This post was contributed by Tish.

Maybe our project is a little misnamed. We have collected many architects who “changed the landscape,” but our project’s collections represent those who sought to preserve the landscape as well. Such collections make sense in North Carolina, a state with a long tradition of preserving its historic landscapes, structures, cemeteries, neighborhoods, and archaeological treasures.

It is difficult to say exactly when preservation efforts began in North Carolina. Certainly, the state’s historical memory is long, stretching as far back to pre-Columbian archaeological sites such as the Town Creek Indian Mounds. Early architecture is also well represented in the state, from the Newbold-White House (which may be the state’s oldest surviving structure) to the beautiful Georgian- and Federal-style buildings of New Bern, Bath, and Edenton. The survival of these places suggests that all generations of North Carolinians have shared at least a passing interest in what came before them.

What maybe described as an active movement towards historic preservation began around the turn of the 20^th century when various historic sites across the state began to attract committees interested in their survival. A fine example of such a committee is the Guilford Battle Ground Company, which incorporated in 1887 with the goal of preserving one of North Carolina’s most important battlefields. Another organized preservation effort began in the 1930s and culminated in the General Assembly’s sponsorship of the Tryon Palace Commission (1945) and led to the reconstruction of the colonial governor’s mansion and state capitol building at New Bern. Also around this same time, the Garden Club of North Carolina reorganized itself as the North Carolina Society for the Preservation of Antiquities. This group’s goal originally was to preserve the finest historic homes and gardens. Over time the group’s mission evolved and its modern incarnation, Preservation North Carolina, seeks to save both high style and vernacular buildings across the state.

National pressures came to bear in 1935 with the Historic Sites Act and in 1966 with the passage of the National Historic Preservation Act. Through these pieces of legislation, we get, respectively, the National Historic Landmarks Program and the National Register of Historic Places. North Carolina’s earliest entries on the National Register are the properties that now make up the state’s Department of Cultural Resources sites.

Historic preservation is now integrated into how North Carolinians think about the landscape. Nearly every town or city, big or small, has something it wants to remember and save, be it an old home or all of Main Street. There are multiple academic programs in the state devoted to training leaders in city planning and historic preservation. Popular blogs encourage us to remember what’s already been lost to the wrecking ball–and to prevent further losses.

The architects and builders we have collected at Changing the Landscape represent professional and academic efforts to participate in the state’s preservation efforts. From Professor Peter Batchelor’s Urban Design Assistance Program to David Fischetti’s twenty-year-long effort to save the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, our collections represent a broad swath of the history of preservation in North Carolina. We hope, ultimately, that these collections will prove useful to scholars of 20^th-century preservation efforts and to those who hope to make a difference in the future by preserving the past.