehouse being too small to house all the
offices that resided within it, there was nothing fatally wrong with the building.150 Its Federal
Style façade had inspired similar statehouses across the country, and architects were not yet
ready to pull down such an iconic structure to only have it replaced with a revival styled
building.151 To do so would be akin to breaking Michelangelo’s David and carving it again in a
Neo-Classical style.
145
The primary example of these new schools of architectural design and thought is the Prairie school, made famous
by Frank Lloyd Wright. See also, James Lindgren, Preserving the Old Dominion: Historic Preservation and
Virginia Traditionalism (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993), 206.
146
Holleran, Changeful, 143. Razing was the recommendation by architects for the Old State House and Old State
Church in Boston.
147
John W. Chambers, The Tyranny of Change: America in the Progressive Era, 1890-1920 (New York: St.
Martin's, 1992).
148
American Architect & Building News, April 27, 1895, 39-40.
149
Ibid.
150
Ibid, only reports major damage to the wooden dome.
151
Holleran, Changeful, 144.
43
Charles A. Cummings, head of the Boston Society of Architects, defended the
preservation of the statehouse, citing the cultural significance of the unique style of the
building.152 Cummings had previously held a role in the destruction and rebuilding of another
historic structure, having designed the replacement for the 1875 Old South Church in Boston.153
But when considering the Bulfinch statehouse, he endorsed preservation. While Cummings
personal views on preservation may have been influenced by his study of British preservationist
John Ruskin, many other changes had taken place since the Old South Church rebuilding.
Advances in metallurgy increased the use of steel in construction, which changed the methods
open to preservationist to preserve buildings. Added to this was the impact of the World’s Fair
on architecture. Cummings led the Society to lobby for the preservation, restoration and
expansion of the Bulfinch statehouse starting in 1894.154 The architectural society promoted the
preservation of the structure by basing its argument on the soundness of the buildings, proposing
practical methods to preserve the structure, and by educating both the legislature in charge and
the public about the quality and importance of the building in American architectural history. 155
This method of arguing for the preservation of buildings was adopted by preservation societies
and organizations in the years following and the second phase of preservation began.
The Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities
With the exception of few firms, the overwhelmingly male architectural profession
ensured that women had little room in this new era of preservation156. Even though women had
152
Holleran, Changeful, 143.
Ibid.
154
Clement K. Fay, in Massachusetts General Court, Hearings… Concerning the Bulfinch Front, 3:17. The
committee consisted of Fay, H. Langford Warren, and William R. Ware.
155
Holleran, Changeful, 143-144.
156
Frank Lloyd Wright was one of the few that hired women to work as architects in his firm, in 1895 he hired
Marion Mahony Griffin. There were a few other firms that hired women architects during the early Progressive Era,
153
44
been the original leaders of the preservation movement in the United States, because of the
movement becoming professionalized, they were soon demoted to on-site caretakers and
volunteers.157 While historic house museums would continue to be shaped by women well into
the contemporary era, women were no longer on the political fore or the ones planning the future
of buildings.158 Upper class men, most with a background or interest in architecture, took over as
the presidents, trustees, and chairmen of historic preservation organizations. With the increasing
stress on professionalization during the Progressive Era, these new leaders often did not focus on
one building but worked to preserve several structures in a wide area.
Although Preservation Virginia had been established in 1889, the Society for the
Preservation of New England Antiquities (SPNEA) was a new preservation organization that
would serve as a model for other budding urban-based preservation groups. The founder of the
SPENA was an admirer of architecture, William Sumner Appleton Jr., and had graduated from
Harvard amidst what his peers saw as the continual invasion of historic Yankee areas by new
immigrants.159 Appleton was a member of the New England elite. A grandson of Nathan
Appleton a Boston industrialist and politician, he had Puritan roots and viewed the rising
numbers of new immigrants as a threat to American values.160 He lived on a annuity of six
thousand dollars, made possible by his grandfather’s success in industry, which allowed him to
live comfortably, and pursue his interests without worry.161 Appleton was a Progressive and
for more information on these, see, Sarah Allaback, The First America Women Architects, (Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 2008).
157
Megan Stubbendeck, “A Woman’s Touch,” in, Entering the Fray: Gender, Politics, and Culture in the New
South, Johnathan Daniel Wells and Sheila R. Phipps ed., (Columbia: University of Missouri 2010), 118-135.
158
Ibid.
159
Lindgren, Preserving, 22-23.
160
“Obituary: William Sumner Appleton,” The Boston Herald, November 25, 1947; Louise Tharp, The Appletons
of Beacon Hill, (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), 308-315. It is also interesting to note that Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow was Appleton Jr’s Uncle.
161
Lindgren, Preserving, 23.
45
historian James Lindgren claims that Appleton was determined to use preservation as a tool to
bring together Yankees, whose heritage was being overrun by immigrants who had taken over
Boston.162
These immigrants newly arrived from Southern and Eastern Europe came to
Massachusetts and other New England states at a rapid pace, rocking the bedrock of elite society.
In Boston alone, the population more than doubled in the years between 1870 and 1905.163 By
1915 more than seventy percent of Boston’s population was foreign born or first generation
American.164 As the population grew, so did the city itself, sprawling out in a ten mile radius
with the help of new transportation systems.165 The cityscape was changing too. With this influx
of foreigners, elite Bostonians abandoned parts of the city, including the historically elite Beacon
Hill where Appleton had grown up, and moved into the more popular neighborhoods in the city
such as the Back Bay area.166 Boston became even more divided as the elitist Yankees
abandoned their original historic buildings to the immigrants and moved into revival styled
buildings.167 Appleton claimed in an article in the Boston Post that it was this built heritage that
had the ability to link together the old blooded Yankees and the un-Americanized immigrants
through patriotism.168
In 1905, Appleton had taken his first step as a preservationist by restoring the Revere
House as part of the Paul Revere Memorial Association. The charter for the organization set
162
Ibid, 26-31
Gibson, US Census, “Population of 100 largest cities”
164
Boston Committee on Americanism, A Little Book for Immigrants in Boston (Boston: City Printing Department
1921), 56.
165
Lindgren, Preserving, 29; See also, Sam Bass Warner Jr., Streetcar Suburbs: The Process of Growth in Boston ,
1870-1900 (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1978).
166
Lindgren, Preserving, 29; See also, George Lankevich ed., Boston: A Chronological & Documentary History,
1602-1970 (Dobbs Ferry, NY: Oceana Publications, 1974), 54,57.
167
Lindgren, Preserving, 35.
168
W. Sumner Appleton to ed., “Ask Aid to Patriotism,” Boston Post Memorial, 16 June 1905.
163
46
forth the idea that the preservation of the house would foster. “Patriotism, philanthropy, civic
virtue, and pride,” not only among the elite, but also in “visitors from all parts.”169 The Revere
house was restored following the scrape mentality of Viollet-le-duc, but through the destruction
of parts of the house, the PRMA was able to more easily remind visitors of Revere’s willingness
to Americanize.170 While some progressives sought to limit the inflow of immigrants, Appleton
and others set out to Americanize them through the restoration and preservation of historic
buildings.
Using the Revere house as a springboard, Appleton launched into the preservation world,
leading him to create the SPNEA in 1910 in order to collect more sites of Yankee traditions and
culture.171 Appleton, inspired by a trip to Europe the previous year, came back to the states with
a renewed interest in preservation and restoration, only to be angered by the current state of
preservation affairs.172 Appleton created the SPNEA calling it, “a new departure in historic
patriotic work.”173 In the first published Bulletin for the SPNEA, Appleton put forth his plan for
the association, claiming “Our New England Antiquities are fast disappearing because no society
has made their preservation its exclusive object. That is the reason for the formation of this
Society.”174 Appleton’s Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities would serve as
a model preservation organization, just as the Mount Vernon Ladies Association had.
169
“By-Laws of the Paul Revere Memorial Association,” Article II, Revere house file.
Lindgren, Preserving, 40-41.
171
Appleton’s path to the SPNEA is more closely covered in the first two chapters of Lindgren, Preserving, 15-49.
172
Ibid, 17-49.
173
Appleton, Diary, 28 December 1909, Quoted in Lindgren, Preserving, 49. I use the quote here to reference the
title of this chapter.
174
The Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, Bulletin 1, no.1 (Boston: May 1910), 1, 4.
170
47
Environmental Conservation and the Progressives
The Progressive Era also brought major changes to the environmental conservation
movement because of the increased interest shown by the federal government. The preservation
movement held little appeal for local, state, or federal government. This was mostly due to its
inability to generate money, the environmental conservation movement gained a strong backer
with Theodore Roosevelt who worked with Gifford Pinchot to bring conservation to the national
level. The definition of utilitarian conservation, first written by W.J. McGee, then echoed by
Pinchot was the efficient use of natural resources for the “greatest good of the greatest number
for the longest time.”175 Using this concept, Roosevelt and Pinchot brought the outdoor
movement to a national level, and called for it to be part of a national program.
Progressive politics and ideals brought conservation to the attention of the Federal
Government. Movements such as the City Beautiful Movement, and the Suburban Movement,
which were both spurred on by increased immigration and by the growing prosperity of the
managerial middle class buoyed the interest of natural parks. Improvements in technology and
the ever expanding network of railroads also allowed elite Americans to travel to these natural
areas. Yellowstone had been a popular destination since its creation as a state park and national
landmark in 1872, and with railroad companies lobbying for the expansion of the national parks,
it was joined in 1890 by Yosemite, Sequoia, and General Grant.176 These parks were
administered by the United States Army until the creation of the National Park Service in
1916.177 While Roosevelt, Pinchot, and other conservationists were more interested in managing
the forests, rangelands, and watersheds that had remained in a natural state for the greater good,
175
Gifford Pinchot, Breaking New Ground (Washington DC: Island, 1947), 326. See also, Merchant, American, 143.
Barringer, Yellowstone, 14-16.
177
Merchant, American, 148-150.
176
48
railroad companies sought to develop the parks into resorts.178 This treatment of nature as a
commodity to be managed and commercialized soon led to heated debates about land and
resource use.179
Tourism and the Management of Nature
Park tourism had been developed in national parks since the 1870s and the creation of
Yellowstone. Camping had become popular and as railways expanded closer to Yellowstone to
take advantage of the surge of tourism, wealthier Americans sought out comfortable housing for
their stay in the park.180 These visitors became the ideal residents of the parks; tourists romantic
ideals about nature called for the removal of any frontiersmen homes and the building of new
concessions and hotels.181 To maximize profit, the concession and hotel monopoly, run by the
railroad companies, in the parks institutionalized tourism and transformed nature into the
romantic ideal that the elite classes believed it to be.182 In doing so, they not only transformed the
park physically, by removing all traces of the people previously living on the lands but changed
how people experienced the park and how they thought about nature.
Visitors to the national parks no longer needed to travel to these remote locations by
horseback or carriage. The train stopped at the gates to the park from which stagecoach lines and
later automobiles would take tourists to a hotel of their choice, each one near a picture perfect
feature of the park. Nature was no longer a thing to live in and wander through, as it had been in
the early nineteenth century, but instead a thing to be consumed through a planned and guided
178
Ibid.
This battle was led by Muir and his allies, and the first clash happened over the Hetch-Hetchy Valley from 19061910. For more on the Hetch-Hetchy case read, John Muir, The Yosemite, (New York: Century, 1912), 249-262.
180
Barringer, Yellowstone, 15, 30.
181
Merchant, American, 153.
182
Barringer, Yellowstone, 15-33.
179
49
tour. So altered were the accommodations in national parks that Muir wrote in a personal letter in
1912 that, “In the development of the Park [Yosemite] a road is needed …. Good walkers can go
anywhere in these hospitable mountains without artificial ways. But most visitors have to be
rolled on wheels with blankets and kitchen arrangements.”183
Figure 2-B Camping in Yosemite 1902
Photo courtesy of Library of Congress
Figure 2-A Tent Hotels at Yellowstone 1903
Photo courtesy of Library of Congress
Natural parks began to be cultivated and developed for consumption in the early
twentieth century, much like Colonial Williamsburg would be preserved and cultivated as a
historic village near the end of the Progressive Era. Railroad companies lobbied for the creation
of more national parks and sought rights-of-way and concession privileges in order to capitalize
on the increased interest in nature; and they succeeded.184 Conservation of many of the original
13 national parks, such as Yellowstone and Yosemite, was due to the combined interest of
railroad companies and conservation minded organizations.185 The influence of these groups led
to the early politicization of parks as places to conserve, and manage. By 1912, Muir lamented
183
John Muir to Howard Palmer, Secretary American Alpine Club, 1912 Dec 12, John Muir Correspondence,
University of the Pacific Library Holt-Atherton Special Collections.
184
Barringer, Yellowstone, 21-29.
185
Barringer, Yellowstone, 40.
50
that Yosemite had been forgotten amidst the commercialization, “as if its thousand square miles
of wonderful mountains, cañons, glaciers, forests, and songful falling rivers had no existence.”186
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, women had not only been involved in the
historic preservation movement but had also played an active role in conservation. During the
Progressive Era, groups such as the General Federation of Women’s Club (1890), the Daughters
of the American Revolution (1896) and the Garden Club of America (1913), became involved in
conservation by forming special committees, writing letters and lobbying their congressional
representatives about saving natural areas.187 Sportsmen and outdoorsmen clubs had formed
earlier in the twentieth century and had similarly advocated for the protection of wildlife and
natural spaces. These groups of women and men had both the leisure time and money to enjoy
the areas that they wanted to protect.188
With the increased regulations, a utilitarian form of environmental conservation emerged
politically. Based on nineteenth century utilitarian English philosophers, Jeremy Bentham and
John Stuart Mill, environmental conservation focused on using the land to promote the happiness
of citizens for the longest time possible.189 American conservationists mixed in earlier American
ideas about environmental conservation and land use to adapt utilitarianism to their own uses.
WJ McGee’s ideal of, “the greatest good of the greatest number for the longest time,” captured
what this new generation of conservationists wished to achieve. With this ideology, the federal
government began to look at nature as an exhaustible resource, a resource that should be
186
Muir to Palmer, 1912 Dec 12.
Merchant, American, 142.
188
A roster of the Boone and Crockett Club for example, has the names of several prominent national figures such
as Theodore Roosevelt, George Bird Grinnell, and General William Tecumseh Sherman. The Garden Club of
America, made up of several smaller local clubs, also had prominent members such as, Mrs Logan of Stenton,
Philadelphia and Mrs. Frank A. Bourne of Beacon Hill, Boston.
189
For more on their ideals about utilitarian conservation read, John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (London: Parker,
Son, and Bourn, 1863); Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (London: T
Payne& Sons, 1789).
187
51
managed. In 1905, the head of the Division of Forestry Gifford Pinchot successfully agitated for
moving the forest reserves out of the Department of the Interior and into the Department of
Agriculture, and renamed the division as the United States Forest Service.190 This move was
made by Pinchot on the grounds that forests should be managed “as if they were a crop.”191 By
1908 the idea of utilitarian conservation had gained enough political support to necessitate a
White House Conference on Conservation in 1909.
This conference was important in several ways. It promoted the regulation of the
conservation movement by the federal government, and also worked to solidify the idea of
resource conservation. Roosevelt stated in his opening address that, “All these various uses of
our natural resources are so closely connected and should be treated as part of on coherent
plan...”192 At this conference, the scientific and political community brought together forests,
water, and rangelands that had been developed separately and unified them into a cohesive unit
of natural resources.193 This original meeting inspired a yearly gathering from 1909-1913 and
continued to bring together many different groups, including women’s organizations, in order to
bring attention to the conservation movement.194 These conferences would not only spread the
word across the nation about conservation, but would also influence policy makers, who would
develop the role of the Federal Government in conservation, a role that would be tested in the
years to come.
190
Merchant, American, 143.
Quoted in, Ibid.
192
“President Roosevelt’s Opening Address,” Proceedings of a Conference of Governors (Washington: GPO, 1909).
193
Letter to the Governors from President Roosevelt, November 1907, Proceedings of a Conference of Governors
(Washington: GPO, 1909). President Roosevelt also invited Governors to attend accompanied by three advisors or
aides of their choosing, He sent letters to Senators, Representatives, Justices, and Cabinet members also. In
December, he invited the leaders of a wide variety of organizations. The program was divided into Mineral, Land,
and Water resources, and capped with “Conservation as a National Policy.”
194
A complete listing of the organizations invited to the first conference can be found in, Proceedings of a
Conference of Governors (Washington: GPO, 1909). It is unclear why these gatherings halted, but WWI most likely
played a large part.
191
52
An early challenge to federal conservation policy came in 1913 with the passage of the
Raker Act. This act authorized the construction of a dam across the Tuolomne River in the
Hetch-Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park in order to provide a consistent and reliable
supply of both electricity and water to the population of San Francisco, and led to many
discussions over resource rights.195 After the devastating 1906 earthquake, Mayor James Phelan
hired agents to survey suitable water sources in the area, and had other options; however in 1909
Pinchot advocated the use of the Hetch-Hetchy Valley, citing the conservation movement’s ideal
of “the greatest good.”196 Pinchot claimed that providing water for San Francisco would be the
highest use of the land. Naturalist John Muir disagreed strongly and wrote several articles about
the effect the dam would have on the valley and the beauty that would be lost. In one such article
Muir wrote,
“…like anything else worth while, from the very beginning, however well
guarded, they have always been subject to attack by despoiling gainseekers and
mischief-makers of every degree from Satan to Senators, eagerly trying to make
everything immediately and selfishly commercial, with schemes disguised in
smug-smiling philanthropy, industriously, shampiously crying, “Conservation,
conservation, pan-utilization,” that man and beast may be fed and the dear Nation
made great. Thus long ago a few enterprising merchants utilized the Jerusalem
temple as a place of business instead of a place of prayer, changing money,
buying and selling cattle and sheep and doves; and earlier still, the first forest
reservation, including only one tree, was likewise despoiled.”197
Muir’s writings stirred the nation, and women’s clubs across the country, many whose members
had never seen Yosemite, let alone Hetch-Hetchy, wrote to Congress to lobby for the protection
of the valley.198 Muir’s arguments, even supported by the women’s groups, could not sway the
government and Hetch Hetchy Valley was dammed. The Raker Act, passed in 1913, allowed for
195
The loss at Hetch-Hetchy led to massive damming programs throughout the New Deal Era, as I will explore in
the following chapter.
