Advisory Council on Historic Preservation

The Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., made from white Colorado marble, was dedicated on Memorial Day 1922. Eight million people visit the memorial each year. Members of the staff of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation toured the undercroft of the Lincoln Memorial on March 28 prior to the start of a major rehabilitation project that is expected to take about 20 months. The National Park Service expects the project will be completed by the 100-year-anniversary of the opening of the memorial in 2022.

As Women’s History Month winds down, the exhibit, “Votes for Women: A Portrait of Persistence,” will open March 29 at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. The building is one of Washington’s oldest, opened in 1836 to house the U.S. Patent Office. Red Cross founder Clara Barton worked in the National Historic Landmark as a clerk to the Patent Office commissioner.

The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announce the call for nominations for the 2019 ACHP/HUD Secretary’s Award for Excellence in Historic Preservation. This joint award honors outstanding historic preservation efforts with affordable housing and community revitalization successes. Submissions are due April 30, 2019. Click here for more information!

The ACHP will meet for its next business meeting April 3-4, 2019 in Washington, D.C. Click here to read the agendas.

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis is probably most well-known for being the wife of President John F. Kennedy. However, some of her greatest contributions were her efforts toward historic preservation.

One of Onassis’s first actions when the President took office was to give prominence to the White House, America’s most famous historic home. She proposed not to merely redecorate the aging mansion but to historically restore it, recognizing the many past residents throughout the home’s history. Through her efforts, a September 1961 law declared the White House a museum with a permanent curator and protected the rooms from being radically altered.