Recognition for historic preservation work in the United States has been reserved almost exclusively for the white elites who have dominated the preservation movement since the mid-nineteenth century. In contrast, this interdisciplinary dissertation presents Black men and women operating outside of the white preservation mainstream and recounts narratives of Black Bostonians stewarding buildings, landscapes, and neighborhoods.
Several arguments emerge from the four case studies. First, Black Bostonians engaged in preservation work. Second, Black preservation efforts were useful as ways to channel place-based history into reform efforts predicated on the need for change, running counter to white elites' bolstering of continuity and celebratory histories. Third, Black preservation strategies, like their interpretations of the sites, incorporated and embraced change that was expressed in variations of adaptive reuse. Fourth, different factions within the city’s Black population had different preservation interests and visions of change, and whites and Blacks often took interest in the same sites for divergent reasons. And, finally, this dissertation shows that the white mainstream has repeatedly slighted Black preservation strategies and even gone so far as to cast them as blighting actions.
Chapter One centers on the group of elite Black Bostonians who purchased the Roxbury home of William Lloyd Garrison, known as “Rockledge,” with the intent to preserve it as an antislavery memorial at the turn of the twentieth century. As St. Monica's Home for Colored Women and Children, the house became a site of contestation between the followers of William Monroe Trotter and Booker T. Washington. Chapter Two examines the dispute over the future of the Charles Street Meeting House, then the Charles Street A.M.E. Church, when a proposed street widening threatened the building in 1920. Chapter Three makes a case for studying actions that result in preservation and not just people who identify as preservationists by examining the conversions of single-family houses to multi-family homes by Black middle-class homeowners from the 1930s through the early 1960s. Lastly, Chapter Four features Elma Lewis, a Black arts educator and cultural activist who in 1966 adapted the Overlook Shelter ruins in Frederick Law Olmsted’s Franklin Park into an outdoor theater to support her community.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/48402 |
| Date | 15 March 2024 |
| Creators | Webster, Madeline E. |
| Contributors | Abramson, Daniel |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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