Kalamazoo area sites have national prominence

Posted by Bill on Monday, April 28, 2008   |   No Comments

I recently posted about the registered Michigan historic sites in Kalamazoo County. If you recall, there were more than 40. It was a short jump from there to thinking about Michigan and the National Register. What sites in Kalamazoo County, I wondered, are listed on the National Register of Historic Places?

Our nation’s official list of cultural treasures worthy of preservation, the National Register includes more than 80,000 listings. The National Historic Preservation Act authorized the National Register in 1966. Today, it is at the center of a nationwide effort to identify, evaluate and protect historic and archeological treasures. Under the direction of the National Park Service, the National Register is the single most important effort to catalog items of significance in American history, architecture, archeology, engineering and culture. Included are districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects.

All historic sites in National Parks are on the National Register. Also included are more than 2,400 National Historic Landmarks, so designated by the Interior Department due to their importance to all Americans. The bulk of the listings on the National Register, however, are the properties deemed to be important to the nation, a state or a community. Agencies of the government, organizations or individuals have nominated these properties for inclusion on the Register.

There is a strict procedure for nominating properties and evaluating their eligibility. Once listed, the significance of a property is recognized and it qualifies for Federal tax benefits and assistance for historic preservation. To learn more about nominating a property, visit the National Register site.

There are presently more than 1,500 sites in Michigan listed on the National Register. You can search for these and any in your own state on the site. I found the site a little hard to navigate, however, so I clicked on the link for the list of SHPOs (State Historic Preservation Offices) they provided. That took me to an excellent site where I could search all Michigan sites on the National Register, all sites on the state Register as well as all of the National Historic Landmarks in Michigan.

As I have said before, this kind of information is not meant to be a destination in itself. But it does add a great deal to your knowledge of and appreciation for local historic treasures—and it adds to the richness of other areas you may visit, too. While you may not travel 200 miles to see a site listed on the National Register, you might stop to check it out and maybe snap a photo if other travels took you within a few miles of it. The key, of course, is knowing where the sites are located, which the sites linked to here will show you.

It really wouldn’t be fair to come this far and not give you some local sites. So here’s a brief sampling of Kalamazoo County sites on the National Register.

Masonic Temple Building–Kalamazoo
William DeLano House—Cooper Township
East Hall—WMU East Campus
Kalamazoo State Hospital Water Tower—Kalamazoo
Ladies Library Association Building—Kalamazoo
Portage Street Fire Station—Kalamazoo
The Oaklands—WMU West Campus
Underground Railroad House—Schoolcraft

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