196
Merchant, American, 150-151.
197
Muir, Yosemite, 261-262.
198
Merchant, American, 151.
53
the O’Shaughnessy Dam to be built between 1915 and 1920. The dam brought water and
electricity to San Francisco and would stand as a precedent for future water rights and damming
issues. This was a “monumental crime” to Muir and other environmental conservationists who
sought the preservation and careful use of federal parks.199
Creek Farm, Orton Plantation, and Poplar Grove in the Progressive Era
Figure 2-C Creek Farm Garden Entrance Lions
photo by Erica Hague, 2011
Figure 2-D Creek Farm, Front of garden retaining wall
photo by Erica Hague, 2011
During the Progressive Era, Creek Farm, Orton Plantation, and Poplar Grove were
models for the time. The grounds and house at Creek farm and Orton Plantation were both
expanded during this time, reflecting the revival architecture of the day and desire to have
expansive grounds. While the world around these sites changed, these houses and their
surrounding land remained in the same families that had lived in them during the previous
century; the tradition of elite control of historically significant buildings and land continued. The
garden and grounds at Creek Farm were improved, wings were added on to Orton Plantation and
the existing plantation house at Poplar Grove was modernized. While the houses changed hands
from one generation to the next, the new generations of custodians followed in their
199
John Muir to Dr. C. Hart Merriam, Feb. 11, 1914, reprinted in whole in, The Life and Letters of John Muir,
William Frederic Bad , ed., (Boston and: Houghton Mifflin Co, 1924).
54
predecessor’s footsteps to protect and thrive in the homes that were left to them, updating the
great houses to fit the current vogues and trends.
In Massachusetts and New Hampshire, the Carey family continued to follow the vogues
of the era. Family patriarch Arthur Astor Carey continued his interest in the arts, becoming the
second president of the Society of Arts and Crafts: Boston in 1899.200 During his presidency he
financed a handicrafts shop and journal entitled Handicraft for SACB. 201 After Carey resigned
from his role as president for SACB in 1902, he built a nondenominational chapel on Little
Harbor road where he preached in the summer.202 Carey and his summer neighbor J. Templeman
Coolidge began to develop an arts community around them at Little Harbor, summer residents
included historian Francis Parkman, author Barrett Wendell, poet Edmund Clarence Stedman,
philosopher John Albee, and artist Edmund Tarbell.203 This community was augmented by
various prominent visitors to the area, such as William Sumner Appleton and Barrett Wendell
who would establish historic house museums in the city of Portsmouth.204
The Carey family was in the habit of entertaining visitors and guests as well as the
summer residents of Little Harbor. Often alternating events with the Coolidges, the Carey family
had an assortment of grand dinners, picnics and garden parties alongside the rather routine
swimming and boating excursions. One of these events came in 1905 when they entertained the
delegates for the Portsmouth Peace Treaty which ended the Russo-Japanese war. A garden party,
200
The Society of Arts and Crafts: Boston sought to foster the development, sales, recognition, and education of
American crafts in Boston according to their mission. “SAC Mission and History,” Society of Arts and Crafts:
Boston, http://www.societyofcrafts.org/about/about.asp (accessed April 10, 2012)
201
Allen H. Eaton, “Handicrafts of New England,” Handicraft (1949), 281-294.
202
Karen Davis, "Arthur Astor Carey, A Man of Wealth in Colonial Revival New England" (Unpublished Seminar
Paper, Boston University, 1995), SPNHF Archives.
203
J. Dennis Robinson, “How the Coolidge Family of Boston Saved Wentworth Mansion,” Seacoast NH (2009)
http://www.seacoastnh.com/History/History_Matters/How_the_Coolidge_Family_of_Boston_Saved_Wentworth_M
ansion/ (accessed April 10, 2012).
204
Appleton established the Governor John Langdon House through the SPNEA, and Barrett funded the private
preservation of The Warner House.
55
given outside Creek Farm in the formal Italian garden, was “rather disastrous,” with both
delegations arriving separately and in sequence instead of enjoying the party together.205 They
also gave dinners to both the Russian and Japanese delegations, which were well attended, with
President Theodore Roosevelt joining the festivities, and remembered by Alida Carey Gulick
who recalled the, “…tremendous noise of voices when the Russian delegation were dining and
very little sound indeed when it was the night for the victorious Japanese…”206 The house still
bears the traces of this event today, gifts of a Japanese tree, planted in the courtyard, and a
Russian-made ornate knocker on the main door of the house.
A prominent Bostonian elite, Carey was cut from the same mold as his elite Yankee
peers. A progressive social reformer, he continued to support Arts and Crafts ideals through the
monetary support and creation of programing dedicated to education. Like Appleton, who ran in
the same social circles, Carey sought to preserve traditional Yankee culture. While Appleton had
created SPNEA and focused on traditional architecture, Carey began to fund arts and education
programs. Carey funded the building of two dormitories for the New Church School in Waltham,
Massachusetts, and eventually moved into the Waltham area in 1910, paying for the construction
of Hillside, a colonial revival sanatorium for nervous patients.207 Carey also funded the creation
of the Free Reading Room at Waltham in 1905, a nondenominational community center, and
bought a schooner for the summer seaman summer camp program. Following Victorian ideals of
the wilderness cult, he also began to endorse the Boy Scout movement in 1910, and in 1915
wrote The Scout Law in Practice.208
205
“Negotiations: Carey Creek Farm Reception,” Portsmouth Peace Treaty,
http://portsmouthpeacetreaty.org/process/negotiations (accessed April 10, 2012).
206
Alida Carey Gulick (1893-1983),Unknown interviewer, transcript, SPNHF Archives.
207
“Boston University Full Report on Creek Farm” (Presented to the SPNHF, Boston University, 2002).
208
Arthur Astor Carey, The Scout Law in Practice, (Boston: Little, Brown, 1915)
56
The Boy Scouts were an institution that emerged during the Progressive Era first in
England around 1907, and then later in the United States around 1910. This movement
incorporated Christian teachings on morality with physical development through outdoor
activities in order to create better citizens.209Carey’s contribution to the Boy Scout movement
emphasizes these points with chapters dedicated to “Our Duty to God,” “Our Duty to Our
Country,” and “To Keep Myself Physically Strong, Mentally Awake, and Morally Straight.” 210
The use of outdoor areas for the scouts prepared them physically and mentally to overcome any
situation that they might find themselves in, thus reemphasizing the importance of self-reliance,
and preparedness.
Carey’s family also began to extend their stays at Creek Farm. The formal Italian garden
was improved in 1899 with the addition of a sundial, and Venetian stone lion statues were
erected facing the Creek at the granite steps that led up to the garden (see figures 2-A & B).211
This garden was the pride of Mrs. Carey, who improved upon it and spent several months outside
of the summer visiting and tending to. Gardens such as the one at Creek Farm were seen as the
middle ground of the continuum from wilderness to urban. Gardens provided a controlled form
of nature to interact with. While it is unclear if Mrs. Carey herself joined the Plant and Garden
Club of Cambridge, her friend Lois Lilly Howe was a landscape architect and influential member
of the club, having once been president.212 In 1904 Howe helped Carey to convert the stable at
the Carey’s Boston home at 48 Fayerweather Street into Mrs. Carey’s own personal apartments,
later numbered 50 Fayerweather.
209
Ibid, see also, Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, Scouting for Boys: A Handbook for Instruction in Good
Citizenship, (London: Horace Cox, 1908).
210
Carey, Scout Law, ix.
211
“Historical and Architectural Significance: Life in the Arts Community around Creek Farm” (Presented to the
SPNHF, Boston University, 2002).
212
“ Lois Lilly Howe,” Cambridge Women’s Heritage Project,
http://www2.cambridgema.gov/historic/cwhp/bios_h.html#HoweLL (accessed April 10, 2012).
57
Figure 2-E Luola's Chapel, 1919
Image courtesy of NC Department of
Cultural Resources
Figure 2-F Sunnyside at Orton circa 1920
Cape Fear Museum
Orton Plantation also changed hands in the early twentieth century but continued to be a
retreat for the owners and their friends. Colonel Murchison died in 1904 and his son-in-law Dr.
James Sprunt bought the plantation from the Colonel’s estate for his wife, Luola Murchison
Sprunt. Dr. Sprunt was interested in the history of the area, and had written Tales and Traditions
of the Lower Cape Fear in 1896, which included the history of Orton as well as Chronicles of the
Cape Fear River in 1916.213 Like her father and husband, Mrs. Sprunt loved Orton, and worked
like many other women of her social standing to expand the house and gardens. In 1910 the
Sprunt’s increased the living space of the house by adding on two wings to either side of the
house. The wings, designed by Mrs. Sprunt’s brother, K. M. Murchison Jr. an architect working
out of New York.214 In 1915 they built a chapel near their home, no doubt spurred on by Dr.
Sprunt’s interest in religion, which was later renamed ‘Luola’s Chapel’ after Mrs. Sprunt’s death
in 1916.215
Mrs. Sprunt was, like other wealthy women of her day, active in a variety of causes. Her
personal cause was the North Carolina Society of Colonial Dames. From 1906 to 1912, she
213
Sprunt, Tales and Tradition ; James Sprunt, Chronicles of the Cape Fear River, (Raleigh: Edwards & Broughton
printing co, 1916).
214
James Lawrence Sprunt, The Story Of Orton Plantation (Wilmington, Unknown, 1958), 16.
215
Ibid, 15-16.
58
served as president of the society.216 Her primary activities within the society were the
purchasing and placing of historical markers at places of interest, and she even served on the
Historical Research committee for the National Council of Colonial Dames.217 This interest in
history led her to establish two yearly essay contests through the Colonial Dames at the
University of North Carolina in order to stimulate, “the interests of the young manhood of the
state in the virtues and exploits of their Commonwealth.”218
Mrs. Sprunt was also remembered to be involved in a variety of local children’s charities,
a supporter of several Presbyterian missions abroad, and a benefactor to the YWCAWilmington.219 She also “Found her rest and relaxation in restoring the old place [Orton],… and
the old and new were blended into a perfect colonial home.”220 Mrs. Sprunt was also
remembered by her friend Ellen Hale Wilson as having a genuine, “sentiment for nature,” which
undoubtedly led to her expanding the gardens at Orton.221 Her sister-in-law, Lucile Murchison
recollected, “Mrs. Sprunt in her rose garden, her arms full of lovely blossoms she was gathering
for her visitors,” visitors that included President Howard Taft in 1909.222 Dr. Sprunt continued to
improve Orton after his wife’s death in 1916. In 1919 he bought the adjoining plantations of
Lilliput and Kendal, increasing the size of Orton to over three thousand acres.
Dr. Sprunt also held an interest in birding. A member of the North Carolina Audubon
Society, he was responsible for protecting the only colony of egrets and heron in North Carolina
216
North Carolina Society of the Colonial Dames of America, Jean Dalziel Wood, and Luola Murchison Sprunt.
Register of the North Carolina Society of the Colonial Dames of America (Raleigh, N.C.: The Society, 1912).
217
Sprunt, Story, 16. See also, James Sprunt, ed., In memoriam, Mrs. James Sprunt (Wilmington, James Sprunt,
1916), 49-50.
218
Sprunt, In memoriam, 71.
219
Ibid, 67-68, 79-84.
220
Ibid, 21.
221
Sprunt, In memoriam,14.
222
Ibid, 18.
59
at the time, which nested at Orton Pond.223 During this time there were a total of 20 colonies on
the Atlantic seaboard, and only three of those were protected solely by an individual.224 Egrets
and heron had become scarce during this time due to plume hunters who sought feathers to adorn
ladies hats. Sprunt’s efforts were obviously prosperous, as the curator of the North Carolina State
Museum, H.H. Brimley was cited as saying, “The pride taken in this interesting heron colony by
its owner, Mr. J. Sprunt, of Wilmington, and his interest in the conservation of all wildlife, is
responsible for its immunity from being ‘shot-up’.”225 Sprunt himself claimed that, “…it is a joy
and satisfaction to afford the heron wise enough to seek refuge at Crane Neck complete
protection from the mercenary and merciless plume hunter.”226 The conservation efforts of the
Sprunt family led to the restoration of the heron and egrets around the Cape Fear and across the
Atlantic seaboard.
Poplar Grove during this time continued to be held as an operating farm by the Foy
family. Joseph Thompson Foy, whose father --Joseph Mumford Foy-- built the house which
stands on the property today, continued to keep up the plantation through farming peanuts, a crop
that their former slaves, who became tenant farmers, had recommend to the Foys. In addition to
their planted crops, the Foys were also had a sawmill on the plantation and augmented their
income by refining salt in salt vats at the river.
223
Rosa Pendleton Chiles, “Crane Neck Heron Colony on Orton,” in Chronicles, Sprunt ed., 61-63. Sprunt Joined
the North Carolina Audubon Society sometime after the turn of the century.
224
Ibid.
225
Ibid.
226
Ibid.
60
Figure 2-G Turpentine Laborer's homes near Wilmington, NC
Louis T Moore Collection, New Hanover Public Library, North Carolina Room Digital Archives
The sawmill was kept busy through the vast timber holdings of the Foy family and
employed several workers who settled near Poplar Grove. Timber and Naval Stores had been
important to North Carolinians before the Civil War, and had overtaken rice and other crops. The
production of turpentine, tar and lumber then was a lucrative business that altered the landscape
through the harvesting of trees, as can be seen with photos of the time (see figure 2-G). After the
land was cleared of trees, it was then often used for cotton and tobacco.227 Nora Dozier Foy, wife
of J.T., became postmistress for the area, picking up the local mail from the railroad and running
the post office out of a front parlor in the house for the benefit of these workers.228
J.T. Foy, much like his father and grandfather, became an influential community
member. He became a state senator in 1901 and influencing railroad planners to build a stop in
nearby Scotts Hill. Foy was a director of the People’s Savings Bank in Wilmington and served
227
Lloyd Johnson, “Naval Stores,” North Carolina History Project,
http://www.northcarolinahistory.org/commentary/103/entry (April 16, 2012).
228
U.S. Census of Population and Housing, 1910: Summary Population and Housing Characteristics: Topsail,
Pender, North Carolina (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1911), Has Nora’s profession as “Postmaster of
Scotts Hill”. Nora and Joseph are also living with their Nephew who would inherit Poplar Grove, Robert, at this
time.
61
on the Board of County Commissioners of Pender County for twelve years, holding a chairman
position for eight years.229 He served as a Pender County Representative for the North Carolina
General Assembly in for several years and became involved in the fraternal order, ‘Royal
Arcanum,’ along with his brother-in-law Dr. Joseph C. Shepard.230 While it is unclear if Mr. Foy
endorsed historic preservation or environmental conservation endeavors, his efforts to bring the
railroad to Scotts Hill shows his interest for the development of the rural area.
Conclusion
The preservation and conservation movements underwent a reformative process in the
Progressive Era. The early movements had evolved separately, but during the same time and
within the same social circles. The conservation movement had, early on, sought and received
the protection of the national government due to the enormity that they sought to protect. The
preservation movement continued on with private organizations, since several early sites, like
Mount Vernon, had been ignored by the Federal Government. Historic Preservation gained
ground with the professionalization of the movement and the backing of the architectural world.
However, preservation would not be embraced federally until New Deal programs were
implemented, and preservation brought under the umbrella of conservation of National Parks.
The conservation movement gained ground, but lost meaning, as the National Park System
strove to develop park lands into recreational areas and modified the landscape to suit the ideals
of the tourists who visited them. While the protection of both natural areas and historic buildings
229
Wilmington, N.C. directory v.8 (1911/1912) (Richmond, VA: Hill Directory Co., 1911), 22.; R. D. W. Connor,
ed., A Manual of North Carolina Issued by the North Carolina Historical Commission for the Use of Members of the
General Assembly Session 1913, (Raleigh: E. M. Uzzell & Co. State Printers, 1913), 303.
230
Connor, Manual, 303, 750. The years that JT Foy is listed as serving as representative are 1901, 1903, 1909, and
1913.
62
arose from the need to cling to remnants of an earlier society, these spaces were capitalized upon
as they were developed and made into attractions.
As the case studies show, national changes and trends did not always permeate to the
local level; private families of the privileged classes such as the Careys, Sprunts and Foys,
continued to use their homes and land as places to live and work. While the only home that could
have been called historic contemporarily was Orton, the changes made to these homes during the
Progressive Era were very much in line with the trends and vogues of the time. All three of these
sites developed, and in some case expanded, their gardens, shaping the land around their homes
to better suit their tastes. All of the families made improvements to the houses, and at least two
of the sites increased their land holdings in the area.
For the Careys, expanding their holdings meant a less of a chance for the commercial
interests of Portsmouth to find a foothold in Little Harbor. Likewise, the Sprunts expansion of
Orton through the purchase of Lilliput and Kendall plantations insured that the ‘primeval forests’
that they enjoyed would not soon be toppled. While it is unclear if the Foys sought to expand,
they were in a rural enough area that it would still be several years until they would be threatened
by encroaching urban development.
63
3. — A Time of Peril Unmatched: 1920 - World War II
“…my conception of liberty does not permit an individual citizen or a group of citizens to
commit acts of depredation against nature in such a way as to harm their neighbors, and
especially to harm the future generations of Americans.”
—President F.D. Roosevelt, 1937231
As the United States roared into the 1920s, there were some hold overs from the previous
Progressive Era. This chapter will explore how technology changed the National Parks and
historic preservation. What did the increase in automobile ownership mean for environmental
conservation? How did it influence developments in Historic Preservation? What did the New
Deal policies mean for these movements? What was gained with the increase of federal support
at National Parks? What was lost? What support did the federal government give to the historic
preservation movement?
