Advisory Council on Historic Preservation

An essay by Robert Stanton, Expert Member of the Advisory Council on History Preservation and former Director of the National Park Service.

African American History Month has special meaning to me. As a son of the segregated South, I was 23 years of age before I was permitted to walk through the front door of a small cafe where my mother worked as a short-order cook, and I was bused 30 miles round trip each day for high school under the doctrine of “separate but equal.” Growing up, I could never imagine the opportunities I had in my lifetime that were made possible from the sacrifices and struggles of those who came before me. One of these giants to whom I am and shall remain grateful is Mr. Frederick Douglass.

The ACHP today sent the fifth triennial report on the status of federal historic property to President Trump in accordance with E.O. 13287 “Preserve America.” The report offers findings and recommendations for agencies, states, tribes, and local organizations to protect and preserve historic property. Click here to read the report.

A partnership among federal and state agencies and an energy company to rehabilitate and save historic airport hangars as part of an energy regulating station has received the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation’s (ACHP) Chairman’s Award for Achievement in Historic Preservation.

In the wake of the unprecedented destruction resulting from Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, the ACHP has been working to help address the impacts to historic properties. Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Puerto Rico, Texas, and the U.S. Virgin Islands were hard hit by the storms. (The impact on the island of St. John was particularly catastrophic.) The ACHP has reached out to the affected State and Tribal Historic Preservation Offices and to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to help coordinate how disaster recovery efforts are addressing historic properties and how review under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act will be expedited.

HOUSTON – Restoration of NASA’s Apollo Mission Control Center (MCC) will get underway this fall, thanks to a $5 million fundraising campaign spearheaded by the nonprofit Space Center Houston, which is partnering with the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) to administer the funds.

Since being decommissioned in the 1990s, the Apollo MCC–a National Historic Landmark housed within the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston–was assigned “threatened” status by the National Park Service in 2015. The predicament led Gene Kranz, flight director for the famed Apollo and Gemini missions in the 1960s, to ask ACHP Chairman Milford Wayne Donaldson for the ACHP’s assistance in restoring the Apollo MCC.