Northcrest Historic District

Current Northcrest Entrance Sign 2017.02.18

National Register of Historic Places

The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the official list of the Nation's historic places worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic value". Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service's National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America's historic and archeological resources and the process for adding properties to it. Of the more than one and a half million properties on the National Register, 95,000 are listed individually. The remainder are contributing resources within historic districts.

For most of its history, the National Register has been administered by the National Park Service (NPS), an agency within the United States Department of the Interior. Its goals are to help property owners and interest groups, such as the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and coordinate, identify and protect historic sites in the United States. While National Register listings are mostly symbolic, their recognition of significance provides some financial incentive to owners of listed properties. Protection of the property is not guaranteed. During the nomination process, the property is evaluated in terms of the four criteria for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places. The application of those criteria has been the subject of criticism by academics of history and preservation, as well as the public and politicians. A property listed in the National Register, or located within a National Register Historic District, may qualify for tax incentives derived from the total value of expenses incurred in preserving the property.

Properties can be nominated in a variety of forms, including individual properties, historic districts and multiple property submissions (MPS). The Register categorizes general listings into one of five types of properties: district, site, structure, building or object.

National Register Historic Districts are defined geographical areas consisting of contributing and non-contributing properties. Some properties are added automatically to the National Register when they become administered by the National Park Service. These include National Historic Landmarks (NHL), National Historic Sites (NHS), National Historical Parks, National Military Parks, National Memorials, and some National Monuments.

Northcrest Historic District

Sometime late in 2015 I was approached by my neighbor Paige Lozier who was associated with the GSU graduate program for a Masters of Heritage Preservation. She indicated that she'd like to approach the professor, Richard Laub about having one of his graduate student groups take up the effort towards getting Northcrest on the National Register of Historic Places. I gleefully committed my full support as I had given this some consideration in the past but the complexities of the submission were a bit overwhelming, and handed off materials I had collected over the previous 16 years as a Northcrest neighbor and curator of Northcrest history. As a result, a nomination was prepared in the spring semester 2016 by the HIST 8700 Case Studies in Historic Preservation class at Georgia State University (GSU).

Northcrest Historic District Project

Over a period of several months there were many meetings with neighbors and letters of support, from organizations like the Northcrest Civic Association, the Northcrest Hoe n' Hope Garden Club and individual neighbors as all the details were collected, surveys performed, and houses evaluated, to put together the application (called the Historic District Information Form (HDIF). This involved tons of work and research, thankfully done by the graduate group - the outcome was a completed HDIF form that was submitted to the NPS for evaluation (with funding provided by various Northcrest group donations).

• Northcrest Historic District: A GIS Analysis of neighborhood Development
• Northcrest Civic Association Signed Letter of Support
• HISTORIC DISTRICT INFORMATION FORM (HDIF)
• HDIF Keyed Photos and Scans H.1 - H.30
  

The result was that the Northcrest Historic District was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on May 5, 2017.

• Press Release 2017.05.05: Northcrest Historic District Listed in the National Register of Historic Places
• What the Northcrest Historic Designation Means for Northcrest Neighbors

A Few Notes by me, John Eaton

• I've added the images provided by the GSU graduate group using the Survey spreadsheet. For all the images, I've cropped, straightened and lightened images before inclusion (the latter to better expose details hidden in shadow). Those images are marked "- 2016.02.20 GSU" to indicate when they were taken and to give the group photo credit.
• During the course of adding the images I've also added all addresses (with just a few exceptions that weren't very relevant, like unbuilt lots - these were Non-Contributing. Also some lots were identified separately in the original plat codes but were combined into adjacent built lots - those were ignored as not relevant) that were on the survey spreadsheet, I've had to make some additions as a handful of addresses were missing. There are also several factual errors in the sheet that I've attempted to correct (these shows up as "this should be x") when a house has been mischaracterized - note that these corrections are my opinions and not the final arbiter of the classifications.
• Often the Historic District Contributing vs Non-Contributing is rather subjective and at times seem to be a bit inconsistent. I believe what was important in the Survey team was that a majority of homes contribute to the Historic District designation - if you don't agree and feel like your home should be contributing but isn't, I'm not sure what you can do to make that change. I believe that the designation is a snapshot in time - specifically 2016, so of course things can change and if there are tax ramifications regarding whether your home contributes or not, it may require some type of evaluation (not sure who would do this) to ensure that you can take advantage of those savings.
• Finally, if you have anything to contribute or have information that's incorrect, etc. please contact me and I'll see what I can do.
  

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