When the National Park Service came into being in 1916 thirteen parks were already
established. Even after the end of the Progressive Era, the NPS continued to focus on utilitarian
conservation to increase and develop the lands they held. As this chapter will show, resource
rights became an issue as developers, cities, and citizens scrambled to claim ownership of
precious natural resources. State officials and local residents also lobbied for development of
these natural areas to gain the federal money for construction of dams, railways, and outposts.
As the U.S. struggled to recover from the Great Depression, the federal government
began supporting historic preservation through New Deal policies. Historic Preservationists
continued to increase their holdings through local organizations, such as the Colonial
Williamsburg Foundation, and gained a valuable resource with the creation of the Historical
231
Speech by Roosevelt, Bonneville Dam, Oregon, September 28, 1937, reprinted in, Franklin D. Roosevelt and
Conservation Vol2 1937-1945, Roosevelt, Franklin D., and Edgar B. Nixon, (Hyde Park, N.Y.: General Services
Administration, National Archives and Records Service, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, 1957).
64
Architectural Building Survey (HABS) through the New Deal. While the goals of the
environmental conservation and historic preservation movements were, seemingly, disconnected,
the validation of both movements was through visitation and tourism. As the nation prepared for
war, a time that President F.D. Roosevelt announced as, “a time of peril unmatched in the history
of the nations of all the world,” preservationists and conservationists were fighting their own
battles between national policies, consumer desires, and divergent policies.232
The Automobile, Preservation, and Conservation
As the Progressive Era and World War I came to a close, new organizations continued to
be created to preserve historic structures in an effort to protect Yankee culture, and National
Parks continued to evolve into tourist destinations. The change that overshadowed other
advancements during this time of transition was the increasing mobility of a wider range of
Americans due to the increase in manufacturing of automobiles.233 The number of automobiles
per thousand of Americans increased from about 5 in 1910 to about 87 in 1920, and continued to
increase throughout the pre-World War II decades with 217 per thousand in 1930 and 246 in
1940.234 As this section will show, this increase in mobility also meant an increase in domestic
tourism as families packed into their cars and struck out for the historic houses, monuments and
vistas that they had previously only been able to read about.
One such tourist destination was Williamsburg, Virginia, where Dr. W.A.R Goodwin and
John D. Rockefeller Jr. in 1926 began to preserve, restore, rebuild, and recreate a 301 acre
232
Speech by Roosevelt at the Chickamauga Dam Celebration, near Chattanooga, Tennessee, September 2, 1940,
reprinted in, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Conservation Vol2 1937-1945, Roosevelt, Franklin D., and Edgar B.
Nixon, (Hyde Park, N.Y.: General Services Administration, National Archives and Records Service, Franklin D.
Roosevelt Library, 1957).
233
Daniel Sperling and Deborah Gordon, Two billion cars: driving toward sustainability (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2009), 3-9, Tables 3.3 and 3.5.
234
Ibid.
65
historic village in Williamsburg, Virginia that they named Colonial Williamsburg.235 The
Colonial Williamsburg Foundation was formed, and the development of the site began with a
massive buyout of property owners beginning in 1926, although the organization was not
incorporated until 1928.236 Goodwin wrote in 1930 that through the restoration of Colonial
Williamsburg, “…a shrine will be created that will serve to stimulate patriotism, that will
develop in American citizens a deeper love for their native land as they come to understand the
things that happened here, without which the foundations of the federal republic could not have
been securely laid.”237 The ideals of Goodwin, Rockefeller, and the Colonial Williamsburg
Foundation (CWF) were still very progressive and echoed the “Americanization” ideals of the
Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (SPNEA) and other preservation
organizations. Williamsburg had been chosen by Rockefeller because, unlike other older
patriotic urban areas, Boston for example, it was the least urbanized.238 Like other historic
preservation societies of the time, the CWF was overwhelmingly male, focused on architectural
analysis, and worked with a Viollet-le-Duc scrape mentality.239 The scale that the Foundation
worked on was much larger though, despite its deceptively small area.
The creation of Colonial Williamsburg began with the destruction of any building built
after the American Revolution within the three hundred and one acre site.240 The CWF bought
the property in order to acquire the eighty eight colonial era buildings.241 Included in this space
235
Richard Handler and Eric Gable, The New History in an Old Museum: Creating the Past at Colonial
Williamsburg ( Durham: Duke University Press, 1997).
236
Ibid.
237
Reverend Dr. W.A.R. Goodwin, transcript of phonograph recording made in Wythe House office July 29, 1930,
transcript reproduced in "The Far-Visioned Generosity of Mr. Rockefeller", Colonial Williamsburg Journal, Winter
2000-01.
238
“Company History,” Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, http://www.fundinguniverse.com/companyhistories/Colonial-Williamsburg-Foundation-company-History.html (accessed April1,2012)
239
Handler & Gable, Old Museum. This entire book covers the institutional history of Colonial Williamsburg.
240
“History,” Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.
241
Ibid.
66
however, was an additional seven hundred and twenty buildings of nineteenth century origin that
the foundation saw as corrupting its ideal colonial image.242 While much of the land that these
demolished edifices stood on became open green space, the CWF also brought in architects to act
as archeologists, whose mission was to research and find the foundations or footprints of historic
structures, so that the buildings might be rebuilt in the pre-colonial styles.243 These
reconstructions, over four hundred in number, still make up a large part of the site today. This
developed colonial village, built up with all the same amenities as the national parks, became a
new type of historic house museums as visitors flocked to the manicured landscapes when it
opened in 1932.244
While several historians have studied the impact of the continued inauthenticity of
Colonial Williamsburg, it was this idyllic setting that drew people to the grounds. In 1934
visitation was at 31,000 annually, and within two years it had tripled.245 Visitors to the site were
greeted by the last vestiges of females in the preservation field, as costumed southern ‘hostesses’
saw to the tours of the houses and town during the early years, to be joined in 1936 by
blacksmiths and other costumed craftspeople.246 By the 1940s African Americans had joined the
ranks of costumed workers, cast to play the role of slaves.247 African Americans had been
caretakers of other historic sites, such as Mount Vernon and Monticello, during this same time
and regularly asked to give tours of the houses and grounds, and their role at Colonial
242
“History,” Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.
Ivor Noël Hume, “Public Archaeology Address,” (address, Society for Historical Archaeology Conference,
Williamsburg, Virginia, January 13, 2007), accessible online at, http://soap.sdsu.edu/Volume2/2_Noel_Hume.pdf
244
“History,” Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.
245
Ibid.
246
Ibid.
247
Handler & Gable, Old Museum, 233; See also, James Oliver Horton, “Slavery in American History,” in Slavery
and Public History, James Oliver Horton and Lois E Horton ed., (New York: New Press, 2009) 35-56.
243
67
Williamsburg was akin to these previous roles.248 Reconstructions were made so believable and
the absence of modern items allowed people to believe that here was a historic village untouched
by time, when really most of the structures were new.249 This type of attraction, where
preservation was used to lend credibility to resurrected buildings, became the new model. While
organizations like the SPNEA continued to preserve scattered buildings across the country, rich
philanthropists née developers, began to spawn Colonial Williamsburg-esque investments such
as Henry Ford’s Greenfield Village (established 1933 Michigan), Eli Lilly’s Connor Prairie
(established 1935 Indiana), and Henry Hornblower’s Plimoth Plantation (established 1947
Massachusetts).
While these new attractions varied in scope and integrity, they all echoed the desires of
Goodwin at Colonial Williamsburg and drew motor-tourists. Henry Ford’s Greenfield Village
was a museum made up of buildings imported from across the country and placed on new
foundations. At its opening, Ford said that, “we shall have reproduced American life as lived;
and that, I think, is the best way of preserving at least a part of our history and tradition.”250 Eli
Lilly believed that by restoring Connor Prairie that he would be able to, “connect people with
history in ways books cannot.”251 Henry Hornblower II began Plimoth with the idea of “a
248
For Mount Vernon see, Scott Casper, “Sarah Johnson’s Mount Vernon: African American Life at an American
Shrine, From Slavery to Jim Crow,” (presentation, Virginia Foundation of the Humaniteies Fellow’s Seminar,
Oct.31, 2006). For Monticello see, Stubbendeck, “Women’s Touch”, 126.
249
Handler and Gable, Old Museum; covers the confusion of visitors throughout the decades over what is perceived
as a real historic building.
250
Quoted in, Henry Ford Museum Staff, Greenfield Village and the Henry Ford Museum, (New York: Henry Ford
Museum, 1972), 10.
251
“Who we are: Connor Prairie History,” Connor Prairie, http://www.connerprairie.org/About-Us/Who-WeAre/History-Of-Conner-Prairie.aspx (accessed Feb 15, 2012).
68
memorial to the Pilgrim Fathers.”252 Despite the Great Depression, these cultural sites were
visited by tourists from across the country, in the pre-World War II years as roads improved.
National Parks also enjoyed an increase in tourism thanks to the automobile. The
entrance of the United States into the first World War crippled the railroad system as rail yards
struggled to meet the demand placed on them, eventually leading to the government control of
railroads in 1917 for the duration of the war.253 Americans who were wealthy enough to purchase
automobiles, latched onto them for the freedom and travel that they afforded. Automobiles began
inundating national parks and the new mobile lifestyle that came with them forced the
concession operators to adapt.254While automobiles had been discouraged by park officials citing
unfit roads, public pressure held fast and beginning in 1908 automobile traffic was allowed at
Mount Rainier National Park.255 Other parks soon followed, and in 1916 Yellowstone admitted
13,500 automobiles, only to be topped the next year with 19,000 automobiles, this trend of
increasing automobile traffic in National Parks would continue throughout the next two
decades.256 With the creation of the National Park Services in 1916, reorganization of park
concessions and transportation was facilitated by the director of the NPS, Stephen T. Mather, so
that by the 1917 tourist season there would be adequate roads and accommodations.257
252
“Presenting the Story of Two Cultures,” Plimoth Plantation, http://www.plimoth.org/about-us/two-cultures
(accessed Feb 15, 2012).
253
Woodrow Wilson, and Albert Bushnell Hart, Selected Addresses and Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson (New
York: Boni and Liveright, Inc, 1918), 238-240. This public address was made 1917 Dec 26, and states that the
power had been given to the president in August. President Wilson claims that “This is a war of resources no less
than of man, perhaps even more than of man, and it is necessary for the complete mobilization of our resources that
the transportation systems of the country should be organized and employed under a single authority and simplified
method of coordination which had not proved possible under private management and control.”
254
Barringer, Yellowstone, 61.
255
Ibid, 62.
256
Ibid.
257
Ibid, 62-67.
69
NPS officials believed that their continued existence was dependent on tourism, and to
expedite their success Mather strengthened ties with the American Automobile Association and
national publications, as he began the “See America First,” campaign.258 Gone were the horse
carts of the last century, tourists could now also hire out private cars or join others on a bus to
tour the parks and travel between hotels and attractions.259 As visitors in automobiles began to
tour the park in greater numbers, park concessions changed. Motor tourists were less apt to stay
at the grand hotels that dotted the parks, preferring instead to camp at sites provided by the NPS
for free that dotted the parks and ‘Auto-camp’ (See figures 3 A& B).260 So popular was autocamping that entire how-to guides were printed and bought up by the public who were soon
outfitting their cars for such excursions.261 Soon well-built roads linked these camping spaces;
improved sanitary facilities were made available, and electric lights improved the camp grounds
and inns, making visit well worth the $7.50 toll on automobiles.262
Tourism boomed through the 1920s, only to be interrupted by the Great Depression.263 At
Yellowstone, the 1929 season had seen 275,000 visitors, but which dropped in 1932 to less than
half of that, a scant 136,000.264 Auto travel had become the dominant form of transportation not
only within the park, but also to the park, supplanting rail-travel265.
258
Barringer, Yellowstone, 66.
Ibid, 67.
260
For more on autocamping see, James Belasco, Americans on the Road: From Autocamp to Motel, 1910-1945
(Cambridge: MIT Press,1979).
261
Elon Jessup, The Motor Camping Book (New York and London: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1921).
262
Barringer, Yellowstone, 75.
263
Ibid, 79-81.
264
Ibid, 87.
265
Ibid.
259
70
Figure 3-A Auto-camp at Cedar Breaks, Utah c.1930
Photo courtesy of PBS and the Hertsch family
Figure 3-B Auto-campers at Yellowstone c.1920
Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress
The Great Depression, the New Deal, and the National Park Service
The depression began a new era at the National Parks. Around this time the leadership of
the NPS was changing, NPS Director Mather retired in 1929, and his replacement, Horace
Albright, stayed only until 1933.266 Mather and Albright had seen the development of the
concession and transportation businesses within the park as a positive; they catered to the tourists
whose presence justified the conservation of the park land and the operations of the NPS. The
NPS was undoubtedly seen as a needed entity and had some measure of credibility. Under
Executive Order 6166 the NPS was renamed as the Office of National Parks, Buildings, and
Reservations and gained the administration of all public buildings, reservations, national
cemeteries, and national monuments.267 This shifted the focus of the National Park Service from
a strictly western environmental view to a fully national scope. When President Roosevelt
secured the passage of the Historic Sites Act in 1935, the NPS gained further national
jurisdiction over the National Historic Sites. This act did more than transfer property into the
266
"Directors of the National Park Service," National Park Service,
http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/hisnps/NPSHistory/directors.htm (accessed Feb, 15, 1012).
267
Executive Order no. 6166, issued on June 10, 1933.
71
control of the NPS, as it opened with “It is hereby declared that it is a national policy to preserve
for public use historic sites, buildings, and objects of national significance for the inspiration and
benefit of the people of the United States.”268 Thus, claiming historic preservation a matter of
national policy.
With the transference of battlefields, presidential birthplaces and buildings of cultural
interest such as the White House into the holdings of the NPS, the management and public
became confused about the mission of the NPS as well as confused about what the parks
themselves were.269 Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes had addressed the national park
superintendents in 1934, calling for a change in the development of the parks. He challenged the
NPS to reconsider the way nature should be enjoyed, and who it should be enjoyed by, stating,
“…parks ought to be for people who love to camp and love to hike and who like to ride
horseback and wander about and have a real community of interest, a renewed communion with
Nature. That is what they ought to be.”270
Ickes stated that, “I want as much wilderness, as much nature preserved and maintained
as possible.”271 He continued, that for decades visitors to the National Parks had been primarily
of the privileged classes, people that could easily afford the cost of the travel and
accommodations for the weeks or months that they would be traveling. The concession owners
and park officials had catered to their ever-changing needs, and the parks had become akin to
country clubs. “Parks are for the reasonable use of all the people…” Ickes claimed, intimating
that the privileged class that were frequenting these parks for months on end, necessitating use of
268
“Historic Sites Act of 1935,” Title 16 U.S. Code, pts. 461-467. 1935ed.
Barringer, Yellowstone, 95.
270
Ibid. See also, T. H. Watkins, Righteous Pilgrim: The Life and Times of Harold L. Ickes, 1874-1952 (New York:
H. Holt, 1990).
271
Hon. Harold Ickes, “Secretary of the Interior Address,” (address, National Park Superintendents Conference,
November 20, 1934).
269
72
federal monies to build lavish resorts for them to stay were not the ideal patron; “Frankly, we
don’t want that kind of people in the park...” he stated.272
Some conservation minded visitors and staff began to work for a return to simpler,
wilder, and less socially divided, National Parks, in 1935 when they founded the Wilderness
Society.273 Echoing the previous generation’s President Roosevelt, the Wilderness Society
believed that, “Conservation means development as much as it does protection,” but that the,
“…natural resources must be used for the benefit of all our people, and not monopolized for the
benefit of the few…”274 These ideas returned to the root of conservation that had been set up in
the 1890s, that of the greatest good for the greatest number for the longest time. As the role of
the NPS and use of the National Parks began to become muddied in the changes of the New Deal
Era, non-elite personnel and visitors were seeking a return to a more egalitarian ideal of what
conservation was and what it strove to accomplish. These ideals would play a large part as
programs such as the Civilian Conservation Corps, Works Progress Administration, and Public
Works Administration became involved in the development of the parks.
New Deal programs began to become active in the National Parks in 1933. Funding for
the parks had stayed consistent, and in some cases increased, during the road building projects of
1931-1932. In 1933 the National Parks received sixteen million dollars under the Public Works
Program of the National Industrial Recovery Act for the sole purpose of building roads and trails
272
Hon. Harold Ickes, “Secretary of the Interior Address,” (address, National Park Superintendents Conference,
November 20, 1934).
273
Harvey Broome, “Origins of the Wilderness Society,” The Living Wilderness 5, 5 (July 1940): 13-15. This
society was heavily influenced by Robert Marshall, “The Problem of the Wilderness,” Scientific Monthly 30, 2
(February 1930): 148. Which called for an organization to “fight for the freedom of the wilderness.”
274
Theodore Roosevelt, “The New Nationalism,” (Speech, August 31, 1910), accessible online at
http://www.presidentialrhetoric.com/historicspeeches/roosevelt_theodore/newnationalism.html (accessed Feb 20,
2012).
73
within and to the parks.275 By June of 1933 four camps of Civilian Conservation Corps were at
Yellowstone alone, working in various capacities to improve the developed areas and upkeep of
natural areas.276 Many of the historic campsites, roads, rest stops, and other amenities in the
National Parks today were built by the CCC. Despite the economic problems of the entire nation,
it was in the 1933 season that automobile visitation began to pick back up in the parks as people
explored the parks via the new roads and campsites built by government funding and the CCC.277
These visitors were staying less time than the elite pre-Depression visitors, and were not
frequenting the inns or concessions, instead preferring to camp out, but were spending time in
the parks.278 Visitation continued to increase until the beginning of the Second World War.
