An advertisement for Quincy, Ill., boasts that the city has 3,665 buildings on the National Register of Historic Places. “Enough said,” the ad simply states. Clearly, this town of 40,655 people is proud of its historic character, advertising as it does in a national magazine.
The ad goes on to encourage viewers to “Call for your free self-guided driving tour guide + Upass (free admittance to all city museums).” All?
Within the Redlands city limits are at least four museums – the U.S. Postal Museum in the post office on Brookside Avenue, the privately held Historical Glass Museum on North Orange Street, the San Bernardino County Museum and the Asistencia, a branch of the San Bernardino County Museum.
How many buildings does Redlands have listed on the National Register?
Because Redlands has the Historic and Scenic Preservation Ordinance, almost all listed buildings and sites are published in the city’s list of Historic Resources, updated to December 2010 and available at the Development Services Department. The document lists two nationally listed districts and several individual buildings or sites.
In all, 417 buildings or sites are recognized by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a national organization under Congressional Charter, signed into law by President Truman in 1949 to provide support and encouragement for grass-roots preservation efforts, according to the National Trust website.
To be listed, a building or
site must meet one of several criteria, including significance to national history, but more importantly, significance to local and regional history. Most of Redlands’ listed buildings meet that criterion.
In Redlands, the Smiley Park Historic District alone includes 383 buildings and one site. This district (which overlaps the city’s own Historic Districts 1, 3, 5 and 9) includes parts of West Vine Street, Olive Avenue, Clark Street, Fern Avenue, Home Place, Buena Vista Street, Parkwood Avenue, Alvarado Street, Grant Street, Fourth Street and Eureka Street.
The Santa Fe Depot District, which has 23 buildings within its limits, includes structures on North Orange Street, Oriental Avenue, Stuart Avenue, Third Street and Eureka Street.
The districts become important to a community when the structures taken together present a context that reflects the community’s heritage. Whether residential or commercial, Redlands’ two nationally registered historic districts exemplify the city’s distinguishing character.
Of the 10 individual structures or sites on the National Register, two are houses – the Fisk-Burgess house on West Fern Avenue and the Auerbacher house on Sierra Vista Drive. For different reasons, neither of these houses is included in the city’s listings.
Public buildings include the U.S. post office on Brookside Avenue, the Lincoln Memorial Shrine and the A.K. Smiley Public Library. Kimberly Crest House and Gardens, managed by the private Kimberly-Shirk Association, is included, as are the privately owned commercial buildings, the Barton House on Nevada Street, and the Academy of Music Building and the trolley car barn, both on East Citrus Avenue. The only individually listed site is the Mill Creek Zanja, all 12 miles of it. According to the records, the listing in the California List of Historic Landmarks happened in the 1930s and on the national register in the 1970s.
While a listing provides a building or site and the city of Redlands with a certain amount of cachet, it means nothing when the building’s welfare is at stake. Many cases have been documented of a nationally listed building being demolished with no mitigation.
The cachet, however, carries value, as Quincy, Ill., illustrates.
SOURCE: Redlands Conservancy