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For some reason, sports acronyms intersect disconcertingly with preservation acronyms. The National Historic Landmark program (NHL) is sometimes confused with the National Hockey League. Likewise, the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) is sometimes confused with the National Horseshoe Pitching Association. The National Historic Preservation Act has enjoyed far-reaching consequences on the American landscape and celebrates a milestone birthday this year. Enacted on October 15, 1966, the National Historic Preservation Act has been vital to instilling a preservation ethic across the United States.
In Seattle, we enjoy historic building protections in the form of designated City landmarks, designated King County landmarks, and properties listed on the Washington Heritage Register in addition to the National Register of Historic Places and the National Historic Landmark program. It was the NHPA that started it all back in 1966 and the story of its inception is a great lesson in preservation advocacy. Best of all, the hero of the story is Washington's own Senator Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson.
The national Advisory Council on Historic Preservation and the National Park Service have dedicated 2006 to celebrating and building greater awareness and support for the NHPA. The following story is enlightening even for preservationists who have worked in the movement for years. You can read the entire text of the Act, including its 22 amendments, at: NHPA text.
Conception of the NHPA
In the late 1950s and early 1960s a broad historic preservation constituency developed. As suburbs began to drain the middle class from urban areas, Americans who remained in cities began to value their neighborhoods more. In addition, a new interstate highway program created during the Eisenhower administration posed a threat to numerous buildings because it called for roads to be constructed in older neighborhoods. The federal government began to upgrade its own facilities around the nation, thus threatening architecturally significant office buildings designed in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The destructive effects of urban renewal programs caused preservationists to unite to maintain the character of older towns. Historical administrators and philanthropists saw that the 1960s might bring tremendous destruction unless a legislative mandate could give preservationists the tools to fight the new forms of “progress.”
Uncommitted citizens had to be won over to the gospel of preservation and conservation. As attitudes toward preservation were gradually being changed, public officials began to think of preserving whole districts of distinctive buildings rather than isolated individual landmarks. As a result, preservation was becoming a planning process with broad ramifications for how American towns and cities would look and work.
In response to public interest and concern about historic properties that were being lost to highway construction and urban renewal, three forces arose: the administration of President Lyndon Johnson, the National Park Service, and the specially appointed Rains Committee. These forces eventually caused the passage of the National Historic Preservation Act.
The Johnson Administration
President Johnson continued the natural conservation policy that the Kennedy administration had popularized and his wife, Lady Bird Johnson, was primarily interested in the protection of natural beauty. As a result of her influence, President Johnson pronounced this as one of his principal domestic policies.
In 1964, Johnson appointed a Task Force to report on the preservation of natural beauty. The Task Force urged that a joint, federal-state program be established in historic preservation. The Department of the Interior, through the National Park Service, was assigned to coordinate completion of a comprehensive inventory of historic sites and structures important in states and localities. To protect significant properties and areas, a governmental board was instituted with the power to veto federal expenditures for projects that would result in the destruction of such properties.
In February 1965, President Johnson sent a Message on Natural Beauty to Congress, drawn largely from the recommendations of the presidential Task Force. Johnson observed that an increasing amount of preservation activity was occurring throughout the United States and that preservationists were objecting to the loss of historic structures. He pledged that his administration would assist local efforts in preservation and recommended that legislation be adopted authorizing federal grants to local governments for the acquisition, development, and maintenance of private historic properties.
 To further discussion of the points raised in his message, the President announced that he would call a White House Conference on Natural Beauty in the spring of 1965. With the First Lady opening the proceedings, the conference took place in Washington on May 24 and 25. The Townscape panel at the meeting considered the preservation aspects of environmental conservation and under the prodding of Gordon Gray, chairman of the board of trustees of the National Trust, adopted recommendations for a national preservation policy.
Gray urged that a survey be created to inventory "landmarks of all types and grades of historic, architectural, and unique community value" and asserted that machinery to veto federal expenditures resulting in destruction of landmarks was essential. Concurrent with President Johnson’s actions, the National Park Service was aspiring to assume a leading role in the preservation movement. President Johnson’s Message on Natural Beauty in February 1965 offered an opportunity for the Department of the Interior and the Park Service to assume an expanded role in historic preservation.