New Deal programming also influenced the role of the NPS at its newly held historic
sites. Previously, the NPS had been solely responsible for overseeing the development and
continuation of the National Parks, and to this end had become rather successful. For the first
time the Federal Government put a federal organization in charge of the management,
preservation, and development of historic sites. While the Antiquities Act of 1906 had sought to
preserve historic sites of interest, it had not named a single government organization to
administer the sites.279 With the 1935 act, these cultural resources were being protected alongside
the natural resources within the NPS. Federal policy now mandated the research, documentation,
preservation, restoration, and development of historical sites and buildings of interest.280 This act
justified the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) that was a part of the New Deal
275
NPS, “The History of the Construction of the Road System in Yellowstone National Park, 1872-1966,”
Yellowstone Historic Resource Study, http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/yell_roads/hrs1-9.htm
(accessed Feb 20, 2012).
276
Ibid.
277
Ibid.
278
Ibid.
279
“American Antiquities Act of 1906,” Title 16 U.S. Code, pts. 431-433. 1906 ed.
280
“Historic Sites Act of 1935,” Title 16 U.S. Code, pts. 461-467. 1935ed.
74
programming, which gave work to architects, draftsmen, and photographers. The HABS program
documented thousands of buildings and sites across the United States, and made these historic
spaces be noticed.281 The NPS would continue to research, preserve, and develop these nationally
important historic spaces, using the same ideology and mentality that they had used with the
development of the Parks System. This unique duality, the blending of these two movements in a
federally mandated organization, gave the NPS foothold of interest across the country and began
to blend historic preservation into the Federal environmental conservation program.
Resource Rights and Dams
While the Hetch-Hetchy Valley dam project had been villainized by Muir and his
followers in the 1910s the successful construction of the dam in 1923 was only one of many that
began to spring up. While several of the dams, most of which were federally funded aid projects
during the New Deal era, such as Hoover Dam, Grand Coulee and TVA, were built because of a
real need to protect low lying towns from flooding and provide development and electricity for
the surrounding community, there were many more with less pure intentions. Senator Alva
Adams of Colorado was one of the politicians seeking to gain federal monies in 1937 through the
Colorado-Big Thompson Reclamation Project. Writing to an Assistant Secretary to President
Roosevelt on June 23, 1937, Adams claimed, “Colorado has had no reclamation project nor any
major project during the present administration. Every state in the west has one or more major
projects. The lack of such a project is highly prejudicial to the standing of the administration.”282
Adams’ project was quite worthy of completion; like most damming projects, the gains in hydro281
Evidence of this is the HABSurveys, many of which are accessible online at, www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/hh/
Senator Alva B. Adams of Colorado to Marvin H McIntyre, Assistant Secretary to the President [Washington]
June 23, 1937, reprinted in, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Conservation Vol2 1937-1945, Roosevelt, Franklin D., and
Edgar B. Nixon, (Hyde Park, N.Y.: General Services Administration, National Archives and Records Service,
Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, 1957).
282
75
electric power and irrigation to the local communities would reduce electric bills and increase
crop yields. But it was still opposed by congressmen and other politicians who argued that it may
inhibit the scenic views of Rocky Mountain National Park where the construction would take
place and might alter the landscape. Adams retorted that “Construction of the project will
improve and not impair the scenic beauties of the Park… there is no single feature of it which
will be detrimental socially, economically, financially, or from the standpoint of scenic beauty
and attraction.”283 Although a few conservation minded National Park supporters still opposed
the project, construction on it began in 1938.
This was not the only project to shake conservationists. The discussion over water rights
became heated during the New Deal era as politicians sought the construction of dams and other
water control projects in their states. These damming projects were part of the dominant
philosophy of the Roosevelt administration as they focused on regional development during the
Depression. Many of these projects would have the side benefit of also harnessing hydro-electric
power for the region. As more states began planning dams for little reason than increase of
federal funds flowing into their state, heated arguments between politicians over local short term
gains through the destruction of public lands were voiced. Secretary of the Interior, Charles West
wrote to Marvin McIntyre, Assistant Secretary of President Roosevelt, in the summer of 1937 to
urge the government to reconsider projects that were to be built in National Parks. West claimed
that at certain sites, the local people would, “…profit at the expense of hundreds of thousands of
actual and potential park visitors.”284 He went even further later in the letter, claiming that if such
283
Senator Alva B. Adams of Colorado to Marvin H McIntyre, Assistant Secretary to the President [Washington]
June 23, 1937, reprinted in, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Conservation Vol2 1937-1945, Roosevelt, Franklin D., and
Edgar B. Nixon, (Hyde Park, N.Y.: General Services Administration, National Archives and Records Service,
Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, 1957).
284
Charles West, Secretary of the Interior to Marvin McIntyre, Assistant Secretary to the President. June 30, 1937.
Republished in, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Edgar B. Nixon, Franklin D. Roosevelt & Conservation, 1911-1945
76
projects were passed, “…precedent would be established for utilization of resources in national
parks throughout the country in connection with purely local irrigation, power development, and
other schemes.”285 If this were to happen, “the economic values of the high public service to
which the parks have been dedicated would shortly be gone.”286 West’s worries were justified.
Reclamation officials often saw themselves as champions of the local public, but their
own understanding of the needs of the people were often skewed, leading to discussions over
what ‘the greatest good’ meant.287 These officials sought to harness the rivers to be the keystone
of regional economic growth, and tended to disregard the conservation of nature as an acceptable
goal.288 The projects that they endorsed, and were funded by the federal government, sought to
provide electricity and regulate water for irrigation. The NPS, which had for so long focused on
the development of natural areas, found several of its sites at the center of land use discussions
and questions about tangible and intangible values. These questions voiced by officials, local
residents, and park tourists, would have no simple answer.
The outbreak of the Second World War did not stop the development of these types of
projects. By the early 1950s the Bureau of Reclamation had no less than eighty dam sites in the
West selected; over two dozen of these sites had already been prepared for construction.289 But
the changing environmental views in the post-World War II United States would begin to reverse
these projects, and start to answer these value questions.
(Hyde Park, N.Y.: General Services Administration, National Archives and Records Service, Franklin D. Roosevelt
Library, 1957).
285
Ibid.
286
Ibid.
287
Rothman, Greening, 36-38.
288
Ibid.
289
Ibid.
77
Case Studies
The Carey, Sprunt, and Foy families during this time were all continuing to use their
homes in the manner to which they were accustomed as private owners. During this time, the
houses were passed on to a younger generation to maintain, and enjoy. This section will explore
the ways that these families continued the legacies that had been set as precedence in the
Progressive Era, during the Depression years, instead of embracing new ideologies.
Figure 3-C Creek Farm from walking trail
Photo by Erica Hague, 2011
The Carey’s of Creek Farm in New Hampshire continued to enjoy their vacation home.
After Carey’s death in 1923, Mrs. Carey continued to spent large amounts of time at Creek Farm
accompanied by her children and grandchildren until her death in 1932, when she was buried on
the property.290 Before her death, she deeded some of the property at Little Harbor over to her
290
Davis, “Arthur Astor Carey,” SPNHF Archives.
78
son Arthur Graham.291 At her death, the remaining property of Creek Farm was divided between
Arthur Graham and the heirs of his brother, Henry Reginald.292
Arthur Graham Carey had inherited his father’s love of art and religion. Graduating from
Harvard in 1914, he soon joined the US troops fighting in World War One. He went directly into
military action, driving an ambulance in France for the Allies.293 After he returned from the First
World War in 1919, he entered into the Harvard Architectural school for two years before
becoming a draftsman at Bigelow and Wadsworth in 1921.294 He gave up his position at the
architectural firm in 1926 to pursue his hobbies in metallurgy, but by 1933 had developed into
more of a thinker, spending most of his time writing and discussing theoretical matters.
Henry Reginald Carey had graduated from Harvard in 1913, and after a single year of
medical school, joined the military efforts during WWI as a secretary at the American Embassy
in Paris.295 After his return to the United States, he married Margaret in 1920 and they settled in
Pennsylvania and had four children, Henry, John, William, and Alida, while he pursued his
career as a professional writer before his death in 1931 at the age of 41.296
While the Careys had enjoyed prosperity and been influential in the Portsmouth and
Boston communities, the children of the family seem to have had less attachment to the summer
home at Creek Farm than their parents. After Mrs. Carey’s death in 1932, Arthur Graham Carey
and Henry Reginald Carey’s family spent only a few years enjoying the property before
291
New Hampshire, Rockingham Co. Register of Deeds, Book 0795, Page 0407, Jun 26, 1925.
New Hampshire, Rockingham Co. Register of Deeds, Book 0894, Page 0240, Feb 06, 1934.
293
Harvard University. The Harvard Freshman Red Book; The Year Book of the Class of 1914 (Cambridge, Mass:
Caustic-Claflin Co, 1914).
294
Harvard College, Secretary's Third Report (Cambridge, Mass: University Press, 1921); See also, Davis, “Arthur
Astor Carey,” SPNHF Archives.
295
Harvard College, Secretary's Second Report (Norwood, Mass: Plimpton Press, 1917).
296
U.S. Census of Population and Housing, 1930, Philadelphia (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1991).
292
79
permanently quitting the house sometime before 1941.297 Henry Reginald’s children and widow
had little interest in the house, living and spending most of their time in Germantown,
Philadelphia.298 Eventually Arthur Graham realized that he was too old to truly enjoy the work
put into the house and spent most of his time at his house in Cambridge, Massachusetts.299
Figure 3-D Approach to Orton Plantation Photo by Associated Press
In Wilmington, Orton Plantation also changed hands during this time. Dr. Sprunt died in
1924 and the plantation passed onto his son, James Lawrence Sprunt, and his second wife Annie
Gray.300 J. Lawrence worked after his father’s death in 1924 to open a road through the forest to
NC133.301 Born in 1927 Laurence Gray Sprunt, Son of J. Lawrence and Annie Gray, wrote that
“Orton House faces the Cape Fear River because water was the chief means of access… By the
end of the 1920s, the automobile and improved roads made the river steamboats obsolete, and I
do not remember ever coming to or from Orton on river transportation.”302 The picturesque drive
297
Davis, “Arthur Astor Carey,” SPNHF Archives.
New Hampshire, Rockingham Co. Register of Deeds, Book 0894, Page 0240, Feb 06,1934.
299
Davis, “Arthur Astor Carey,” SPNHF Archives.
300
Sprunt, Orton, 16-17.
301
Ibid.
302
Laurence Grey Sprunt, The Past-- A Stairway to the Future, (Wilmington, NC: L.G. Sprunt, 2007).
298
80
from NC133 to the plantation house (see Figure 3-D) was yet another of the improvements made
at Orton to accommodate the changing times and technology.303
Figure 3-E Sign erected near Wilmington City Limits by Chamber of Commerce
Photo by Louis T Moore, 1923, Louis T Moore Collection, New Hanover Public Library
This generation worked to preserve the historic plantation home and continued to expand
the gardens that Dr. and Mrs Sprunt had begun. By the 1930s the garden had expanded into
several of the old rice fields, and covered 20 acres.304 Annie Gray sought the help of landscape
architect Robert Swan Sturtevant and horticulturist Churchill Bragaw, who made significant
contributions to the garden.305 The Sprunts opened their garden to the public sometime after this
expansion, charging an entrance fee of twenty-five cents. The gardens that had remained largely
private before were made accessible to all through new roads and people were happy to pay the
fee to tour the expansive grounds.
303
Wilmington began to cater to motor tourists in 1923, posting signs like the one seen in figure 3-E. Perhaps it was
because of the expansions that Wilmington was doing at this time that the Sprunt family decided to build a road.
304
Ibid.
305
Susan Taylor Block, “The Majestic Plantation,” Wrightsville Beach Magazine, July 2007.
81
Figure 3-F Back of Poplar Grove
Photo by Erica Hague 2010
Across the Cape Fear, in Pender County, Poplar Grove Plantation was also changing
hands. Despite their social and political success, J.T. and Nora Foy faced personal tragedies
when all four children died in childbirth. They turned to J.T. Foy’s younger brother, Henry Foy
for an heir, and he sent his eleven year old son Robert Lee Foy Sr. to inherit Poplar Grove.306
Robert would live with his aunt and uncle at Poplar Grove and grow into his position as heir.307
Robert Foy inherited the plantation in 1918 after his uncle’s death, and continued to
improve the house and grounds, as well as continue to farm peanuts through the mid twentieth
century.308 He, perhaps at the prompting of his wife, Elizabeth, integrated new technology into
the house, building a windmill to pump water into the house and a new kitchen area soon after he
inherited. He also had the house wired for electricity in 1937, the same year that Robert Jr.
306
House Tour, July 20, 2010.
Robert reportedly moved to Poplar Grove when he was 11, about 1898, he was recorded living there in the 1900
census.U.S. Census of Population and Housing, 1900; Topsail, Pender, North Carolina, (Washington, D.C.:
National Archives and Records Administration, 1900).
308
House Tour, July 20, 2010.
307
82
graduated from highschool.309 These modern touches to the nearly century-old house breathed
new life into the home as the next generation of Foys began to fill the house.310
Conclusion
The post-Progressive, Pre-Second World War United States was a time of reevaluation
for many environmental conservationists and of political acceptance for historic preservationists
at the national level. Both movements had set backs with the stock market crash of 1929 and
subsequent Depression, but both gained the support of the federal government. In the case of
historic preservation, the movement gained government endorsement and legitimacy with the
passage of the Historic Sites Act of 1935. Historic Preservation continued to gain power and
legitimacy as a movement with the interest of corporate developers who sought to highlight
portions of the nation’s past through architectural remembrances of Yankee heritage and
tradition. Conservation continued to become entrenched in political struggles as the NPS grew
from a concession management line item to a multi-faceted department, responsible for
developing heritage tourism and protecting natural and historical areas.
While the Progressive Era changed the conservation and preservation movements into
larger, more professional, and more politicized movements, the Depression and New Deal eras
brought more federal interest and money into both areas than ever before. It was during this time
that these two movements were inextricably linked in the federal view through legislation and
interest. While both sister movements had developed largely apart from one another, they were
309
House Tour, July 20, 2010. See also, “Obituary: Robert Lee Foy Jr.,” Star News, May 27, 2011.
Robert’s first two daughters were born in 1914 (Elizabeth) and 1917(Gertrude), his first son Robert Jr. was born
in 1919 and worked alongside his father on the farm. U.S. Census of Population and Housing, 1920: Topsail,
Pender, North Carolina (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1920); For Robert Jr’s profession see , Records
of the Selective Service System, 1926-1975, North Carolina World War II Draft Registration Cards, Record group
137, Box Number: 122.
310
83
bound together in this era. While organizations in these areas were still very hesitant to work
together, many seeing the disarray that the NPS spiraled into with the incorporation of historic
sites into their realm, they could not avoid the association.
In the cases of Creek Farm, Orton Plantation, and Poplar Grove, they too were vulnerable
to the technologies that were emerging during this time. The Careys at Creek Farm continued to
retain their land holdings in the Little Harbor area, keeping the land privately held within the
family. The Sprunts at Orton also retained their land, while giving into the new technologies of
the time to build a road to Orton, which would become their primary mode of transportation into
the estate. The Sprunts also expanded and opened their gardens to tourists, which would lead to
the gardens becoming an important area for locals in the coming decades. The Foy family also
remained in control of their land, but adopted modern necessities such as electricity and running
water. While none of these families acted expressly for the sake of environmental conservation
or historic preservation, all of them took steps to ensure that their land holdings and buildings
would remain unchanged during this time period.
84
4. — A Future With Greater Meaning: 1945-1970s
“In sum, if we wish to have a future with greater meaning, we must concern ourselves not only
with the historic highlights, but…with the total heritage of the nation and all that is work
preserving from our past as a living part of the present.“
—With Heritage So Rich, Conclusions,1965
At the end of the Second World War, the United States soldiers who returned home came
back to a very different nation than they had left. The United States had rebounded from the
Great Depression with the help of New Deal programs and the economic stability brought on by
the war efforts in the early 1940s. This chapter will explore the effects of the bountiful years that
followed World War Two on the historic preservation and environmental conservation
movements. How did automobiles and suburbs continue to change communities? What did
preservationists do to adapt to the changes to cities during this time? What sparked the rise of
new environmentalism? How did the federal government react to the changes in the
environmental conservation and historic preservation movements?
The United States entered an era of unparalleled growth and wealth after World War
Two. The middle class boomed as returning soldiers came home to jobs to produce automobiles,
household electronics, and other consumer goods that would feed the development of the nation.
Goods developed by the military during the war, such as plywood, entered into the public sphere
and increased the development of suburbs as everyone sought the American dream of a family
home out of the city. Automobile production and ownership soared, and the interstate highway
system was planned, developed, and built. In its wake was the destruction of thousands of
historic sites.
This chapter will show how the historic preservation movement rapidly developed its
fledgling ties to the federal government after World War Two. Legitimized as a movement with
85
the 1935 Historic Sites Act, the historic preservation movement had yet to become a priority for
the federal government until the 1960s with the passing of the National Historic Preservation Act
of 1966. During the gap between World War II until the passage of the 1966 Act, the federal
government took part in the destruction of several thousands of historic buildings and sites which
were in the path of the network of interstates built with the passage of the 1956 Interstate
Highway Act. Further damage was done to historic buildings and cultural sites during the
repetitive urban redevelopment programs, which waxed and waned during the 1940s, 50s, and
60s.
The environmental conservation movement also saw changes in federal policy and public
involvement during this time. While visitation of the national parks increased with the
availability of automobiles; environmental consciousness began to increase as well. People
began to realize the impacts that their modern conveniences were having on society as a whole.
This chapter will look especially at the case of Silent Spring and the affect it had on the
movement as it continued to discuss resource rights, and water projects. The post-war era
brought about extensive changes for both the conservation and historic preservation movements
federally and locally. More sites became inundated with cultural tourists, who travelled the
freshly paved roads in their newly built automobiles, seeking to affirm their heritage.
The Rise of Automobiles and Suburbs
As World War Two ended, Americans began to seek out the consumer goods that they
had given up during the war. Many members of the rising middle class strived to purchase
automobiles, new homes, and technology particularly. The automobile rose from a mechanical
oddity to an important mode of transport before World War Two for many wealthy Americans.
