Washington business district may become historic district
The National Road Heritage Corridor is partnering with the Washington Business District Authority and the Washington Community Development Corp. to have the city’s central business district designated as a National Register Historic District.
The organizations held a workshop Thursday to talk to business and property owners in the district about the benefits of the designation.
“This is a competitive advantage when we’re trying to attract developers and new property owners,” said Donna Holdorf, executive director of the National Road Heritage Corridor.
The Heritage Corridor hired Angelique Bamberg, a historic preservation planner with the independent Clio Consulting of Pittsburgh. Over the summer, Bamberg surveyed the business district, came up with boundaries for the potential historic district register and submitted a draft nomination to the state’s Historic Preservation Office.
The district would include a total of 162 properties, 138 of which are buildings, Bamberg said. The boundaries would essentially follow the boundaries of the central business district – from the railroad tracks on South Main Street up to Walnut Street, and from Franklin Street to College Street.
She said she’s making revisions to the nomination, after which it will be made available to the public. The nomination is expected to go before the state’s historic preservation board Feb. 4 in Harrisburg.
Then, the National Park Service will review it and make a final determination as to whether it will become “part of the permanent record of American history,” according to Bill Callahan, the community preservation coordinator for the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission.
Holdorf said Thursday’s meeting was held to eliminate some myths about what it means for the district to be designated on the national register.
“People are afraid that if it’s designated as a historic district that they won’t be able to do what they want with their properties,” she said. “That’s not true.”
During his presentation, Callahan told the approximate 15 stakeholders in the room that the designation “doesn’t restrict how properties are managed by owners” or that it would bring about new zoning ordinances.
“There are a lot of misperceptions about what it means to be a historic property,” he said. “It’s not just about old stuff. It’s about how we can understand properties’ significance to our history.”
That significance is determined by a set of criteria that the district would need to meet in order to achieve the designation, including broad patterns of historic events, association with a significant person in the past, architecture and archaeological significance.
The properties also have to be 50 years old and have a high degree of physical integrity, he said.
Bamberg, who surveyed each of the buildings in the proposed district, said that since government is one of the greatest uses within the district, it meets the “historic events” criteria. She said it also meets the architecture criteria, as the district includes buildings that showcase “a broad spectrum and sequence of time periods.”
“Washington has a very long history going back to the 18th century,” she said.
Callahan said the program is a great way to identify “assets” and create tourism areas within the community, as the state’s historic preservation board looks for “authentic character.”
“Where we call home, there is an associated value to the history,” he said.
Both he and Bamberg emphasized that the national register isn’t a museum program.
“This isn’t about creating museums and freezing a building in time,” Bamberg said. “Being used is the best preservation for a building.”
Callahan said the designation could also come with income tax credits at the state and federal level for businesses within the designated district that invest in rehabilitation of their buildings.
“These are really powerful tools to spur economic development in the historic district,” he said.