golden gate park: views from the thicket

Regardless of whether or not Golden Gate Park is officially listed on the National Register of Historic Places, guidelines developed by the National Park Service for historic properties that are listed on the National Register could be useful in debates about how to manage this historic San Francisco park as a cultural resource.

THE SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR’S STANDARDS FOR THE TREATMENT OF HISTORIC PROPERTIES

“The Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties are common sense principles in non-technical language. They were developed to help protect our nation’s irreplaceable cultural resources by promoting consistent preservation practices.

The Standards may be applied to all properties listed in the National Register of Historic Places: buildings, sites, structures, objects, and districts.

The Standards are a series of concepts about maintaining, repairing and replacing historic materials, as well as designing new additions or making alterations. They cannot, in and of themselves, be used to make decisions about which features of a historic property should be preserved and which might be changed. But once an appropriate treatment is selected, the Standards provide philosophical consistency to the work.

There are Standards for four distinct, but interrelated, approaches to the treatment of historic properties–preservation, rehabilitation, restoration, and reconstruction.

Preservation focuses on the maintenance and repair of existing historic materials and retention of a property’s form as it has evolved over time. (Protection and Stabilization have now been consolidated under this treatment.)

Rehabilitation acknowledges the need to alter or add to a historic property to meet continuing or changing uses while retaining the property’s historic character.

Restoration depicts a property at a particular period of time in its history, while removing evidence of other periods.

Reconstruction re-creates vanished or non-surviving portions of a property for interpretive purposes.”

via TPS Standards and Guidelines.

Which approach would be best for Golden Gate Park?  Or is it possible that each of the four approaches might be useful at some point in a large park like this with such a long and rich history?

dunes in golden gate park, viewed from strawberry hill, 1880 (San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection, SFPL)

What would it take to “officially” designate Golden Gate Park a historic landmark?  The process begins at the state level;  historic landmarks must be registered by a state first and then they may be considered for national historic landmark designation (a process managed by the National Park Service).  In California the Office of Historic Preservation is under California State Parks.  Here is a summary of that program:

“The State Historical Resources Commission has designed this program for use by state and local agencies, private groups and citizens to identify, evaluate, register and protect California’s historical resources. The Register is the authoritative guide to the state’s significant historical and archeological resources.

The California Register program encourages public recognition and protection of resources of architectural, historical, archeological and cultural significance, identifies historical resources for state and local planning purposes, determines eligibility for state historic preservation grant funding and affords certain protections under the California Environmental Quality Act.

Criteria for Designation

Associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of local or regional history or the cultural heritage of California or the United States (Criterion 1).

Associated with the lives of persons important to local, California or national history (Criterion 2).

Embodies the distinctive characteristics of a type, period, region or method of construction or represents the work of a master or possesses high artistic values (Criterion 3).

Has yielded, or has the potential to yield, information important to the prehistory or history of the local area, California or the nation (Criterion 4).”

via California Register.

Frozen in time?  If Golden Gate Park were to be given historic-landmark status, the Stow Lake boathouse could be included in the designation. (Examiner file photo)

via Entire Golden Gate Park might be deemed historic | San Francisco Examiner.

What would it mean to designate Golden Gate Park a historic landmark?  What are the pluses and minuses of such a designation?  Given how much the landscape has changed and how many features have been added since the park was created in the nineteenth century, what would be the rationale for “freezing it” in its present form?   Which parts of the park are most important historically?   Can we privilege one period of its history over another?  It looks like a lively debate is brewing around these and other questions of historic authenticity in the park.