13 National Historic Landmarks Added To the System
The roster of National Historic Landmarks has grown by 13, with landmarks in nine different states received that designation this week from Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.
Among the 13 is are sites associated with the famed Apache scouts, the largest collection of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings in the world, and an early 18th-century parish church.
“Each of these landmarks teaches us about the history of our land, our people, and our nation - from pictographs dating back two millennia to a World War II warship,” Secretary Salazar said in a prepared statement. “By designating these sites as National Historic Landmarks, we are ensuring that future generations will know these important chapters in our nation’s story.”
National Historic Landmarks are nationally significant historic places that possess exceptional value or quality in illustrating or interpreting the heritage of the United States. The program, established in 1935, is administered by the National Park Service on behalf of the Secretary of the Interior.
“These new listings will join approximately 2,500 other sites in the National Historic Landmark Program,” said National Park Service Director Jonathan B. Jarvis. “These places not only showcase our rich and complex history – from prehistoric time right up to the modern era – but they help drive tourism and boost local economies.”
The new National Historic Landmarks include the following sites:
• Among seacoast lighthouses still in existence, the Montauk Point Lighthouse (Long Island, New York) was the most important for the nation’s foreign trade during the first eight decades of the United States lighthouse service;
• Located in Midtown Manhattan, the Town Hall (New York City, New York) represents the history of American radio broadcasting during the golden age of network radio from the 1930s through the 1950s;
• The destroyer escort USS Slater (Albany, New York) is a rare and extraordinarily intact example of an important class of mass-produced warships designed for convoy protection during World War II;
• Constructed in 1888-89 by a wealthy Troy couple as a memorial to their only child, the Gardner Earl Memorial Chapel and Crematorium (Troy, New York) is the most architecturally sophisticated example of early public crematoria in the United States. The building is an example of Romanesque Revival architectural composition with a rich detailed interior design that reflect its memorial nature;
• Built in 1888-1889, the Braddock Carnegie Library (Braddock, Pennsylvania) is the oldest intact library building in the United States funded by Andrew Carnegie;
• The Fort Apache and Theodore Roosevelt School (Fort Apache, Arizona) was one of the 14 former U.S. Army forts redeveloped as a school as part of Federal Indian policy that sought to assimilate Native Americans through education following tribes’ confinement on reservations. Today the school district is a unique resource that reflects several decades of highly complex and dynamic interactions between the U.S. federal government and Native Americans throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries;
• Deer Medicine Rocks (Rosebud County, Montana) is a sandstone rock formation in Montana’s Rosebud Valley that is associated with the Great Sioux War of 1876-1877. Numerous Native American petroglyphs cover the walls, including a representation of the Battle of the Little Big Horn, as well as various anthropomorphic and religious drawings;
• The akima Pinšiwa Awiiki (Fort Wayne, Indiana) is a rare surviving example of a treaty house in the U.S. Built as part of the terms of the 1826 Treaty between the Myaamia (Miami) and the United States, it is associated with Pinšiwa, the akima (civil chief) of the Myaamia, a nationally significant American Indian statesman and leader;
• St. Peter’s Parish Church (New Kent County, Virginia) is an exceptional example of early 18th-century brick architecture from the Chesapeake Region;
• Eyre Hall (Northampton County, Virginia), a rare vernacular architectural ensemble and rural landscape of the Colonial and early Federal periods, is a significant physical remnant of Chesapeake society, which was economically and socially based on slavery;
• Meadow Brook Hall (Rochester, Michigan) is a large early twentieth-century country estate which includes a large mansion inspired by British architectural precedents along with smaller residential buildings constructed in the same style;
• The campus of Florida Southern College (Lakeland, Florida) contains the largest “integrally designed” grouping of buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright on a single site anywhere in the world; and
• The Carrizo Plain Archeological District (San Luis Obispo County, California) represents a unique concentration of pre-contact sites, art, and artifacts, the outstanding significance of which has been recognized for almost a century by anthropologists, archeologists, artists, and novelists.