86
After the war, this mode of transportation was opened up to more individuals as car
manufacturing plants made use of federal monies to retool war production factory lines into
civilian transportation lines. While this took time, and resources were scarce directly after the
war, by 1949 most major automobile manufacturers were at pre-war levels of production.311
Automobiles were more than just a social status item, they served their purpose as a mode
of transport from suburban homes which saw an increase in production with the development of
new building materials such as plywood.312 Returning veterans embraced the idea of suburban
homes as the American Dream, which was pushed and advertised by developers.313 Elite white
families were no longer the only residents of suburbs, working class Americans could now also
afford to have their own homes, yards, and automobiles. For these veterans, home ownership
equated to material success and well-being.314
These new suburbs were different than the streetcar suburbs of the Progressive Era.
Developed further from town and requiring interstates and highways in order to commute to the
city center, these new suburbs were a melding of city and country.315 These areas did not develop
on a grid, like earlier suburbs, but instead focused on curved streets and cul-du-sacs.316 Typically
neighborhoods were formed by developer-builders, who offered similar designs from a
catalogue, such as those designed and built by Levitt & Sons.
311
Ibid.
Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1965. Volume I, entry 54, 155-165;
excerpt taken from, Special Message to the Congress on Conservation and Restoration of Natural Beauty, February
8, 1965 (Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office, 1966); President Johnson claimed that, “For most
Americans the automobile is a principal instrument of transportation, work, daily activity, recreation and pleasure.”
313
Jackson, Crabgrass.
314
David L. Ames, “Interpreting Post-World War II Suburban Landscapes as Historic Resources” published in,
Preserving the Recent Past, Deborah Slaton and Rebecca A. Schiffer ed., (Washington, DC: Historic Preservation
Education Foundation, 1995).
315
Ibid.
316
Jackson, Crabgrass, 236.
312
87
Abraham Levitt, and his two sons, William and Alfred, took the ideas of interchangeable
parts and mass production and applied it to the housing industry. Focusing on speed and cost
effective design, Levitt& Sons was able to build 30 houses a day by the summer of 1948.317
Their focus was on returning GIs and their families; Levitt& Sons catered to community needs
by including pools, schools, and postal delivery. While the first Levittown focused on renting
homes, subsequent communities offered payment plans for home ownership, for around eight
thousand dollars, payable by installments, the American dream could be bought. 318 These
cookie-cutter homes, outfitted with appliances, televisions, and carports, were viable housing
options for families with automobiles because of their distance from cities and amenities. Despite
their low walkability and architectural singularity, by 1950 more Americans lived in suburbs
than anywhere else.319
The combination of consumer demand and production of more middle class homes in the
suburbs reinforced the need for automobiles throughout this period. Automobile ownership
surged during this time, rebounding from about 220 per thousand at the end of World War Two
to 323 by 1950.320 The number of automobile owners continued to rise even higher after the
passing of the National Interstate Highway Act in 1956. The amount of cars per thousand in
1960 stood at about 410, and in 1970 the halfway mark was broken with 545 automobiles per
thousand. By 1980 the amount had risen to 710.321
317
Kenneth T. Jackson, "The Baby Boom and the Age of the Subdivision,"
http://us.history.wisc.edu/hist102/readings/Jackson_BabyBoom.pdf (Accessed March 1, 2012).
318
Lynne Matarrese, The History Of Levittown, New York (Levittown, N.Y. : Levittown Historical Society, 1997).
319
Robert E England and David R. Morgan, Managing Urban America (North Scituate, Mass: Duxbury Press,
1979).
320
Daniel Sperling and Deborah Gordon, Two billion cars: driving toward sustainability (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2009), 3-9, Tables 3.3 and 3.5.
321
Ibid.
88
Deurbanization and Urban Renewal
As Americans migrated out of cities and towns after World War Two, they pushed
suburban areas further out. These former city dwellers had no interest in the preservation of the
urban homes, stores, and community areas and instead focused on building new amenities closer
to their new homes. The abandoned urban centers created large areas of urban decay. By
midcentury, community leaders and politicians of many of these places lobbied for urban
renewal to remove areas that they considered as permanently blighted from their towns and
cities. The Department of Housing and Urban Development led the urban renewal movement in
the United States with the passage of the Housing Act of 1949. As part of President Truman’s
Fair Deal, this act focused on rehousing Americans that lived in slums and tenements. While this
act provided some of the urban poor with the ability to move into improved housing, it often
destroyed more housing than it created. Poor immigrants and African Americans, who had been
the primary tenants of these urban slums, were often displaced by these ‘improvements,’ due to
the expense of the new housing.322 These minorities though, were not the only victims of urban
renewal.
In 1957 a national conference of city developers met to discuss the decline of cities.
Filled with professors, architects, real estate experts, industrialists, and government officials, this
meeting focused on rehabilitating the outmoded cities and breathing new life and meaning into
these urban areas.323 This group decided that a reorganization of urban spaces was required, and
that cities would no longer be the industrial meccas that they had been but instead become the
322
Bernard J. Frieden, and Lynne B. Sagalyn, Downtown, Inc.: How America Rebuilds Cities (Cambridge, Mass:
MIT Press, 1989), 29.
323
Ibid, 15-16.
89
cultural and educational heart of the community.324 Held one year after the passage of the
National Interstate Highway Act, this conference sought to expand highways and roads, bring in
educational, cultural, commercial, green spaces and tourist areas and to push out the warehousing
and industrial factories and the slum housing.325 While this group of elite experts sought the
destruction of the industrial city, in order to create a new community focus that would draw in
suburbanites, they often neglected to plan for the people who lived and worked in the cities. This
disregard of the mostly poor and ethnically diverse people who actually lived in these urban
communities would be a hallmark of urban renewal. Urban renewal would be repeated in city
after city in the latter half of the twentieth century, and its impacted on the historic preservation
movement would be long-lasting and widespread.
Historic Urban Preservation
With the destruction of historic cities and the rebuilding of many urban centers,
preservationists saw the need to protect the historic structures in many of these urban areas.
While the historic preservation movement as a whole had gained legitimacy and federal interest
with the passage of the Historic Sites Act of 1935, it had yet to gain a national organization
dedicated to leading the movement. Large institutions such as Colonial Williamsburg, and
societies like SPNEA had acted as models for similar local private organizations, but no national
organization existed to bring these groups together and focus on widespread issues such as urban
renewal. The NPS was supposed to be leading the historic preservation field with the
endorsement of the federal government, but had not fulfilled its task in urban areas. By 1947
324
325
Frieden and Sagalyn, Downtown, Inc, 15-16.
Ibid, 16-17.
90
preservationists had begun to organize nationally, and in 1949 they were rewarded with the
passing of the National Trust for Historic Preservation Act.326
This National Trust Act of 1949 expanded the 1935 Historic Sites Act to create the
educational non-profit organization named the National Trust for Historic Preservation. This
organization was to “facilitate public participation in the preservation of sites, buildings, and
objects of national significance or interest.”327 However, this act did little in its first years, as
historic preservation was overshadowed by the Korean War and then later the Vietnam War. It
was not until the interests of Ladybird Johnson inspired her husband, President Lyndon Johnson,
to make preservation a part of his Great Society administration that the National Trust gained
strong support.328 The First Lady was interested in national beautification and saw historic
preservation playing a role in improving cityscapes.329 Conservation, too, was an important part
of this national beautification plan, as President Johnson emphasized in his 1965 inaugural
address, “We must make a massive effort to save the countryside and to establish--as a green
legacy for tomorrow--more large and small parks, more seashores and open spaces.”330 Soon
after, he made a special address to congress on conservation that focused on national
beautification, specifically targeting the National Trust as an organization to support for the
improvement of the future.331 For the President, conservation and preservation were already
linked interests.
326
“National Trust for Historic Preservation Act,” Title 16 U.S.Code 468. 1949 ed.
Ibid.
328
Murtagh, Keeping Time, 64.
329
Ibid.
330
Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1963-64, (Washington, D. C.:
Government Printing Office, 1965), 112-118. Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union, January 4,
1965
331
Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1963-64, (Washington, D. C.:
Government Printing Office, 1965), 155-165. Special Message to the Congress on Conservation and Restoration of
Natural Beauty, February 8, 1965
327
91
In May 1965, the First Lady opened the White House Conference on Natural Beauty.
This conference formed a committee on historic preservation, which was supported by the
National Trust and filled with public and private organization leaders.332 This committee
published the iconic, With Heritage So Rich, which would lead to the passage of the 1966
National Historic Preservation Act and influence a new generation of preservationists.333 The
conclusions of With Heritage So Rich pointed out the need for the preservation movement to
reorient itself in order to better serve the rootless American public that craved the stability and
belonging that historic buildings embodied.334 To this end, countless organizations across the
nation became active in preserving not just the houses of famous men, nor houses that were of
architectural interest, but entire neighborhoods. The scope of Historic Preservation widened
again, and drew in support from a more diverse range of community members seeking to save
their historic neighborhoods from urban renewal, and finally cemented federal interest.
Federal attentiveness to historic preservation was also impacted with the creation of With
Heritage So Rich, and led to a new wave of urban preservation. With the passage of the National
Historic Preservation Act of 1966 and the subsequent creation of the National Register of
Historic Places, sites of national state, local, architectural, and cultural interest were recognized
and documented.335 While at first many of these were singular buildings or estates, the national
register today boasts many different kinds of areas, including districts. This piece of legislature
also encouraged an increase in federal grants towards rehabilitation and restoration of historic
structures, buildings, and districts.336
332
Murtagh, Keeping Time, 64.
Ibid. United States Conference of Mayors, With Heritage so Rich; A Report (New York: Random House, 1966).
334
Mayors, With Heritage, 207.
335
“National Historic Preservation Act of 1966,” Title 16, U.S. Code, Pts. 470.1966 ed.
336
Murtagh, Keeping Time, 66-68.
333
92
Perhaps most importantly, the National Historic Preservation Act provided legal basis for
preservationists to voice complaints about federal works in regard to the built environment.
Historic sites would no longer be bulldozed over for roads, or swallowed up by damming
projects as they had earlier in the century. This act required federal organizations and private
groups that were funded or licensed federally to take cultural property into account before any
changes were made to the built environment.337 For federally funded programs the widespread
destruction of structures would be slowed down, or stopped altogether.
The 89th Congress, in session from 1965-1966, was also responsible for passing other
pieces of preservation legislature that served to reinforce the National Historic Preservation Act.
In 1966 the Department of Transportation Act mandated policy that natural and man-made sites
along highway routes be preserved.338 This put an end to the bulldozing of sites and established
positions for preservationists within federal and state Departments of Transportation. This
Congress also passed the Demonstration Cities act in 1966, which changed the way that
preservation was funded.339 This act provided funding for urban preservation through the
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, altering some of the methods of urban renewal.
By the 1970s there had been an increase in local organizations, tied to the National Trust
for Historic Preservation, working to preserve sites of national, state, and local interest. These
organizations, sought to protect historic sites and districts, and to bring new life into these old
places. Historic house museums had proven, for the most part, to be unprofitable because of their
high costs of maintenance. These historic structures had to be put to use or risk losing public
interest in them. While historic houses could always be houses, the late 1970s saw the beginning
337
Murtagh, Keeping Time, 66-68.
“Department of Transportation Act of 1966,” Title 49, U.S.Code, Pts. 103. 1966 ed.
339
“Demonstration Cities and Metropolitan Development Act,” Title 42, U.S. Code, Pts. 4231. 1966 ed.
338
93
of the adaptive reuse ideology as historic buildings became refitted as offices, bars, businesses,
galleries, and a multitude of other purposes in order to make these historic spaces relevant and
useful to the public that would occupy them.
Rise of Environmentalism
While the conservation movement of the Progressive and New Deal eras focused on the
management of nature and its resources, the post-World War II era gave way to new
environmental concerns. Old issues, such as air and water pollution, were revisited and expanded
to include soil pollution, in response to new agricultural technologies that caused health risks.340
Much of this new environmentalism was led by the suburbanite class that emerged from the
Second World War. Many of these suburbanites were concerned with their own personal
environments and quality of life first, and the management of national nature preserves
second.341
With the increase of domestic affluence and international power during the Cold War
Era, some Americans began to argue that the nation could seek social and economic progress
without destroying nature. They believed that America had the power and wealth to be able to
have new buildings, suburbs, and technologies, without the destruction of natural areas. Unlike
the early conservation movement, 1950s environmentalism could employ a wide range of
interests and methods. Environmentally minded Americans adopted a wide range of issues and a
340
Pollution had been a concern since the Progressive Era, and had at that time spurred many elite Americans to
leave the city for the cleaner country. Pollution during the Progressive Era was, for the most part, a women’s cause.
For more information on early pollution movements, see, Martin V. Melosi ed., Pollution and Reform in American
Cities, 1870-1930 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980). For information on late 20 th century see, Martin V.
Melosi's, Effluent America: Cities, Industry, Energy, and the Environment (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh
Press, 2001).
341
Samuel P. Hays, Health, and Permanence: Environmental Politics in the United States, 1955-1985 (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1987), 2-5.
94
varying degree of involvement. For example, radical groups emerged during the social unrest of
the 1960s, seeking to remove themselves from the consumerist society and live in and with
nature.342 This commune movement was vastly different from the ‘radical’ woodsmen of the
Progressive Era and before, like Thoreau and Muir, who sought individual freedom and a low
impact relationship with nature. However, very few Americans subscribed to the ideals of these
communes. Environmentalists of the 1950s and 60s were much more likely to focus on either the
beautification, anti-development, or pollution.
With the increase of highways, suburban sprawl, and urban decay, important national
figures such as Lady Bird Johnson, as has been seen, sought to beautify these landscapes using
natural areas, parks, and forests, The purpose of these beautification efforts was to increase
appreciation of the aesthetic and recreational qualities of the natural world. These ideals fell in
line most closely with the national park movement of the previous decades, and continued to link
conservation of natural spaces and the preservation of historic structures.
The Sierra Club, founded in 1892, followed this line of thought, but also opposed the
pace of the consumerist society that necessitated the need for a beautification program. It drew in
members who sought to work against the building of dams. While many of these proposed dams
would destroy natural areas, many members sought the halting of their development in protest to
what they saw as mindless progress instead of protecting nature.
342
Communes and commune life during this time might be most easily understood through the works of Gary
Snyder. Gary Snyder, A Place in Space (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 1995); contains several of his works from 19501990s on environmental issues.
95
Many Americans who had concerns over the
consequences of progress joined the ranks of the Sierra
Club in order to agitate against development. The
growth of the club came on the heels of the loss of a
battle at Glen Canyon Dam, which regulated the flow of
water through the Grand Canyon. The Sierra Club had
chosen not to fight the dam, despite its earlier success at
blocking the Colorado River Echo Dam project in 1955.
Many environmental conservationists were
disenchanted with the Bureau of Reclamation, and
although they had no ties to the local community that
Figure 4-A Sierra Club Campaign Advertisement
would be impacted by damming projects, began to
speak out against such developments. For the Sierra Club and its supporters, these spaces were
best left to their own devices, and devoid of development. The Bureau ignored the outcry and
continued to back its policy of “the greatest good for the greatest number for the longest time”
that had been developed in the Progressive Era. This unbending policy was not tolerated by the
Sierra Club.
By the mid-1960s two dams had been proposed for the Grand Canyon as part of a larger
Central Arizona Project. This project would severely alter the canyon, what the Sierra Club saw
as a sacred space. The Sierra Club launched a propaganda campaign in all the major domestic
newspapers that spoke out against such desecration. “Should we also flood the Sistine Chapel so
that tourists can get nearer the ceiling?” asked the headline (see figure 4-A). The Bureau had
little to say on the matter, believing the majority of the public to be indifferent.
96
Many Americans spoke up and out about the Central Arizona Project, and other damming
developments though. The Sierra Club, led by David Brower, claimed that, “Progress need not
deny to the people their inalienable right to be informed and to choose.”343 This claim resonated
with the American public who felt that information had been withheld from them, and they raced
to save the canyon and spoke out about the presidential administration that had allowed such a
crisis in the first place. The Johnson administration, which had signed the Wilderness Act in
1964 which had simultaneously defined wilderness and protected 9 million acres, stoped the
damming project in the wake of emotional cries from the public. But this approach to
conservation varied greatly from the efforts of previous generations that sought to develop
national park areas and those of the 1960s who tried to work within the political administrations.
Finally, other groups making up the new environmentalism movement focused on
reducing pollution. Americans who embraced this environmental concern sought to improve
quality of life through the protection of clean air, water, and soil. Many of the worries from this
area of new environmentalism were brought about with the creation and use of new chemicals
and technology. Some of the worries from this group were made public with the publishing of
Silent Spring.
Silent Spring
Silent Spring, published in 1962, described the effects of DDT on the avian population of
a suburb. Used heavily in the Pacific during World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam
343
Eliot Porter, and David Ross Brower, The Place No One Knew: Glen Canyon on the Colorado (San Francisco:
Sierra Club, 1963), ii.
97
War, DDT was a pesticide used to control outbreaks of malaria and typhus.344 Long term studies
on the effects of prolonged exposure to DDT were simply not done. The author of Silent Spring,
biologist Rachel Carson, questioned use of chemicals with so little study on its impact, and
linked DDT use to the death of birds in her friend’s neighborhood.345 “In nature nothing exists
alone,” Carson wrote, echoing the words of ecologists.346 Carson argued for larger and more
comprehensive studies on these chemical agents that people were using in order to find out the
effects of such chemicals in a wider area.347 She theorized that prolonged exposure to, and use
of, these products could not only kill the birds, but could also lead to long lasting illnesses, and
even death, in the human population.348
“These sprays, dusts, and aerosols are now applied almost universally to farms,
gardens, forests, and homes-nonselective chemicals that have the power to kill
every insect, the "good" and the "bad," to still the song of birds and the leaping of
fish in the streams, to coat the leaves with a deadly film, and to linger on in soilall this though the intended target may be only a few weeds or insects. Can
anyone believe it is possible to lay down such a barrage of poisons on the surface
of the earth without making it unfit for all life?” Carson questioned. 349
Carson was blasted by the chemical companies and despite her degree in biology, was
called a hysterical woman.350 Despite these criticisms, her book captured the attention of
President John F. Kennedy’s, and he directed his Science Advisory Committee to investigate the
claims of Carson.351 The findings of the committee eventually led to the banning of use of DDT
in the United States in 1972, and internationally in 1979.352
344
Persistent Bioaccumulative and Toxic (PBT) Chemical Program, “DDT,” EPA,
http://www.epa.gov/pbt/pubs/ddt.htm (accessed April 1, 2012).
