national register nomination for boulevard park historic
national register nomination for boulevard park historic
national register nomination for boulevard park historic
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<strong>historic</strong>. This creates a hegemonic hierarchy of building types that discounts the functions<br />
and occupants of <strong>historic</strong> buildings outside of a defined period of significance.<br />
Schwartzer argues that the field of <strong>historic</strong> preservation should move beyond these myths<br />
in order to catch up with the progress made in other fields of <strong>historic</strong>al study. He also<br />
suggests that <strong>historic</strong> preservation has become part of urban history, and is a field worthy<br />
of study in its own right.<br />
Historian David Hamer took up this suggestion in History in Urban Places: The<br />
Historic Districts of the United States. 33<br />
It is a work of urban history focusing its<br />
attention on <strong>historic</strong> districts instead of urban redevelopment. Hamer argues that <strong>historic</strong><br />
districts celebrate only a selective interpretation of the past. This selective interpretation<br />
functions as yet another illusion, with its own type of destructive results.<br />
Like other urban historians, Hamer describes the effects of urban renewal on<br />
central cities. As mentioned in works on <strong>historic</strong> preservation, the response to urban<br />
renewal is identified as a significant driver of change <strong>for</strong> American <strong>historic</strong> preservation.<br />
This response encouraged legislation at local, state and federal levels and spurred public<br />
reaction to protect <strong>historic</strong> sites. After the passage of the National Historic Preservation<br />
Act of 1966, thousands of <strong>historic</strong> districts were created throughout the United States.<br />
Initially, many of these districts were surviving fragments of central city areas<br />
overlooked or ignored by the bulldozers of urban renewal.<br />
33<br />
Hamer, David, History in Urban Places: The Historic Districts of the United States. Columbus: Ohio<br />
State University Press, 1998.<br />
25