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I’ll never forget the first time I saw the campus of my college: as I pulled up the drive, the historic belltower of Main Hall emerged from behind the branches of a magnolia tree and the rocking chairs lining the wraparound porch swayed in the wind. I instantly felt at home.
The feeling that the sight of Main Hall elicited in me that day reflects the value of historic preservation on college campuses, the Hon. Sara Bronin, chair of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, explained to me. During our conversation about the opportunities and challenges of historic preservation on campuses, she emphasized that historic buildings on college campuses “connect us to those campuses’ legacies. Oftentimes they tell the story of the evolution of the university, the people who founded and contributed to a university’s rise, and they help to attract people because they’re usually among the more beautiful buildings on a university campus.”
These buildings play a pivotal role in fostering a sense of community on campus. “Historic buildings,” Bronin said, “can contribute to a sense of identity and a sense of place on a campus. They become symbols of campuses.” To illustrate this, Bronin spoke of her time at the University of Texas at Austin: “The tower at the University of Texas campus, where I went to school, was designed and constructed in the 1930s by Paul Cret, who was a noted architect at the time. The investment that the University of Texas made as a public institution in that large building was really an attempt to put the university on the map. To distinguish it, not as a small town rural university — Austin was much smaller in the 1930s — but as a player among national universities. And today that tower continues to create a sense of identity and orientation for students on the campus. It’s lit burnt orange when the university, or its football team, or one of its students, or faculty, have a notable achievement. And it continues to be the center of campus.”
But aside from the aesthetic appeal and community-building that historic buildings can contribute to a campus, they also have real value when considering sustainability concerns. “The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation recently adopted a policy statement on climate change and historic preservation, essentially arguing that any institution has the opportunity to consider climate adaptation and mitigation strategies in historic buildings, and that we, as Federal policymakers, need to help support that,” Bronin said. At the same time, she went on to point out, “the policy statement also recognizes that historic preservation is essentially sustainable. Reusing existing assets, as in the case of historic buildings, means that we’re not building new ones, and we’re also not casting aside the embodied energy that has been used to create.”
Opponents of historic preservation efforts often cite the need to provide students with modern amenities in order to remain competitive. However, Bronin explained that “the historic nature of older campus buildings doesn’t necessarily prevent them from being modernized to meet current needs. There are some pretty interesting and innovative mechanical, electrical, and plumbing system techniques. There are ways to ensure that new additions are compatible with historic fabric, and you can see examples all over the country. When an institution thinks carefully about modernization, it can be done in a way that ensures the buildings can be used for many years to come in university settings.” Modernization and preservation, in other words, need not be mutually exclusive. It is possible, with careful planning and maintenance, to have both.
Modernization is not the only concern that preservationists must navigate when working with colleges. Many colleges in recent years have begun to reckon with buildings on their campuses that were built by enslaved people or funded by or named for enslavers. Bronin acknowledges the challenges associated with painful histories, saying, “Preservationists all over the country have grappled with how to deal with monuments to the past that have been associated with painful histories. When you think about things like statues, those are primarily commemorative, so they don’t fit, in the typical instance, into our historic preservation framework at the Federal level — including the National Register of Historic Places, which specifically excludes commemorative works. And so, from a federal policy perspective, those are not considered to be part of the history that’s worth listing on the National Register. I think campuses have generally done a good job of raising these issues and respectful debate and considering how views and perspectives and values have evolved since some of these things were first created.”
As I learned from Bronin, historical preservation efforts can in fact be a crucial tool in preserving significant parts of Black history. When speaking with Jacob Mossbrook, who works with Bronin for the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, he noted the importance of the National Park Service’s HBCU program in preserving history on Historically Black College campuses: “National Park Service’s HBCU Grant program has been active since 1995, and it was recently reauthorized in 2019 through language within the Natural Resources Management Act ensuring funding until 2025. As a result, dozens of preservation projects on HBCU campuses have been funded each year, and in 2023 alone $9.7 million were administered to HBCUs by the National Park Service (National Park Services).” For example, Clark Atlanta University received two (one in 2018 and one in 2021) HBCU grants totaling $1,000,000 to restore Park Street Church, a building that served a significant role for its community, providing support and assistance for those who traveled to Atlanta for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s funeral following his assassination. The grants allowed the University to thoroughly rehabilitate the gothic revival church, allowing the structure to be repurposed to house Clark Atlanta University’s music and art departments.
While preserving historic buildings may come with challenges, the benefits of maintaining our campuses’ architectural heritage are immeasurable. Historic buildings not only showcase our colleges’ identities, but also are valuable to sustainability efforts and preserving the broader history of our country. Historic preservation on college campuses is not merely about the physical buildings; it’s about fostering the legacy not only of the colleges, but the communities that have called them home.