345
Carson, Silent Spring.
346
Ibid, 8.
347
Ibid.
348
Ibid.
349
Ibid, 7-8.
350
Peter Matthiessen, “Environmentalist Rachel Carson” Time, (March 29, 1999).
351
“The Story of Silent Spring,” NRDC http://www.nrdc.org/health/pesticides/hcarson.asp (accessed April 1, 2012).
352
World Health Organization, Environmental Health Criteria 9, DDT and its Derivatives (Geneva: World Health
Organization, 1979).
98
While Silent Spring and the subsequent banning of DDT use are debated to this day, the
book served its purpose to bring attention to the unstudied use of potentially dangerous
chemicals.353Carson’s findings were embraced by the American public, because they echoed the
unspoken concerns of many over the invisible consequences of progress and the use of
technology. Her claims would incite a generation of new environmentalists who would argue for
the federal protection of nature in order to protect their own lifestyle. Smog, water pollution, and
other new environmental issues were raised across the nation.
Beautification and Environmentalism
In 1959 William Whyte encouraged Life readers to go take a look at the countryside
while they still could, and then go back towards the city, “Here, in what was pleasant countryside
only a year ago, is a sight of what is to come. No more sweep of green—across the hills are
splattered scores of random subdivisions…”354 With the increase in suburban sprawl and the
expansion of highways, beautification programs, which had begun during the Progressive Era,
became popular again. Lady Bird Johnson saw beautification as part of the traditional first lady
sphere of social and moral uplift, and led the beautification program very seriously.355 In May
1965 President Johnson, at the urging of his wife, called together a White House Conference on
Natural Beauty claiming that “The beauty of our land is a natural resource. Its preservation is
353
Opponents of Silent Spring claim that Carson’s study killed many through the spread of Malaria and other
diseases that could have been prevented with the use of DDT. Carson never calls for not using DDT, but instead
only pushes for more in-depth study and research on the affects that use will have. For more information on
arguments against Silent Spring, see, Erik M. Conway, " Denial Rides Again: The Revisionist Attach on Rachel
Carson" in Merchants of Doubt, Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway (New York: Bloomsbury, 2010), 216–239.
354
William Whyte Jr., “A Plan to Save Vanishing U.S. Countryside,” Life 47, (August 17, 1959): 88-89.
355
Rothman, Greening, 96-67.
99
linked to the inner prosperity of the human spirit.”356 This conference, aimed at building parks,
planting trees and flowers along highways, preserving and rehabilitating historic structures, and
cleaning up unsightly signs of sprawl was the beginning for environmental acts such as the
Highway Beautification Bill of 1965. Programs that emerged from this conference were aimed at
disadvantaged neighborhoods, abandoned spaces, and highways and the influence of the first
lady helped to attract attention to the environmental movement.357 The Beautification programs
might seem superficial, but they provided funding for the greening of many urban areas and
brought together environmental consciousness with historic preservation.
The Changing Use of Creek Farm, Orton Plantation, and Poplar Grove
As debates raged on nationally about environmental concerns, the need for green spaces,
and the desire to preserve historic landscapes, the fate of Creek Farm, Orton Plantation and
Poplar Grove laid in the hands of their new owners. All three sites saw a change in ownership
during the New Deal Era, although this did not necessarily mean a sale of the property. All of the
properties were nearing historic status, and entering into new phases of their existence. These
places had outlived their original purpose, and were beginning to enter into roles for which they
had not originally been intended.
As the Carey family slowly moved away from the Boston and Portsmouth area, Creek
Farm sat uninhabited. In 1957 the family finally decided to sell Creek Farm and accepted an
offer by Chester and Billie Noel to buy the house and acreage. The Noel family seemed to have
held similar interests with the Carey family and began work on renovating the seventy year old
356
Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1965, Volume I (Washington, D. C.:
Government Printing Office, 1966), 155-165. Special Message to the Congress on Conservation and Restoration of
Natural Beauty, February 8, 1965.
357
Rothman, Greening, 98.
100
home. The Noels drew up plans to subdivide the property in 1958, but chose instead to divide the
house into ten apartments.358 Chester Noel worked as a contractor and perhaps because of this,
the subdivision of the house was done with intense care and attention to detail.359 Thus Creek
Farm went from a summer cottage on little harbor to an apartment complex.
This complex drew several tenants, who began to form a new community around the old
cottage. The grounds, gardens, and buildings that had seen foreign diplomats, at least one
president, and a wide variety of artists of all sorts were once again a place where people were
living. This new community at Creek Farm continued to keep up the land and house, and kept
both free from any major changes. These new tenants were a wide variety of individuals, but
included several younger people who had moved to the area to further their careers. The
surrounding private homes, likewise, continued to remain undeveloped. Neighbors remembered
it as, “…a tremendous piece of property,” recalling the attention that the Noels lavished on the
house and land.360 Former tenants suggested that “…the seed of the protection of that property
goes back a great deal of years.”361 That the Noels had put aside the development plans for good.
After the Second World War, Orton Plantation continued to be lived on by James
Lawrence Sprunt and his second wife Annie. The gardens continued to be a tourist destination,
drawing visitors and interest throughout most of the year, but drawing special attention from the
locals during the spring months when the azaleas were in bloom.
358
“Boston University Full Report on Creek Farm” (Presented to the SPNHF, Boston University, 2002).
“Boston University Full Report on Creek Farm” (Presented to the SPNHF, Boston University, 2002).
360
Rick Simpson, (Portsmouth Advocates Forum on Creek Farm, May 22 2001), Transcript SPNHF Archives.
Simpson had been a neighbor to Creek Farm since his birth in 1957.
361
Jamison French, (Portsmouth Advocates Forum on Creek Farm, May 22 2001), Transcript SPNHF Archives.
French’s first apartment when he moved to Portsmouth (circa 1975) was at Creek Farm.
359
101
In 1947 Dr. W. Houston Moore, an active Rotary Club member in Wilmington, called a
meeting of the local civic clubs and the Chamber of Commerce. The purpose of this meeting was
to “discuss the feasibility of holding an azalea festival to celebrate the beauty of the gardens at
Greenfield, Orton, Airlie, and other gardens around town.”362 The festival was arranged for the
spring of 1948 and opened with wonderful weather and gardens at the peak of their beauty.363
The festival became a yearly event, drawing thousands of people into the city, and across the
river to Orton.
James Sprunt had always loved the rich history of Orton and in 1973 he submitted a
nomination and the house was listed on the National Register.364 James died later that same year
and Annie continued to live in the house until her death in 1978. The plantation that had become
a home, had now become an important local attraction that drew locals and tourists alike. The
brothers that inherited the Orton continued to visit regularly throughout this time.
Poplar Grove Plantation continued to be owned by the Foy family, although it is unclear
if the owners lived in the plantation house until they sold it in 1975 to a cousin, Jan Long. She
worked to have the house placed on the National Register in 1979 and in 1980 officially opened
the house as a historic house museum.365 The owner would continue to expand the outbuildings
on the property in order to house different work areas that visitors could interact with, including
a smithy, weaving room, and reconstructed tenant farmer housing.
362
Letter from Hugh Morgan, First Azelea Festival President, to Gayle Ward, undated. Available at, “History,”
North Carolina Azealea Festival, http://www.ncazaleafestival.org/page.asp?q=aboutus-history (accessed April 12,
2012).
363
Ibid.
364
National Register of Historic Places, Orton Plantation, Southport, Brunswick Co., North Carolina, 73001294.
365
National Register of Historic Places, Poplar Grove, Scotts Hill, Pender Co., North Carolina, 79003346.
102
Although these sites were involved very little in the changes that the Cold War era
brought to the United States, they all underwent change during this time and survived. For Creek
Farm, the subdivision of the house brought in the needed monies to support the land that
surrounded it. The conservation of the land then took precedence over the complete preservation
of the structure. At Orton Plantation, the land was changed as the gardens were expanded and
opened to visitors. The forests, gardens, and house worked as a whole to provide a unique
southern experience for tourists. At Poplar Grove, the house and immediate acreage was sold to a
party interested in the restoration and preservation of the house. While some of the owners saw
these changes as a choice between conservation and preservation, other saw it as an opportunity
for both.
Conclusion
During the Cold War era, many changes to both the historic preservation and
environmental conservation movements occurred. While both movements became closer through
legislative action and gained more of a widespread national following, these positives came at a
high cost. Technology and suburban development took its toll on the environment, and historic
buildings. The increasing reliance on automobiles as the main source of transportation, the
increase in suburbs and suburban housing, and the development of the interstate highways
caused the removal of several historic places and natural spaces. As these suburban areas grew,
urban decay spread, leading to more destruction through urban renewal programs.
While many of these negative events were halted with the passage of legislation during
the Johnson administration, the nation still was divided on these important cultural resource
issues. There was a large amount of information and knowledge that constantly bombarded the
103
public. This mass of information created misunderstandings as different types of
environmentalists or preservationists sought to gain political ground for their own niche market.
While both movements grew together in legislation, they grew apart at grassroots levels. Many
Americans failed to realize that the environmental conservation and historic preservation
movements did not have to be mutually exclusive.
104
5. —A New Paradigm: The Past 30 years
“More and more, we are striving to preserve what has survived from the past, not to idolize that
past, but to inform the present and to ensure the quality of the future”
—W. Brown Morton III, 1991366
In the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, the resignation of President Richard Nixon and
the US withdrawal from the unpopular Vietnam War, the historic preservation and
environmental conservation movements matured and shifted their focus. This chapter will
explore the quickly shifting foci of the historic preservation and environmental conservation
movements in the past thirty years, and ask, have these movements begun to work together? If
so, what change has made them do so? What are the challenges and pay-offs of such endeavors?
What has the government done to facilitate or block such collaborations? What can the case
studies show about the growth of local environmental conservation and historic preservation
movements?
Preservation had become professionalized in the Progressive Era, gained legitimacy with
the New Deal and had profited by funding and legislative support with the Great Society during
the Cold War years. This chapter will look at the impact of the Main Street America program and
the increase of national register neighborhood listings during the end of the twentieth century.
1991 was the 25th anniversary of the founding of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966,
and the 75thanniversary of the founding of the NPS; during this year, preservationists from many
different professional areas gathered together at a national conference to discuss the past and
future of the preservation movement. It was at this conference that goals for collaboration with
environmental conservationists were first set.367
366
367
W. Brown Morton III, “Forging New Values in Uncommon Times,” in, Lee, 39-41, 40.
The goals of this conference can be found in, Brink and Dehart, “Findings,” in Lee, 15-23.
105
The conservation movement grew from an elite escape from urban life to a nationally
funded management of nature for the greatest good during the Progressive Era, and gained
widespread support with the advent of the automobile. While the movement as a whole had
fragmented after World War II, the rise of new environmentalism had not completely erased the
presence of conservationists. Until this time, conservationists had focused mostly on large
national parks instead of local areas, this chapter will explore how private groups began to
emerge and take roles in local and state areas which helped to solidify the movement.
Urban Flight and Historic Preservation
Preservationists had moved away from focusing only on the landowning elite estates and
began including worker housing, downtown storefronts, and middle class neighborhoods during
the post-war Era. As has been shown, at a time when many urban centers were being abandoned,
preservationists stepped in to restore and revive the commercial core of cities and towns across
the nation.368Beginning in 1980 and led by the National Trust, the Main Street program worked
to revive historic downtowns in small-town America.369 Focusing on providing smaller matching
grants for owners to make much needed repairs and smaller fixes, this program was a
combination of beautification, preservation, and urban renewal.
To save these historic structures in perpetuity the buildings would have to bring in
enough money to offset the cost of maintenance. Preservationists, when faced with this problem,
realized that the historic structures could be adapted from its previous function to serve a wide
368
Michael Tomlin, “Preservation Practice Comes of Age,” 74, in, Lee, 73-79.
“About Main Street,” National Trust for Historic Preservation, http://www.preservationnation.org/mainstreet/about-main-street/ (accessed March 11, 2012).
369
106
variety of purposes.370 These buildings were saved from destruction, and their use and purpose
was adapted to the new needs that they would fill. Historic houses changed into businesses, old
department stores morphed into libraries, and old churches became bars.371 These changes were
also good for the economy, keeping the materials and work local, increasing the amount of jobs
available for both restoration work and in the new businesses that were being created from
historic structures.372
The expansion of these Main Street Programs to include historic housing districts also
improved property values in some areas. For instance, in New Bern, North Carolina, property
values of fifty seven homes that had been restored between 1970 and 1986 were compared to
their 1970 price, the appreciation of these properties was almost eight hundred percent.373 The
downtown property values in the downtown areas of New Bern also saw an increase, property
values in 1978 were 8.7 million, and in 1994 were 42.3 million.374 The restoration work
increased jobs in the area, the increase in property values benefitted the owners of the buildings,
and the increase in tax revenue because of the increase in property values benefitted the entire
community. These combined preservation efforts helped to revitalize the New Bern area.
Adaptive reuse of historic structures became another tool for preservationists to use as they
worked to duplicate the success of New Bern.
The 1980s also heralded the advent of what proved to be the short-lived era of façadism.
At first, this method of preservation was seen as an acceptable compromise; a ‘best alternative’
370
Donovan D Rypkema, Profiting From The Past (Raleigh: Preservation North Carolina, 1997); explores the
various methods and payoffs of downtown preservation.
371
These are only some of the many examples of adaptive reuse of buildings. Some of these are Wilmington
specific, such as the New Hanover Public Library, which was once a Belk Department store, and several of the
historic houses on Market Street which are now offices for Lawyers, architects, and other businesses.
372
Rypkema, Profiting, 7-12.
373
Colin W Barnett, The Impact of Historic Preservation on New Bern, North Carolina: From Tryon Palace to the
Coor-Cook House (Winston-Salem, N.C.: Bandit Books, 1993).
374
Swiss Bear Newsletter, New Bern, North Carolina, 1995.
107
to losing the building completely, the façade of the structure is saved, while a modern building is
constructed behind.375 Some argued that the architecture and feeling of the building would be
preserved, and modern needs would be met. However, others took a different view. As one
architectural critic put it, “To save only the facade of a building is not to save its essence; it is to
turn the building into a stage set, into a cute toy intended to make a skyscraper more palatable.
And the street becomes a kind of Disneyland of false fronts.”376 It took a few years for many
preservationists to realize that, the destruction of all but the front of an edifice is only paying lipservice to preservation, and to compromise a building in such a way would destroy its integrity.
Today these façades can be seen in many cities, Wilmington, North Carolina for example, has
kept the façade of the Theater on Front Street. Façadism though, taught preservationists about the
dangers of compromises and encouraged them to seek out cooperation for improved long term
situations of such buildings.
With this increase in locally based preservation efforts, the preservation organizations as
a whole increased their business management operations and knowledge. Local preservation
organizations were now working with individual home and business owners, large corporations
who owned land and buildings, and government institutions in order to preserve the historic
fabric of their communities. They had to master the laws, codes, and tax write-offs that were
available in order to make restoration understandable and attractive to owners of buildings with
the potential to be preserved. State Historic Preservation Offices (SHPOs) sprung up across the
nation with the passing of the National Historic Preservation Act that created the National Trust,
once its role was solidified with the 1980 amendment to the act, were responsible for navigating
375
376
Michael Tomlin, “Preservation Practice Comes of Age,” 75-76, in, Lee, 73-79.
Paul Goldberger, “’Facadism’ on the rise: Preservation or Illusion?” New York Times, July 15, 1985.
108
the process of nominating a site for the National Register of Historic Places.377 The
developments that had begun with the creation of the NPS came full circle in the end of the
twentieth century as funding and write-offs became available for a wide variety of historic
structures.
Conservation & Environmentalism in the Late Twentieth Century
By 1980, political malaise had only heightened the fears of some segments of the public
over environmental concerns. Many suburbanites focused on new environmentalism and health
risks due to pollution of air, water, and land, which had led to the Clean Air and Clean Water
Acts in the 1960s and 1970s, and several amendments in the ‘70s and ‘90s.378 However, there
were still public concerns regarding the conservation and management of the National Parks,
Forests, and other natural public spaces. While there had been a renewal of preservation minded
leadership in the NPS during the 1950s and 1960s, a change in leadership prompted a return to
the pre-World War II policies of development and tourism in the national parks.
James Watt, an attorney from the West, was appointed under the Reagan administration
in 1981 as the new Secretary of the Interior, and began to deregulate natural resources. 379 Watt
wanted to change how the Department of the Interior managed its resources, and to do so he
rewrote regulations for the management of the department. He sought an increase in what he
called ‘public use’ of the parks which meant escalating the development of parks to make them
more accessible to a wider variety of vehicles.380 He also stopped the procurement of additional
land for national parks and opened up some areas of park lands to economic interests, such as
377
“National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA),” Title 16, U.S.Code, pts. 470.
“Clean Air Act of 1963,” Title 42, U.S.Code, Pts. 7401. 1990ed. ;was amended in 1967, 1970, 1977, and 1990.
“Clean Water Act of 1972,” Title 33, U.S. Code, Pts. 1251. 1987 ed.;was amended in 1977 and 1987.
379
Rothman, Greening, 169-174.
380
Staff, “What Watt Wrought,” High Country News 15, no. 20, Oct 31, 1983.
