Advisory Council on Historic Preservation

The ACHP continues to honor those who volunteer their time for historic preservation during April, National Volunteer Month. The Museum at Eldridge Street is a Preserve America Steward for demonstrating a successful use of volunteer time and commitment in order to help care for our nation’s historic heritage.

Roberta Berken has spent the last 18 years as a docent at the Museum at Eldridge Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and she says it has been a great gift to her.

Berken moved to New York City in 2002 and was looking for something interesting to do. While attending a program at the Eldridge Street Synagogue, someone approached her and suggested she look into becoming a docent there.

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.

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.

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.