Secretary Udall
Shortly afterward, Interior Secretary Morris K. Udall directed the Service to draft legislation authorizing grants to local authorities to help them preserve "private landmarks of beauty and history." Early in September 1965, the History Studies staff and the legal division of the Park Service completed work on a bill that would authorize matching federal grants to the states for historic preservation activities. Under the bill, the federal government would finance a survey in each state conducted by the state historical society or a similar agency. Each inventory would be based on the standards and procedures used by the Historic Sites Survey of the Park Service in inventorying properties of national significance. Each state would then prepare a comprehensive, statewide preservation plan drawn from the results of the survey.
Once approved by the Secretary of the Interior, the plan would serve as the guide for federal grants to the state for acquiring, preserving, and developing public or private historic properties. Sites and structures of importance to regions, states, and localities, was well as those of national significance, would be eligible for financial assistance. In 1964, Representative Albert M. Rains, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Housing, decided to retire. He expressed to Laurance G. Henderson, an urban affairs lobbyist, that he was interested in pursuing a public interest project upon retirement.
Henderson then approached Carl Feiss, an architect and urban planner with experience in historic preservation, and suggested that Rains head a special historic preservation study. The two men decided that the former Congressman should lead a non-partisan, blue-ribbon committee, which would visit Europe to examine preservation activities abroad and produce a report presenting the need for preservation in the United States.
On the advice of Robert R. Garvey, Jr., executive director of the National Trust, the impresarios of the project, asked the heads of federal agencies involved in financing construction projects or pursuing preservation activities to serve as ex officio members. The administrator of the General Services Administration and the Secretaries of the Departments of the Interior, Housing and Urban Development, and Commerce, readily agreed to participate. Rains and Henderson also asked people with influential political connections to serve on the panel, including Senator Edmund S. Muskie of Maine; Congressman William B. Widnall of New Jersey; Governor Phillip Hoff of Vermont; former mayor Raymond R. Tucker of St. Louis; and Gordon Gray, chairman of the National Trust.
Rains Committee
In late October and early November, the special committee, or Rains Committee, as it soon became known, visited eight European countries with notable records in preservation. It soon became clear that the national governments in Europe had assumed the principal responsibility for preserving and restoring their physical heritage. George Hartzog, who represented Secretary Udall on the trip, later recalled that seeing the war-damaged sections of European cities rebuilt and restored under public auspices persuaded the committee that the federal government in the United States had to participate in preservation efforts. Private enterprise alone could not afford to preserve the historic features of American cities.
It was intended that the study would culminate in a published report that would make major preservation legislation possible. Upon their return from Europe, Feiss and others drafted recommendations for a new national preservation program which were approved by the Rains Committee when they met in New York City several weeks later. Feiss then worked with Helen Bullock, the National Trust’s editor, to assemble a book containing essays, photographs, and the committee report; With Heritage So Rich was published at the end of January 1966.
With a foreword by Lady Bird Johnson, essays on the varied nature of the physical heritage of America, and attractive photographic plates, the new volume commanded immediate public attention. Although the Johnson administration, National Park Service, and Rains Committee were now agreed that there should be legislation, each was pursuing a slightly different objective. The administration desired to encourage a popular activity through grants to the states. The Park Service wanted to enhance its position in the preservation movement through a grants-in-aid program. The Rains Committee was seeking primarily to curb destructive actions financed by federal agencies.
During 1966, bills were introduced, modified, and combined, as each party strove to have its objective emphasized in the legislations and to amend those features that it did not favor. In a message to Congress on February 23, President Johnson promised that he would recommend matching grants to states and the National Trust to carry out preservation activities. Senate Bill 3035 (S.3035) and House Resolution (H.R.13491) were introduced on March 7. The principal provisions of the bills were:
Grants to the states would be used to complete historic sites surveys followed by the development of comprehensive preservation plans;
Grants to the states would be used to acquire, preserve and develop historic properties that were not federally-owned;
The Secretary of the Interior would maintain a national register of sites, buildings, and objects significant in American history; and
Grants would be made available to the National Trust.