378
109
off-shore oil drilling in central California and large scale leasing of coal, oil and gas tracts.381
Mainstream environmental groups such as the Wilderness Society, Sierra Club, and Audubon
Society grew quickly as a reaction to this giant step back for conservation. The Wilderness
Society grew from 48,000 members in 1979 to 100,000 in 1983; during the same years the
Audubon Society grew from 300,000 to 498,000.382 The number of environmental organizations
that Americans could join also increased as groups became more specialized within the broad
sphere of environmental issues. Americans could now join global groups such as the Wild
Foundation, and the Earth Liberation Front, national groups such as the Citizens Campaign for
the Environment, state groups like Environment California, or local groups such as the
Chesapeake Bay Foundation.
Spurred on by the changes Watt made within the Department of the Interior, and by state
organizations agitating for the return of management of natural sites to their respective states,
these grassroots members became a significant political force. These new members were willing
to donate money, sign petitions, write letters, and become a highly visible public power that most
legislators could not disregard.383The burgeoning environmental movement was made up of both
professional environmentalists from the well-established and mainstream organizations like the
Sierra Club, and newer, direct action, grassroots groups such as Earth First!.384 To the movement
as a whole, this blend of different types of organizations would prove a boon because
mainstream and more radical organizations balanced each other in achieving what the other often
could not. While Watt was removed from his position in 1983 after several politically
381
Staff, “What Watt Wrought,” High Country News 15, no. 20, Oct 31, 1983.
Rothman, Greening, 180.
383
Ibid, 181.
384
Earth First was founded in 1980 by David Foreman, Howie Wolke, Ron Kezar, Bart Kohler and Mike Roselle. A
direct action group, that saw value in non-violent civil disobedience such as monkeywrenching, to sabotage and end
environmental destruction, but did not openly endorse or plan such events. More information about the organization
can be found at, http://www.earthfirstjournal.org (accessed April 15, 2012.)
382
110
embarrassing public blunders, the environmental movement benefitted, in some ways, from his
stint in office.385 Watt had threatened the political bipartisanship of the environmental
movement, and the environmentally minded public had put aside their individual interests to rise
up to challenge his changes as a cohesive unit.386 As the Reagan years ended, these
environmentalist groups began to widen the scope of their interests, and to recognize
environmentalism as a global problem, as well as a national issue.
Development of Dual-Movement Sites: Creek Farm, Orton Plantation, and Poplar Grove
The case studies of Creek Farm, Orton Plantation, and Poplar Grove throughout the
earlier chapters have shown the progression of the sites throughout the development of the larger
historic preservation and environmental conservation movements. While these places did not
reflect the larger national issues in the past, they have recently been sites of partnerships for
preservation and conservation movements on a local and state level. These coalitions, revolving
around local sites where both movements have an interest have been tentative at best. These
partnerships have few guidelines, being among the first of their kind, and as such are full of
misunderstandings, contradictions, and flaws. Despite these mishaps, these budding partnerships
hold the promise for an improved system of preserving, developing, and using America’s
cultural resources. Not as shrines, or as untouchable preserves, but as places where Americans
can come in contact with, use, and learn about their nation’s history. These natural areas that are
preserved in conjunction with historic buildings are part of the past and part of the future.
385
Watt was eventually removed for announcing on September 21, 1983, in a speech to the US Department of
Commerce, that a Department of the Interior advisory board consisted of “a black…a woman, two Jews and a
cripple. And we have talent.”
386
Public outcry blocked several of his large plans that he wished to implement as covered in, “Watt’s Ignorance of
Coal Proved Fatal,” High Country News 15, no. 20, Oct 31, 1983.
111
To keep these areas untouched by development, but open to the public to enjoy, is a
difficult ideal to accomplish. “Americans put more trust in history museums and historic sites
than in any other sources for exploring the past.” claim historians Roy Rosenzweig and David
Thelen.387 By keeping these areas around historic buildings free from development, it lends
historical credibility to the sites and offers unique areas for Americans to experience their shared
heritage without interference.388 But this argument alone is often not enough to inspire
organizations to work together in this day and age. “If we are to make the public case for historic
preservation, we must base it not on patriotism or aesthetics, but rather on economics.” writes
preservationist Tersh Boasberg.389 The economic argument is what made the Main Street
Program so well received, and the same argument holds true for environmental conservation.
The full economic effect of dual resource sites have yet to be fully studied, especially when
considering how these sites influence the property values of the surrounding community; the
case study of Creek Farm affords at least one viewpoint on the economic benefits on-site of
having a dual-resource property.
Creek Farm
In 1997, after the death of her husband Chester, Billie Noel placed nearly 30 acres of the
farm, which did not include the cottage, under easement through the State of New Hampshire,
Division of Forests and Lands.390 In 2000 Billie Noel sold the house to the Society for the
Preservation of New Hampshire Forests with the stipulation that the house be torn down or
387
Roy Rozenzweig and David Thelen, The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life, (New
York: Columbia University, 1998), 105,184.
388
Ibid, 105-108. Is especially helpful in understanding how people relate to historic sites and museums.
389
Tersh Boasberg, “A New Paradigm for Preservation,” in Lee, 145-151,150.
390
“Boston University Full Report on Creek Farm” (Presented to the SPNHF, Boston University, 2002).
112
moved at her death.391 This stipulation is a common one for conservation organizations who have
little knowledge about preserving historic structures. Noel indicated in conversations with
neighbors and tenants that a choice had to be made between the house and the land.392 Former
tenants of Creek Farm indicated that, while Noel would have liked to keep both had she known it
was an option.393 Noel was quoted as saying, she "did not want the house to be left in a
dilapidated condition as was the Wentworth hotel for all these years. It would break my heart."394
Fearing that the house would fall into disrepair and would be compared negatively to other local
historic sites while the land would exist forever, choosing to conserve the land seemed the better
choice.
The New Hampshire Division of Historical Resources (NHDHR) had been working on
determining if Creek Farm was eligible to be placed on the National Register before the sale.395
The age and architecture of the building would be enough to qualify the site, but its illustrious
owners, architect, and its use during the 1905 Treaty of Portsmouth to house the Russian and
Japanese diplomats pushed the house over the edge as a truly remarkable historic place. The
summer cottage at Creek Farm is eligible for the National Register but the nomination forms
have yet to be completed.396 Regardless of its National Register status, the house and grounds
were thrust into local and widespread dispute in 2000 as the SPNHF announced the contract
391
“Boston University Full Report on Creek Farm” (Presented to the SPNHF, Boston University, 2002).
Barbara Tsairis, (Transcript, Portsmouth Advocates Forum on Creek Farm, May 22 2001), SPNHF Archives.
Noel’s personal letters to the SFNHF were not available in its archives, and so the words of her former tenants,
Barbara Tsairis, and Jamison French must suffice to speak for her.
393
Ibid.
394
Karen Dandurant, “Deed Changed to Save Creek Farm Cottage,” Seacoastonline.com, 14 April 2002
http://www.seacoastonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20020414/NEWS/304149992 (accessed 15 April 2012)
395
Interview with Will Abbott, May 11, 2011.
396
Ibid. Abbott indicated that he was unsure about the process, and that the SPNHF was, to his knowledge, not
involved in the nomination process.
392
113
details to demolish all traces of cultural resources on the property in order to develop the site as a
local park, upon Noel’s death.397
The SPNHF had no prior history of preserving historic buildings, and with no earned
income from the site, saw little profit in pouring money into an old house.398 Nonetheless, the
SPNHF recognized the importance of the site in the local and global history and began working
with the local preservation community in the form of an advisory council in order to develop
management plans for the site.399 A class of students at Boston University took part in the
development of a management plan and began developing adaptive reuse plans for the building
as an artist’s community, which were later found financially unstable by the SPNHF.400 The
opening discussion about the preservation of the building occured May 22, 2001 with a local
preservation group, Portsmouth Advocates, facilitating the forum at Creek Farm. The forum,
entitled, "Estranged Bedfellows: A Forum on the War of Attrition Between Conservationists and
Preservationists and the Debate Over the Future of Creek Farm,” brought together the
community of Portsmouth, the SPNHF, and the students of Boston University.401 Jay Smith, a
board member of Portsmouth Advocates acknowledged that the problems at Creek Farm were
dividing the community and was quoted as saying, "Conservationists and preservationists
generally feed from the same trough. This is also a national issue as land and historic
397
James Buchanan, “Sagamore Creek Treasure May See Wrecking Ball,” Seacoastonline.com, 24 Dec, 2000.
(http://www.seacoastonline.com/articles/20001224-NEWS-312249993) (accessed April 15, 2012); for Deed, New
Hampshire, Rockingham Co. Register of Deeds, Book 3506, p1370 25 September 2000.
398
Interview with Will Abbott, 11 May 2011. According to Abbott, they have other sites with buildings on them, but
the buildings are left to themselves, and these sites are not open to the public, thus buildings in varying states of
disrepair do not pose a threat.
399
Ibid. See also, James Buchanan, “Hope for Creek Farm revived,” Seacoastonline.com, 11 May 2001,
http://www.seacoastonline.com/articles/20010511-NEWS-305119981 (accessed April 15, 2012).
400
Correspondence with Dr. Richard Candee, 2011.
401
James Buchanan, “Future of Farm to be Debated,” Seacoastonline.com, 21 April, 2001,
http://www.seacoastonline.com/articles/20010421-NEWS-304219996 (accessed April 15, 2012).
114
preservation goals come into conflict around the country.”402 This forum opened the door for a
change in the terms of the agreement between the SPNHF and Noel.
The forum was facilitated by a neutral party and as the president of the Portsmouth
Advocates, John Grossman claimed that the group was not taking a decisive stand on the issue.
Grossman was quoted as saying that “…we [Portsmouth Advocates] prefer to provide a forum
where both sides can listen to each other. We want to be a facilitator to continued dialogue.”
Keeping the opportunity for dialogue open through a neutral party gave Creek Farm the chance it
needed. The SPNHF was persuaded to approach Noel about a change in the terms of the property
in 2002 to be able to explore other options for the building.403 Noel, who had expressed regret at
the imminent loss of the building after the sale, was happy to oblige, and drew up a new contract
with six conditions for the continuance of the building on the property.404 The conditions were,
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

SPNHF cannot under any circumstances bear financial or operational
responsibility for the house
A financially and operationally strong partner must bear the
responsibilities of the upkeep of the building
The house must be maintained and operated to conditions satisfactory to
Mrs. Noel's lawyer and SPNHF
Use of the house must be compatible with, and preferably complementary
to, the other public uses of the reservation
Use of the house must be acceptable to the City of Portsmouth
Finally, a solution must be found within two years of Mrs. Noel's death.405
These conditions did not guarantee the preservation of the building.406 Will Abbott of the
SPNHF believed that the economic feasibility of renting the house to pay for the maintenance of
402
James Buchanan, “Future of Farm to be Debated,” Seacoastonline.com, 21 April, 2001,
http://www.seacoastonline.com/articles/20010421-NEWS-304219996 (accessed April 15, 2012).
403
Karen Dandurant, “Deed Changed to Save Creek Farm Cottage,” Seacoastonline.com, 14 April 2002
http://www.seacoastonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20020414/NEWS/304149992 (accessed 15 April 2012).
404
New Hampshire, Rockingham Co. Register of Deeds, 20 Book 4363 p 2756, September 2004.
405
Ibid. These same six conditions were also covered during my interview with Will Abbott in 2011.
406
Karen Dandurant, “Deed Changed to Save Creek Farm Cottage,” Seacoastonline.com, 14 April 2002
http://www.seacoastonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20020414/NEWS/304149992 (accessed 15 April 2012).
115
the land was a prominent reason that the SPNHF sought out the change in contract.407 Noel died
in May 2004, beginning the two-year countdown to find a suitable caretaker for the cottage.408
The two years were nearly up when in May 2006 The SPNHF was able to find a suitable renter
for the property with the Shoals Marine Laboratory of Cornell University.409
The laboratory has a 50 year lease on the buildings, and is responsible for the upkeep and
maintenance of the buildings under the terms of the contract.410 While the laboratory has few
regulations about the changes that it may make to the buildings, it must not alter the exterior of
the house or certain shared spaces of the house.411 Since the house is to be used as student
housing for the laboratory staff, the apartments will remain, although changes are currently being
planned to update the water and electric of the house to bring it up to code.412 While the SPNHF
believed that the preservation of the house would be financially infeasible, it found that by
leasing the house and leaving the maintenance of the structure to the university, both the house
and land could be taken care of without further financial assistance by the society.413 In this way,
the society earns money for the upkeep of the trails and grounds at Creek Farm through the
preservation of the historic house on the property.
While Creek Farm is still very much an ‘in-progress’ site (Cornell has not yet reached its
funding goal to renovate the utilities of the cottage) the ability of the SPNHF to work with the
local preservation community to navigate a solution is laudable.414 Many land-focused
407
Interview with Will Abbott, 11 May 2011.
Emily Aronson, “Stately Turn-of-the-Century ‘Cottage’ Needs a Caretaker,” Seacoastonline.com, 07 Nov 2004
http://www.seacoastonline.com/articles/20041107-NEWS-311079973 (accessed 15 April, 2012).
409
“A Natural Classroom at Creek Farm: Shoals Marine Lab an Ideal Partner,” Forest Notes (SPNHF), Summer
2006, 27-28.
410
Ibid.
411
Interview with Will Abbott, 11 May 2011.
412
Ibid.
413
Ibid.
414
Interview with Will Abbott, 11 May 2011.
408
116
organizations stick to a demolition policy when faced with structures. Their lack of knowledge
about the undertaking or benefits of preservation has created a default response to historic
structures, despite the common ideas behind these sister movements, or as the Portsmouth
Advocates put them, estranged bedfellows. While a successful outcome at Creek Farm is still
tentative, it is a story that has the power to influence other large conservation organization
policies towards historic structures.
The success of Creek Farm is due to several reasons. First and foremost, there was an
interest to prevent the commercialization of the property by the owners, Chester and Lillie Noel.
Second, there was an organization, the SPNHF, willing to buy the site from the owners and put it
under easement to protect the land from developers permanently. Third, there was an interested
party of community members who were willing to be vocal about the complete preservation of
the property, the forum attendees, who called out the SPNHF for not educating itself about the
property that they acquired. Fourth, there was a neutral party which facilitated the dialogue
between the SPNHF and the preservation community. Finally, there was a partner willing to take
on the expense of the restoration and upkeep of the house, Shoals Marine Lab, whose yearly rent
to the SPNHF pays for the maintenance of the grounds. Without any one of these conditions, the
building, and land, could have been sold to developers, left neglected, or even bulldozed.
Orton Plantation
At Orton Plantation, these points have not been fulfilled in the same way as Creek Farm,
but it too has been successfully preserved and conserved. The Sprunt family continued its
ownership of Orton Plantation during the late twentieth century. During this time, the family
privately maintained the house and gardens, maintaining the later for the public. The gardens
117
were a major tourist destination, and presumably the fee for touring and renting out the facilities
to weddings and parties went towards offsetting the cost of garden staff. In 2000, the family
sought out the North Carolina Coastal Land Trust to put the nearly three-thousand acre site under
easement.415 Under this easement the grounds, including the rather sizeable Orton pond and
surrounding pine forest, a sizeable part of which was part of a state program of longleaf pine
restoration would kept undeveloped.416 The garden areas and historic rice fields were also
protected from future speculative development but were open for the public’s enjoyment.417
While the house was nominated for and placed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1973, with the backing of the Sprunt family, no formal preservation easement has been placed
upon the house and surrounding outbuildings.418
The Historic Wilmington Foundation has distinguished the Sprunt family in recent years
with special preservation awards and has enjoyed a close relationship with the family.419 Orton
Plantation has been the site for several benefits and functions for HWF, and the Sprunts have
kept the house and outbuildings in remarkable shape for their considerable age. The preservation
of the historic house, the oldest part of which dates back to the 1700s, was assured with the
ownership of the Sprunts, but in 2010 the family sold the house to distant relatives of the original
Moore family which had owned the property in the colonial era.420 Louis Moore Bacon bought
415
Correspondence with Cassandra Gavin, NCCLT, September 27- October 8, 2010.
Orton Plantation Easement, NCCLT archives.
417
Ibid. The forest areas could be harvested for timber and other goods under the easement, and the land used for
farming purposes.
418
National Register of Historic Places, Orton Plantation, Southport, Brunswick Co., North Carolina, 73001294.
419
Orton Plantation was the site for a Gala event in 2010, before the Sprunts sold the property to Moore.
420
Andrew Dunn, “Orton Plantation Purchase Completed for $45 Million,” Star News, Dec 1, 2010.
http://www.starnewsonline.com/article/20101201/ARTICLES/101209981 (accessed April 15, 2012).
416
118
the house from the Sprunt family for around forty-five million dollars, ending the nearly 130
year ownership of the property by that family.421
Bacon has been depicted as a billionaire conservationist by local news outlets, and the
Sprunt family saw his background as a conservationist as a plus when considering the sale.422
Since the house had no preservation easements on it and has no organization backing it, it has
little protection from its owners. The nearly three thousand acres of land originally put under
easement by the Sprunts will retain its easements, but it is unclear if the surrounding acres that
Bacon bought around the same time will also be put under easement with the NCCLT.423 Bacon
closed the gardens and grounds to tourists in June of 2010 in order to undertake his restoration
plans.424
From the beginning of the sale of Orton, Bacon made it clear that he wanted to restore the
old rice plantation to its former glory.425 Orton had been one of the first rice plantations on the
Cape Fear, and while successful, had never enjoyed the connection that Charleston and other
southern areas enjoyed with rice cultivation. Rice became an important local grain, and became a
staple crop alongside the pine trees which provided a variety of naval stores. Bacon wanted to
restore the old rice fields and create a living historic farm, although this space will not be open to
the public.426 Pursuing this dream though has landed him in trouble a few times, most
memorably with the Army Corps of Engineers who found his restoration of the historic rice
421
Ibid.
Ibid.
423
Ken Little, “Orton's new owner files for restoration permits,” Star News, October 13, 2011
424
Ibid.
425
Dunn, “Purchase Completed,” Dec 1, 2010,
426
“Statement to WWAY, April 27, 2011,” http://www.wwaytv3.com/2011/04/27/only-3-orton-owner-told-to-stopwork-wetlands (accessed April 15, 2012).
