Los Angeles Conservancy

Location: Los Angeles, CA

Website: www.laconservancy.org

The Los Angeles Conservancy is a nonprofit membership organization that works through education and advocacy to recognize, preserve, and revitalize the historic architectural and cultural resources of Los Angeles County.

A small group of concerned citizens formed the Conservancy in 1978 as part of a community-based effort to prevent demolition of the Los Angeles Central Library, built in 1926. The Conservancy now has more than 6,000 members and hundreds of volunteers, making it the largest local preservation group in the U.S.

With a mandate of awareness, assistance, and action, the Conservancy works to preserve historic resources by developing preservation and reuse strategies, as well as raising awareness of their value in strengthening communities, conserving resources, fostering economic development, and enriching lives.

We work closely with neighborhood associations, heritage organizations, cultural institutions, and other preservation groups. We also spearhead and promote initiatives to facilitate preservation and deter senseless demolition, including the Mills Act and other investment tax credits, the Los Angeles Adaptive Reuse Ordinance, and the creation of historic districts.

The Conservancy’s proactive preservation efforts include the Broadway Initiative, which for over a decade has sought to revitalize downtown’s Historic Core; the Neighborhood Initiative, which provides outreach, programs, and services that help protect Los Angeles’ historic neighborhoods; and a Youth Outreach Initiative, which engages children and teens to cultivate the next generation of preservationists. Since 1982, we have officially recognized outstanding achievement in preservation through our annual Preservation Awards.

The Conservancy’s advocacy efforts have helped to save and revitalize such beloved landmarks as the former Cathedral of St. Vibiana, the Wilshire May Company Building, the Wiltern Theatre, the Cinerama Dome, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ennis House, and the world’s oldest remaining McDonald’s restaurant.

These are but a few of the countless historic resources that the Conservancy has worked to protect from demolition. We work with property owners, developers, public officials, and other stakeholders to find mutual solutions that preserve irreplaceable historic resources. We work closely with neighborhood associations, heritage organizations, cultural institutions, and other preservation groups.

We also spearhead and promote initiatives to facilitate preservation and deter senseless demolition, including the Mills Act and other investment tax credits, the Los Angeles Adaptive Reuse Ordinance, and the creation of historic districts.

Through a host of innovative educational programs, the Conservancy has introduced legions of Angelenos to the history and value of Greater Los Angeles’ built environment. Our series of architectural walking tours has served more than 100,000 residents and visitors over the past thirty years.

Additional special tours focus on the work of a particular architect, neighborhood, or architectural style. Launched in 1987 to draw attention to the plight of Broadway’s neglected movie palaces, the annual Last Remaining Seats film series entertains more than 10,000 people each year while demonstrating the vitality and viability of L.A.’s extraordinary historic theatres.

The Conservancy’s large and active membership reflects an unprecedented level of support for L.A.’s historic resources, and the Conservancy continues to gain ground in making preservation part of public policy, urban planning, and the public consciousness.

Landmarks Association of St. Louis

Location: St. Louis, MO

Website: www.landmarks-stl.org

St. Louis, bequeathed with a wealth of historically and architecturally significant buildings, owes the conservation and adaptive reuse of much of that inheritance to Landmarks Association of St. Louis, Inc.

Organized in 1958 and incorporated as a non-profit in 1959, Landmarks is the primary advocate for the region's built environment. Important victories from our early years include the Bissell Mansion and Red Water Tower in Hyde Park, the Chatillon-DeMenil House in Benton Park along with the Wainwright Building and Old Post Office in downtown. But in spite of many accomplishments, preservation was seldom included in the planning process. In the early 1970s, Landmarks embarked on an ambitious citywide survey to identify important sites and potential historic districts.

The survey pace accelerated in the late 1970s when the federal government passed legislation offering tax credits for renovating properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places. By the mid 1980s St. Louis led the country in historic tax credit reinvestment, thanks in large part to Landmarks' nominations to the Register.

Landmarks also played a key role in framing Missouri's historic rehab tax credit program in 1997. High-profile rescues resulting from this legislation include the Drury Plaza Hotel (encompassing the partly demolished Fur Exchange), the Westin Hotel (an adaptive reuse of Cupples Station) and the Sheraton St. Louis City Center, ingeniously inserted in the former Edison Brothers Warehouse. Without historic tax credits, these three sites and countless more including the Arcade Building would be surface parking lots.

Each May Landmarks presents a ceremony honoring St. Louis' 11 Most Enhanced Sites. Inaugurated in 1996, the list runs the gamut from those privately financed to those requiring every possible public resource. Projects recognized in 2007 (with costs ranging from $500,000 to $36 million) contributed $129,400,000 to the local economy. The total figure since we started keeping close tabs in 1998 is an astonishing $1.5 billion.

Landmarks' National Register nominations also provide essential background for publications including the organization's bi-monthly newsletter and a series of guidebooks. The most popular, St. Louis: Landmarks & Historic Districts first published in 1988, was revised in a greatly expanded version in 2002. That same year Landmarks released the third in its series of multilingual cultural tourism pieces based on public transit.

Designed to encourage international tourism and to introduce recent immigrants to easily reached attractions, the full-color brochures (Art on Wheels, Art on Rails) were funded in part by the Regional Arts Commission, the Whitaker Foundation and the Gateway Foundation.

Students participating in the WABMO program explore Daniel Chester French's sculpture, Peace and Vigilance, in the Old Post Office building.

In 1991, Landmarks created "What Are Buildings Made Of?" (WABMO) to introduce the built environment to tomorrow's leaders. An acclaimed heritage education program supported since its inception by the Regional Arts Commission, the original WABMO sessions were directed to students in the 4th through 6th grades. Since then the program has grown to include versions for high school and college students, for at-risk youth and for senior citizens. A WABMO for families and Architecture Weekends for adults will be offered starting in 2008.

By 2006, the Landmark Association recognized the need to establish an architectural center for metropolitan St. Louis to advance its core mission to preserve, enhance and promote St. Louis' architectural heritage and to ecourage sound planning and good contemporary design.

With an eye toward its 50th anniversary celebration in 2009, Landmarks embarked on an ambitious capital campaign, raising over $300,000 for the center. By late 2008, Architecture St. Louis was open to the public, quickly becoming an educational center hosting programs for children and adults and a gallery space for exhibits on contemporary architecture, architects and historic preservation.

Today, Landmarks draws its strength from a broad-based membership. The more than 1300 regional dues-paying citizens include architects, attorneys, developers, consultants, historians, neighborhood leaders, bankers and community volunteers who contribute expertise and participate as advocates.

Over the years they have supported Landmarks, even in the face of controversy. That is probably the legacy envisioned in 1962 by Roger Montgomery, one of the founders, who wrote: "We must encourage continued use and creative adaptation of existing buildings and districts. But it is a mistake to insist that there must be an economic income returned by all buildings. Preservation is often self-justifying on purely cultural terms."