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Bellingham Historic Resource SurveyHistoric Preservation Northwest was selected by the City of Bellingham
to perform their Preserve America
grant work for 2008-2009. The grant is for historic preservation work in the
Lettered Streets, South Hill and York neighborhoods. The project entails
the physical description of approximately 2,200 resources, writing short histories on
approximately 1,500 resources, and creating three historic districts over a 1-1/2 year period. Quick Links
Current StatusThe three historic district nominations were heard before the State Advisory Council for Historic Preservation on 11/5/2009 in Spokane. All three passed with flying colors and have been forwarded to the Keeper of the National Register for final review. The Keeper has now added the Cissna Cottages Historic District to the National Register, as of 1/29/2010, and we await word on the other two districts. Here are the final historic district nominations, one for each district: We are finished with the inventory of the three neighborhoods as of 7/29/09. Below are the final inventory forms. The files are large. (Right click on the file name and Save Target As, if you would like to save the PDF file to your computer.) Each neighborhood is in address order:
Here are some interesting statistics for the project. Total
count: 1.16 million words. That is just the inventory of the 2,167
buildings built before 1961. Comes out to 535 words per building to
describe each along with its history, so it adds up quick. Plus another
41,000 words in the three nominations (not including the building
descriptions). Heck of a lot of words over 1-1/2 years. That's 2,192
words per day, seven days a week! Contact InformationKolby LaBree is the research coordinator for this project. You may contact her at househist@gmail.com or through our dedicated phone line at 360-778-8953. Additional information about the project can be found at the City of
Bellingham's website. Volunteer OpportunitiesA large component of this project is driven by volunteers in the three neighborhoods, plus a few go-getters from outside the neighborhoods. You can become involved with any number of aspects of the project ranging from:
If you are interested in getting involved with any or all of the project tasks, please contact us by one of the means listed under contact at the top of the page. The more the merrier! UPDATE: We have completed the volunteer portion of the project. Thanks is hardly enough for the huge amount of work we received from our small army of volunteers. Their efforts made this project possible!
Project Time LineBelow is the time line for Bellingham's Preserve America project current as
of 7/29/09:
Statistics for the ProjectWe started the project in January 2008 and have completed as of 7/29/09:
Project StatusThe following is a series of charts showing completion levels on the various
components of the survey as of 7/29/09:
Volunteer DownloadsThe following files are for download by the volunteers on the Bellingham Historic Resource Survey only. Some files are small, but some files are quite large, so be sure you look at the file size to the right of the file name before you click on a file. Right click on the file name and Save Target As, if you would like to save it to your computer. Otherwise, left click on the file name and a temporary version of the file will display on your screen. Most of the files below are in an Adobe Acrobat format (i.e., PDF extension). If you don't have Adobe Acrobat, you can download it for free from Adobe.
Sanborns:
City Directories:
History Write-ups:
Architectural Survey:
Kroll Maps c.1953 (right-click on the file name to download):
Press Releases, Articles and VideoThere has been some press on this project, all of it good! We've found Bellingham to be the most well-informed community that we've ever worked with. Nearly everyone we've run into on the streets has heard of the project we're doing. And those who haven't, have all thought the project was a great idea. Many people could tell us off the top of their head's when their house was built and some of the ownership history. Never have we encountered a community of people as knowledgeable about their history as in Bellingham! Here is a sampling of the press that we have seen:
Modified: 02/05/10
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