422
119
fields to be disrupting the surrounding wetlands.427 However, it appears that the local
communities have been slightly less vocal than the Army Corps when it came down to the
preservation of the house.
Bacon seems to have little interest in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries history of the
historic house. Although he has expressed interest in the house, due to his relation building the
original one-story structure, he inventoried the house and decided to auction off the unneeded
household items that were left by the Sprunt family in July, 2011.428 Many of these pieces dated
back to the nineteenth century, when the Sprunt family had first taken possession of the house.429
While many local community members scrambled to buy up the bits of history, there were few
who spoke out about the auction. Since the home was owned by a private individual and not an
organization though, there was no mandate for a public discussion. Despite his run in with the
Army Corps, Bacon continued to remain relatively quiet about the restoration work that he was
planning at Orton.430 Some community members feared that he would tear down parts of the
historic house in order to revert it to its original style and form. Others lamented the loss of the
former gardens, and berated the new owner for disrupting the wedding plans of future brides.
Despite this negative publicity, Bacon and the property manager for Orton, Dillon Epp, have
pushed on in carrying out their plans.
427
“Public Notice, October 5, 2011” Army Corps of Engineers,
http://www.saw.usace.army.mil/wetlands/notices/2011/SAW2011-00624PN.pdf (accessed April 16, 2012).
428
Andrew Dunn, “Hundreds of Items From Orton Plantation House Auctioned,” Star News, July 5, 2011.
429
Ibid.
430
Moore was originally rather vague in his plans, and beyond citing Longleaf and rice field restoration projects did
not invite media to the site until a year into the restoration work. The preservation of the house is still a topic that
has not been covered in local media outlets, but Moore has decided not to open the grounds back up to tourists
unless they are with an environmental, historical, or educational group.
120
In January 2012, they conducted a day-long tour to reveal the beginning of the changes at
Orton, focusing on the environmental issues at the site.431 Inviting local landowners and
organizing with the help of local conservation groups, including the NCCLT, Orton was the
focus of a longleaf pine forest renewal project.432 While the house and rice plantation have yet to
be seen, Bacon and his employees have been making great strides to work towards a property
with more indigenous species of plants, which they hope will encourage the renewal of the rare
wildlife in the area. As Orton has been an important wildlife and nature preserve in the past, it is
encouraging to see the new owner embracing these ideologies.
Most recently, Epp, the site manager, has been interviewed by local media about the
restoration of the rice fields. In this interview Epp noted that Orton Plantation Holdings has
applied for designation as a National Historic Landmark, which would raise it in status from its
current National Historic Register status.433 Moore has also requested that the rice plantations be
placed on the National Register.434 Spokesman Mark Hubbard also stated with this latest news
release, that the property would not be reopened as a commercial tourist attraction, but that the
house and grounds would be opened to educational activities that were prearranged through a
conservation group or a historical/cultural society.435
Orton Plantation is still a site in-process, and the changes made in the next few years by
Moore and his expansive team of conservationists will be the making of the site. This site is very
different from Creek Farm. While the property is large and has a rather long history of
conservation and preservation, the site is not protected as much as it could be. There is no neutral
431
Jonathan Spiers, “Orton Plantation in Transition,” State Port Pilot, Jan 6, 2012
Jonathan Spiers, “Orton Plantation in Transition,” State Port Pilot, Jan 6, 2012
433
Cassie Foss, “Orton’s Old is New,” Wilmington Star News, 23 March 2012.
434
Ibid.
435
Ibid.
432
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party to bring together the public wishes and the owner, so if a change to the plantation house is
made, there are few courses for preservationists and conservationists in the community to pursue.
The land is mostly protected through its easements with the NCCLT, but Moore’s team has
proved itself unfamiliar with basic codes before, so there is no guarantee that they will follow the
easement guidelines. Perhaps the largest difference between Creek Farm and Orton is that there
is not a vocal community to fight for the public interests on private land. Without a public voice,
the house may have no one to protect it. Historic Wilmington Foundation may lead the effort to
save the structure, if such an effort is indeed needed, but would be relying on the importance of
Orton as a keystone of the community to offset those who hold private ownership over public
interest. The weaknesses in preservation at Orton are a contrast to the strength of the preservation
at Poplar Grove.
Poplar Grove
Poplar Grove embodies the most basic of partnerships between the historic preservation
and environmental conservation movements, but has been successful. While the house originally
had 628 acres of land attached to it, the house and surrounding 16 acres of land were sold to a
cousin of the Foy family in 1975.436 Jan Long, the owner of the house and surrounding land, Jan
Long, nominated the plantation house for the National Register in 1979 and helped to create The
Poplar Grove Foundation, which manages the long term preservation of the house.437 In 2009 she
approached the North Carolina Coastal Land Trust about putting easements on the property
436
“Owner Didn’t Want To Keep Poplar Grove To Herself,” Wilmington Star News, August 26, 1989.
National Register of Historic Places, Poplar Grove, Scotts Hill, Pender Co., North Carolina, 79003346. The date
of the foundation’s founding is arguable, though most likely dates to the 1980s.
437
122
surrounding the house in order to protect it from future developments, as suburban housing was
steadily encroaching.438 The NCCLT was happy to facilitate the easement for several reasons.
For the NCCLT, putting Poplar Grove under easement was unusual, but came with many
benefits. A few years previous, in 2007, the NCCLT had opened up the Abbey Foy-Moore
Nature Preserve next door to Poplar Grove.439 The land owned by the Foy family, was put under
easement through the NCCLT and opened up a nature walk and preserve.440 Poplar Grove
offered up parking facilities to the nature preserve, which was adjacent to it, when the lands held
by Jan Long came under easement. Under the terms of the easement, Long and any future
owners of the property have the right to maintain the buildings in any way that they see fit,
which includes dismantling the buildings if the owner so desires.441 The easement does dictate
that the land be left undivided and undeveloped outside of the area of the house and surrounding
outbuildings.442 In addition, the land falls in an important watershed location that the NCCLT
seeks to protect.
The NCCLT is primarily an environmental institution and as such has no expertise to
enforce historic construction or design standards. Without this expertise they cannot require that
the house or outbuildings maintained a certain way, or even kept at all.443 While the grounds
surrounding the house are guaranteed in perpetuity to remain unaltered, the Poplar Grove
Foundation is the organization that is responsible for the preservation of the historic house.
Although in this case the private owner, Long, was the instigator for the joining of the two
different organizations to work together, the result is the conservation of the undeveloped areas
438
Correspondence with Cassandra Gavin, NCCLT, September 27- October 8, 2010.
“Welcome to Abbey Foy-Moore Nature Preserve,” Cape Fear’s Going Green, Fall 2008.
440
Ibid.
441
Correspondence with Cassandra Gavin, NCCLT, September 27- October 8, 2010.
442
Ibid.
443
Ibid.
439
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by the NCCLT and the preservation of the historic house through a local foundation dedicated to
a singular site.
In the case of Poplar Grove, Long acted as the neutral party to bring together the
preservation and environmental conservation groups at Poplar Grove. She did so only after she
had worked to preserve and restore the house, and was assured that the buildings on the property
could remain under the terms of the conservation easement.444 While the land is used mostly by
the visiting public, the house and its facilities also serve the neighboring nature preserve, and as
such performs a dual duty. The preserve, with its historic mill pond, includes several areas of
historical interest to the plantation house and serves as a visual buffer, blocking out the
encroaching suburban housing developments.445 Poplar Grove had few problems to contend
with, with the preservation and conservation being funded by Long, in contrast to the nearby
Orton Plantation which faced different circumstances.
Conclusion
While the past thirty years have matured the preservation and environmental conservation
movements, there is still a divide between the movements on a local, state, and national level.
Recent events have begun to show that local and state organizations can work together for the
benefit of all, but these episodes have been sporadic and typically unplanned. While private
property owners sometimes smooth the transition between the two movements, organizational
ownership of properties is becoming more common and has led to problems because of a lack of
communication between preservationists and environmental conservationists. If these two types
of movements are to work together, they must begin to think about the opposing viewpoints,
444
Ibid. Most of the outbuildings on the property were built in the 1980s, as far as I can tell, many of them are
undocumented in local news, and the original National Register nomination form has no mention of them at all.
445
Rachel Dickerson and Jim Pfeiffer, “Trusted Land,” Wrightsville Beach Magazine, September 2008.
124
language, and problems. At Creek Farm, people of preservation and conservation mindsets
worked together to improve the site as a whole, using the earnings from the rental of the house to
fund the upkeep of the trails and forest. Within Orton Plantation, changes are currently ongoing,
but new ownership has sought to work with easements to restore the historic rice fields to better
reflect what life was like at the original plantation house. At Poplar Grove, the historic house
museum that runs the site has placed the acreage under easement in order to provide a buffer and
parking areas for an adjoining nature preserve.
Each of these cases started with an owner interested in the preservation and/or
conservation of the property. These private owners approached a group, in all three cases these
groups have been conservation groups, regarding the preservation of the property, and entered
into easements to guarantee the conservation of the property in perpetuity. This is where these
case studies bifurcate. In the case of Creek Farm, the conservation group bought the property and
due to public outcry began to work on a plan to preserve the cottage on the site. At Orton
Plantation and Poplar Grove, the grounds and houses retained their private ownership, and the
owners saw to the preservation of the building. For Creek Farm and Poplar Grove, the house had
to change its function in order to be preserved, while at Orton Plantation, the house is,
presumably, to act as it always has been, as a home for its owner. These three case studies show
the range of pathways for the future of the preservation and environmental conservation
movements in the United States. Large sites have other options for their preservation, and do not
need to devolve into sites like Colonial Williamsburg, or require the money and interest of a
single individual.
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6. Conclusion— Where Do We Go From Here?: The Twenty-First Century & Beyond
“A historian can no more presume to read the future than anyone else“
— David McCullough, 1991
In 1991, the annual conference for the National Trust for Historic Preservation set forth
goals for the next twenty-five years. Many of these goals have not yet been met on a widespread
scale, and others have yet to be attempted. While it is difficult for any historian, historic
preservationist, or environmental conservationist to anticipate the needs of the future, there are
several policies and ideas that can be drawn from the case studies presented here that local, state,
and national organizations can begin to incorporate into their larger goals and focus. While a
wider study should be made nationally of dual resource properties, these small changes, drawn
from Creek Farm, Orton Plantation, and Poplar Grove, can make a big difference.
First, local historic preservation and environmental conservation organizations can
improve their understanding of the combined history of these movements and use the tools and
programs that have been developed on both sides to improve their common areas. Many
misunderstandings based on a difference in jargon, language, and history keep organizations
apart. This is not a surprise since there are no books that present even a basic combined history
of these movements, and the books that are available only mention the other movements in
passing. To improve cooperation, organizations can seek each other out and learn more about
each other. They can begin asking each other how their own programs might fit in with the
other’s programs.
This can be seen particularly well in the case of Creek Farm. Had the SPNHF had a better
understanding of the preservation efforts in the Portsmouth area and had worked with area
preservationists from the beginning, they would not have come under public scrutiny to the
126
extent that they did. Their unfamiliarity with preservation practices and interests caused them to
incite the public against their programs. When they opened up the lines of communication with
the Portsmouth Advocates group, and through them the public, they were able to achieve a
mutually beneficial outcome.
Perhaps the most basic advice for both organizations would be to keep an open mind and
not be afraid to ask questions. The goals of these movements are very similar. The methods to
achieve those goals also have several overlapping areas. With enough dialogue, and
understanding on both sides, a plan for the custodianship of common spaces can be produced and
followed. The benefit of such an outcome is worth the time it takes to improve the understanding
of the organizations and individuals in those organizations.
A neutral party may be useful to facilitate these partnerships. The success at Creek Farm
was due in large part to the forum opened by the neutral Portsmouth Advocates group. Prominent
community leaders as well as organizations with interests in both the historical and
environmental, or even the local government could take on this role as facilitator. As long that
the facilitator is calling together the organizations active in the community in a semi-annual, or
even annual, forum to discuss opportunities for cross-organizational support, there will be a
chance for these organizations to get to know each other and work together.
This advice can also be applied to the private owners of properties. It takes time and
resources for an organization to cultivate a relationship with owners of buildings and land. Many
private owners are unfamiliar with the regulations, goals, methods, and interests of the historic
preservation and environmental conservation movements. Such a lack of familiarity led to
Bacon’s confusion about the environmental impact of dredging, which resulted in a halting of the
127
rice bed revitalization at Orton Planation by the Army Corps of engineers when he failed to take
out the proper permits. While owners may be knowledgeable about the local historic preservation
organization or the local land trust group, their understanding must be cultivated about the other.
Workshops held cooperatively by the local organizations can help improve the understanding of
the public at large, and of private owners. These cooperative educational events can also impact
local laws, funding, and political support. Education begins in the historic preservation and
environmental conservation organizations and spreads from there; it is important that the
members of both organizations are knowledgeable about the benefits and reasons for these dual
resource properties so that they can teach others.
Second, national programs on both sides can facilitate the cooperation of these two
movements by providing them forums at their annual conferences. For instance, the National
Trust for Historic Preservation, which is the premier historic preservation conference in the
United States, could have at least one panel session dedicated to these dual resource properties
each year. A meet and greet after the session, as well as workshops and networking opportunities
would also be useful to larger organizations. Preservationists and conservationists should have a
forum to discuss long term goals and methods. When the national goals coincide, then they will
be in a position to lobby for more federal support through funding and legislature, with the
backing of two powerful movements.
Federal interest and disinterest has consistently shaped both the historic preservation and
environmental conservation movements, and there is no reason why it should not continue to do
so. If the movements can gain grassroots support for their partnerships, then the government will
prioritize its support of these national organizations. However, if the public does not keep its
politicians interested in these movements, a reversal of power akin to the Watt years during the
128
Reagan administration is likely to occur. For the long term stability and protection of the United
States historic, natural, and cultural resources, the public must remain knowledgeable and
interested in the development of the historic preservation and environmental conservation
movements. This knowledge and interest should be cultivated by local and state programs that
can work with the public.
Third, local organizations could begin to inform the public about the benefits of these
dual resource properties, and present a united front when presenting options for easements on
properties. To do this, historical preservation and environmental conservation organizations
should work together, prioritize education among their goals, and involve the community in the
preservation and conservation of properties. When the community becomes invested in the
success and continuation of local places, it will also be more likely to support these movements
on a national level.
There is no one correct method to follow for these properties to thrive, but if both types
of organizations can work together with the property owners, the true potential of the property
can be brought out and maintained for generations to come. If the organizations can become
more knowledgeable about each other’s history, goals, and methods, they will be better informed
to answer the questions that will undoubtedly arise about the future of these dual resource sites.
While there are undoubtedly problems that will arise that will have no clear or correct
answer, these two movements can accomplish more together than they can apart. There is no
need for local environmental groups to demolish historic buildings on easement sites because
they are untrained to care for structures. There are historic preservationists who can help them
save, maintain, and repurpose these buildings. Similarly, historic preservationists should not
129
have to worry about acquiring funds to buy up land surrounding historic sites, thus saving them
from being overwhelmed by suburban sprawl. There are environmental organizations that
specialize in protecting natural areas by putting them under easement and allowing the land to be
used for farming or other non-developmental ways.
The custodians of Creek Farm have proven the usefulness of dual resource properties to
its custodians and to the movements as a whole. Orton Plantation has yet to unveil its new plan,
but its custodians have shown themselves to be active in both movements, and this intermovement involvement will hopefully continue through the restorations of the site. Poplar Grove
demonstrates the awkward beginnings of camaraderie between these two movements. These
budding partnerships between the historic preservationists and environmental conservationists
are only the beginning of what promises to be a very important chapter in the future of both
movements. Preservationists and conservationists need to begin seeing themselves as cocustodians of these common grounds. These places should not only be managed, developed, or
even preserved, but also brought back to life and watched over until they are handed into the
custodianship of next generation.
130
7. Bibliography
Primary Sources
Newspapers and Magazines
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"An Immense Tree." Gleason's Pictorial Drawing Room Companion. October 1, 1853.
“Obituary: Robert Lee Foy Jr.” Star News, May 27, 2011.
“Obituary: William Sumner Appleton.” The Boston Herald, November 25, 1947
“Owner Didn’t Want To Keep Poplar Grove To Herself.” Wilmington Star News, August 26,
1989.
“Plantation Opens Thursday.” Wilmington Star News, April 5, 1980.
“Topics of the Times: No More Abandoned Farms in New Hampshire.” The American
Agriculturist 53 (June 1842): 358.
“Watt’s Ignorance of Coal Proved Fatal.” High Country News 15, no. 20, Oct 31, 1983.
“Welcome to Abbey Foy-Moore Nature Preserve.” Cape Fear’s Going Green, Fall 2008.
American Architect & Building News. April 27, 1895; 39-40.
Appleton, W. Sumner. “Ask Aid to Patriotism.” Boston Post Memorial, 16 June 1905.
Aronson, Emily. “Stately Turn-of-the-Century ‘Cottage’ Needs a Caretaker.”
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Block, Susan Taylor. “The Majestic Plantation.” Wrightsville Beach Magazine, July 2007.
Broome, Harvey. “Origins of the Wilderness Society.” The Living Wilderness 5, 5 (July 1940):
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Buchanan, James. “Hope for Creek Farm revived.” Seacoastonline.com, 11 May 2001.
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Buchanan, James. “Sagamore Creek Treasure May See Wrecking Ball.” Seacoastonline.com, 24
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Cunningham, Ann Pamela. “Letter to the Southern Matrons.” Charleston Mercury, Dec. 2, 1853.
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Cunningham,Ann Pamela. “To the Daughters of Washington.” March 27, 1855, MVLA archives.
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Dickerson, Rachel and Jim Pfeiffer. “Trusted Land.” Wrightsville Beach Magazine, September
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Dunn, Andrew. “Hundreds of Items From Orton Plantation House Auctioned.” Star News, July
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