Concurrently, members of the Rains Committee began to pursue their agenda. Laurance G. Henderson arranged for a copy of With Heritage So Rich to be placed on the desk of every member of Congress and requested that the Departments of the Interior and Housing and Urban Development draft measures based on proposals and recommendations in the Rains Committee report. On March 17, Senator Edmund S. Muskie introduced S.3097 and S.3098 which was echoed in the House of Representatives with H.R.13790 and H.R. 13972, introduced by Representative William B. Widnall. The principal provisions of S.3098 and H.R. 13972 were:
Grants to the states and the National Trust, similar to S.3035 and H.R.13491; and
Maintaining a national register, similar to S.3035 and H.R.13491.
But unlike S.3035 and H.R.13491, a protection measure was included—federal agencies would be required to take into account the effects of their undertakings on nationally-significant properties included in the National Register. The principal provisions of S.3097 and H.R.13790 were:
Grants to municipalities;
Changes to the existing Urban Renewal and housing laws to permit more favorable treatment of historic properties; and
The establishment of a National Advisory Council on Historic Preservation which would develop and recommend preservation policies at federal, state, and local levels.
The House and Senate quickly held hearings on S.3097 and H.R.13790 and reported favorably on the bills in the summer of 1966. However, H.R.13491 and H.R. 13792 were stalled in the House Interior Committee. Chairman Wayne N. Aspinall, a Colorado Congressman chiefly interested in mining and grazing rights, did not consider the measures vital and made no move to schedule hearings. The administration was unwilling to put pressure on Aspinall to consider the bills, and Rains, Muskie, and Widnall lacked influence with members of the Interior panel.
Scoop Jackson to the Rescue
Finally, Gordon Gray of the National Trust asked Senator Henry M. Jackson, a personal friend and chairman of the Senate Interior Committee, to hold a hearing on the bills immediately. Jackson agreed, and a hearing was set for June 8, 1966. At the hearing, Gray urged Senator Jackson to provide in S.3035 for the protection of historic properties from federally-funded destruction. Gray also proposed that the provision in S.3097 and H.R.13790 calling for the establishment of a National Advisory Council on Historic Preservation be included in S.3035.
Concerned about the effectiveness of the provision for protecting historic properties, Senator Jackson told the witnesses that the provision should have "some teeth in it." Accordingly, with the concurrence of Gray and the Park Service, Jackson directed the staff of the committee to draft an amendment to Senate Bill 3035 stating that the head of a federal agency could not proceed with any change to a historic building or site that had been included in the National Register. The Senate Interior Committee reported an amended version of S.3035 to the full Senate on July 7 and the bill was passed on July 11. The bill had two titles:
After the passage of S.3035, Representative Roy Taylor, chairman of the House Subcommittee on National Parks and Recreation was persuaded to schedule a hearing. During the subcommittee hearing, there was much debate about Section 106—should it apply only to federally-funded projects as agreed on in S.3035, or should the scope be broadened to include federally-licensed projects as well—and when the House Interior Committee filed its report at the end of August, Section 106 had been expanded to include federally-licensed projects.
When S.3035 was brought to the floor of the House of Representatives for action in mid-September, conservative members of Congress made sure that the bill was not approved. The bill was referred to the Rules Committee where it, languished until Gray intervened with Chairman Howard W. Smith and asked him as a personal favor to allow the bill to be considered again. In early October, the House finally passed the bill and the Senate agreed to the amendments. Finally, on October 15, President Johnson signed Public Law 89-665, which has become known as the National Historic Preservation Act.
Sources
Glass, James A. The Beginnings of a New National Historic Preservation Program, 1957 to 1969. American Association of State and Local History, 1990.
National Trust for Historic Preservation. With Heritage So Rich Reprinted in 1999.
This article was adapted from the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation website at: Advisory Council
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