The Quest to Protect Historic Buildings
Groups Battle Neglect And the Wrecking Ball

By Scott Elder
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, November 4, 2007

It's impossible to miss all the construction projects going on in the District these days. New condos, new office buildings, new giant holes in the ground: The city has just undergone one of its most extensive development booms in decades, and many projects are still in the works. With land at a premium, a new building going up often means an old one must come down. But this is the nation's capital, and some of those buildings designated for the dustbin are more than just bricks and mortar.

"Washington was designed as a monumental city, and we have some monumental buildings," says Rebecca Miller, 31, executive director of the D.C. Preservation League. Without protection, they can be lost, she says.

To keep the most important buildings standing, the preservation league works closely with the city's Historic Preservation Office and its Review Board, which is responsible for approving the demolition or extensive renovation of any potentially historic property in the city. Every year the preservation league publishes a "Most Endangered Places" list to raise awareness about sites in peril. (We explore eight currently or formerly endangered places at right.)

Some places aren't threatened by the wrecking ball but by "demolition by neglect," and the league and its allies pressure owners to maintain such properties. Behind the facades of a set of Georgian rowhouses on N Street NW near Dupont Circle, leaky roofs and broken windows are rotting the insides, the league says, though the owner disputes that. And in the Franklin School, now used by the city as a homeless shelter, the lack of heating in parts of the building is damaging the interior's elaborate plaster and woodwork.

The preservation league also keeps an eye on federal properties such as the west campus of St. Elizabeths Hospital in Anacostia, where the Department of Homeland Security hopes to build its headquarters; and the Old Naval Observatory at the Potomac Annex in Foggy Bottom, under surveillance by the director of national intelligence as a potential site for his new high-security office.

The league began life in 1971 as Don't Tear It Down, a grass-roots organization formed to save the Old Post Office on Pennsylvania Avenue NW. Thanks to an intense four-year lobbying campaign that included street protests, the federal government did not tear down the structure. After that success, the organization fought off efforts to demolish the famous Willard Hotel and the Romanesque-style Franklin School, which was designed by Adolph Cluss, the architect of Eastern Market.

Don't Tear It Down -- renamed the D.C. Preservation League in the early '80s -- hasn't won all of its battles. One major loss was the Rhodes Tavern, built at 15th and F streets NW in 1799. It had been commandeered by the invading British during the War of 1812 and therefore survived the burning of Washington. But it didn't survive the wrecking ball of 1984. Losing such a significant part of the city is "like if you lose a chapter from a book and you can't get that chapter back," Miller says. "You lose a lot . . . pictures just don't do things justice like seeing a place in person."

Community groups often handle preservation issues closer to home. The Dupont Circle Conservancy, for example, raised the alarm about the N Street rowhouses, and the Community Citizens Association of Foxhall Village, the city's newest historic district, is struggling to curb a spate of tear-downs. "That's how you get preservation activists in neighborhoods, because something is happening down the street that they don't like," Miller says. "And they typically get their other neighbors involved."

The Friends of Tregaron Foundation formed that way. When neighbors of the historic Tregaron Estate in Cleveland Park heard that a foreign corporation planned to develop 14 acres with as many as 200 houses, they organized and blocked construction for 25 years. Then, in January, the corporation and the Friends of Tregaron made a deal: The owner would donate 13 acres to create a wooded park in exchange for the right to develop the remaining acre.

One preservation group in the suburbs sprang from the rubble of a beloved landmark. "I literally stood across the street with tears rolling down my face," says Eileen McGuckian, recalling the day in 1974 when she watched bulldozers "chomp" into the Masonic Lodge near her home in downtown Rockville. "We said, 'We need an organization that will not allow that to happen again,' " she recalls.

Along with other ruffled Rockvillians, she founded Peerless Rockville and immediately took up the cause of the 19th-century B&O Railroad Station, then slated for demolition to make way for the Metro. The group couldn't change the Red Line's path, but after 10 years of lobbying, the 400-ton brick building was picked up in one piece and moved to safety 15 yards away.

It was a major victory for Peerless Rockville, but there was -- and still is -- plenty of preservation work left to do in the suburbs. McGuckian, the group's executive director, is quick to point out that cities such as Rockville are older than the District and notes that there are about 40 preservation and historical societies in Montgomery County alone.

The most effective way to protect buildings such as the imperiled old Rockville Regional Library, McGuckian says, is to explain their value to the public before there's a direct threat. "Preservationists are often reacting to some danger," she says, "but probably the best tool we have is education."