Route 66 part of endangered list
WASHINGTON >> Route 66, Denver’s Larimer Square and school buildings in Los Angeles are on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s 2018 list of America’s most endangered historic places.
The annual list highlights architectural and cultural sites that the National Trust deems at risk from development or neglect.
The list can mobilize support and funding for preservation. But listings can also be controversial. Saving neglected historic properties is expensive. And when the National Trust advocates halting proposals to develop a site, local residents and officials may disagree, citing a need for modernization or economic growth.
Still, of the nearly 300 places that the National Trust has identified since the list was launched 31 years ago, the private nonprofit organization saidfewer than 5 percent have been lost.
The National Trust’s concerns about local proposals for development range from Denver’s Larimer Square to a site across from Mount Vernon in Virginia.
Larimer Square is a thriving retail center. But the National Trust said its history as Denver’s oldest commercial block and first historic district is threatened by proposals to build two towers and partly demolish several buildings.
In Los Angeles, the National Trust is calling attention to proposals to modernize schools that would include demolishing “almost all historically and culturally significant buildings” on the Roosevelt High School campus.
The school was a central setting for activities related to the 1968 East L.A. Chicano Student Walkouts, which helped catalyze the national Chicano Civil Rights Movement and symbolized the era’s student activism.
Route 66 is up for designation as a National Historic Trail, which the National Trust said would bring “recognition and economic development” to historic sites along the storied road. The Senate would have to pass legislation for the designation to take effect and the president would have to sign it before the end of 2018. Route 66 opened in 1926, connecting eight states between Chicago and California.