Community Outreach Will Precede Historic Designations

In a presentation Tuesday, city preservationist Gail Hunton used a map to highlight prospects for new historic districts, but recommended to the Historic Preservation Commission a program of neighborhood outreach before making any formal designations.

The city now has six residential historic districts and several others. Hunton prefaced her presentation with comments on the “institutional history” of the city’s preservation movement, noting that residents initially raised the issue of protecting historic buildings from neglect by absentee landlords or deterioration from lack of repairs. In addition, without protections, owners of historic dwellings sometimes found large apartment complexes springing up next to their homes.

The response was a Historic Review Committee in 1979 and the establishment of four historic districts, including Crescent Area, North Avenue, Van Wyck Brooks and Hillside.

Hunton cited Plainfield as an “early leader” in the preservation movement. The city’s Historic Preservation Commission dates back to 1985, when state legislation first allowed such bodies.

But with no new designations for several years, the notion of possible new districts brought a public reaction similar to the early days – fear of outside impositions on changes to one’s own property being the main complaint. At an August meeting of the HPC, members of one neighborhood presented petitions opposing designation of their homes as historic. Click here for Plaintalker's post.

Tuesday’s meeting revealed that their Marlborough Avenue neighborhood was not under consideration, but that did not prevent one resident from seeking extra assurance that a designation might not come anytime soon.

Hunton said now each property targeted for possible designation has to be researched for its value for an historic designation. The initial survey she completed did not indicate whether a property within a possible district was “contributing” or “non-contributing” to historic designation.

Of those in favor of historic preservation and district designation, one former Brooklyn resident said he saw preservation consciousness begin there in the 1950s and “brought that mentality with me to Plainfield.”

He expressed regret that “more people don’t know what we do here.”

Calling his block a “Whitman’s candy box” of architectural styles, he said he was fully in favor of his house being in an historic district.

But resident Oscar Riba voiced fears of the financial aspect of being told to do expensive renovations consistent with historic guidelines. Several commissioners reassured Riba that repairs for an older home would have to be made anyway and that those following historic guidelines were most likely less costly in the long run.

--Bernice Paglia