Two recent wins in historic preservation underscore the different ways that preservation can be achieved -- through private and government efforts. Let's hope we see more of both, as well as efforts that combine private and public interests.
In Winston-Salem, members of tiny Lloyd Presbyterian Church have raised $218,000 for the renovation of their whitewashed building, surpassing a goal of $201,000, the Journal's Mary Giunca reported recently. That's quite a victory for a church with fewer than 50 members. But their cause was worthy indeed.
For more than a century, the congregation on Chestnut Street has been a bedrock for rapidly changing eastern Winston-Salem. Hundreds of the community's leaders worshipped and raised their families in the church, which also ran a school. The local chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality met at the church during the civil-rights movement. The church has run a tutoring program in recent years and still runs a day shelter for the homeless.
The church building is the second oldest black church building in the county and one of its few Carpenter Gothic Revival buildings. So as revitalization efforts take shape in the congregation's neighborhood, it's only fitting that its church building, which dates back to the early 1900s, should be renovated as well.
The other preservation win is in Boone, where the town bought the downtown post office building for $1.25 million --after a lot of encouragement from the citizenry. When word got out last winter that the U.S. Postal Service wanted to sell the building, people let the town know that they wanted the post office to be saved.
"To me, it's a real statement by the town about how important the downtown is," Bettie Bond, the chairwoman of Boone's Historic Preservation Commission, told the Journal's Monte Mitchell.
The Colonial Revival building, constructed of stone in 1938 as a Works Progress Administration project, is a Boone landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It will continue to serve as a post office. Town officials are open to feedback about how to use the part of the building not needed by the post office. Here's the best part of the deal: The money to buy the building came from the town's general fund, so the post office is already paid for.
It takes private efforts and public efforts, and combinations of the two, to make historic preservation work. Let's hope that combination works for the Nissen House in Lewisville, and for other buildings that we should save from the wrecking ball in the years to come.
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