National Trust’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places 2016
The National Trust for Historic Preservation annually complies a list to identify “important examples of the nation’s architectural and cultural heritage that are at risk of destruction or irreparable damage.” The designation can help galvanize grassroots and political support for protecting sites, but isn’t always welcomed by locals. Here are looks at eight from this year’s cohort, many of which are in urban areas.
- In El Paso’s Chihuahuita and El Segundo Barrio neighborhoods, the National Trust says “homes and small businesses are threatened by demolition.” (Russell Contreras/AP)
- The trust says Milwaukee’s Mitchell Park domes, which house conservatories, are an “engineering marvel, and a nationally significant example of Midcentury Modern architecture.” (Brian Moore/CC BY-SA 2.0)
- Utah’s Bears Ears area’s 1.9 million-acre “cultural landscape” of archaeological sites, cliff dwellings and petroglyphs is threatened by “looting, mismanaged recreational use and energy development,” the National Trust says. (Rick Bowmer/AP)
- San Francisco’s Embarcadero District is an “iconic waterfront” that needs “long-term planning” to cope with rising sea levels and earthquake vulnerability, the trust says. (Eric Risberg/AP)
- Historic buildings in Flemington, New Jersey, including the Union Hotel, which housed people involved in the 1935 Lindbergh baby kidnapping case, known as the “trial of the century,” could be demolished under a development proposal. (Russell Sprague/CC BY-ND 2.0)
- The Trust would like Houma, Louisiana’s The Delta Queen steamboat to return to overnight passenger cruising as a way of “securing” its future. (Al Behrman/AP)
- A rail line is proposed for the area around South Carolina’s Charleston Naval Hospital District, a re-entry point for U.S. servicemen injured in Europe and Africa during World War II. (Bruce Smith/AP)
- The “scenic integrity” of the James River in Virginia at Jamestown, where America’s first permanent English settlement was founded in 1607, is threatened by a proposed transmission line, the trust says. (Steve Helber/AP)