Three years ago, the National Park Service-National Capital Region approached Historic Preservation Director Don Linebaugh with a project: assist them in tracking and documenting the condition of the thousands of national treasures that fall under their care in the National Capital Region. Since then, graduate students from the Historic Preservation Program have documented the length of George Washington Memorial Parkway, over 184 miles of C & O Canal and the Antietam Battlefield, carefully surveying and assessing the condition of each historic structure—from monuments to culverts—that graces their landscapes.
In October, the National Park Service (NPS) renewed the contract for another year, tasking the program to undertake five separate and quite complex sites: Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia; the Monocacy Battlefield in Frederick, Maryland; Catoctin Mountain Park in Thurmont, Maryland; Manassas Battlefield Park in Virginia; and a group of smaller parks known as the “National Capital Parks-East,” a collection of sites that includes the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, Circle Forts like Fort Washington and the Mary McLeod Bethune House. It’s the largest collection of cultural resources the team will survey since the project began and, because of the variety, the most challenging.
“The job is big, but very exciting,” said Christine Henry, Assistant to the Director of the Historic Preservation program and co-lead on the project. “This project gives our students a lot of things to think about, because there are so many more buildings and structures and such a variety. Not just in the type of structure, but also in location; we’ll be in urban areas and very rural areas. Our students will truly get the entire scope of the D.C. region’s cultural resources, which is quite amazing.”
The new crop of site audits begins this fall, sending six historic preservation graduate students into the field armed with cameras, notebooks and—because of the remote location of some areas—an occasional NPS Ranger. This year, Henry, who has managed the program over the past three years, has the help of Kirsten Crase, who recently completed her Ph.D. in American Studies and has just joined the Historic Preservation Program as a faculty research associate.
According to Henry, partnerships like the one with the NPS are the most crucial method of preparing students for the professional world because they provide much needed experience in developing methods and practicing interpretation. Crase and Henry teach very specific methodology for students to use as a baseline for their surveys, which includes assessing eight points on a structure along with requiring the students to start at one point and always walk in one direction.
Explains Henry, “If you do it the same way each time, there is less of a chance you’ll be confused by your notes later.”
While highly structured, this foundation gives students the freedom to consider changes that might not be immediately apparent and factors that could create change over time. When assessing a structure, students must consider the environment (Is it near water?), the materials (Is the building wood or stone?) and its location (Urban versus rural?). Students must also pay attention to how the structure is being used, which greatly affects its condition; historic houses like the Mary McLeod Bethune House don’t endure the same wear and tear as a cabin camp in Catoctin Mountain Park.
“The students are comparing and need to interpret the different places by how they are used. What does it mean to use a building versus interpret it as an object? What does it mean when a building is a wood building as opposed to a stone building? They will get a wider range of answers.”
While the sheer number and variety of structures that the students will need to survey is bigger than previous projects, Henry and Crase still plan to have pictures, documentation and recommendations uploaded to the NPS database by the end of the spring semester. While the NPS is required to perform audits on all historic structures on a cyclical basis, this is not just an exercise; the recommendations and reports are critical to the individual site managers, who will determine what actions need to be taken.
“We are very pleased to continue this relationship with the National Park Service,” said Linebaugh. “I think the fact that the NPS has tasked us to survey these particular sites, which are quite varied and challenging, is a reflection of their level of confidence and trust in our work.”