A dated national preservation competition
The October 2017 archive described the Partners in Preservation Main Streets competition, involving American Express, the National Trust for Historic Preservation and National Geographic. Approximately $2 million in grants was associated with 25 participating proposals.
Voting was described as continuing through October 31, with winners to be announced November 2. Those were dates in the 2017 contest, not an invitation to participate in a current vote or apply for a present-day grant.
Two Dorchester buildings
Dorchester’s proposal paired the Pierce Building with the Streetcar Comfort Station. The discussion connected preservation with the Uphams Corner Arts and Culture Innovation District and neighborhood uses of older buildings.
The Streetcar Comfort Station on Columbia Road was discussed as a place for bicycle-related activity and a coffee shop. Bowdoin Bike School appeared in the neighborhood account. These proposed uses explained the community purpose of the preservation effort; they did not establish a later opening or operating schedule.
The participating places across the country
The archive’s roster ranged from the Alabama Theater in Birmingham to Richmond’s Market Street Mall, West Hollywood’s Formosa Café and San Diego’s Stevens-Hartley Annex. It also included the Carolina Theater in Greensboro, Las Vegas, New Mexico’s E. Romero Hose and Fire Building, Cincinnati’s Woodward Theater, Oklahoma City’s Yale Theater and Cape Girardeau’s Ives Square bandstand.
Other proposals involved Atlanta’s Bryant-Graves House, Casa Grande neon signs, a Steamboat Springs caboose, a historic Hyde Park cable car in Illinois and the Lyric Theater in West Des Moines. Miami’s Little Havana theater proposal and the Dorchester pair appeared alongside New Orleans’ Old McCrory’s Store, the James Hughes Building in Washington, D.C., Salt Lake City’s Granary District, the Collin County Courthouse in McKinney and the Dr. McPhail Building in Franklin, Tennessee.
The remaining community examples included Seattle’s Chinatown signs, Germantown’s Trower Building and Parker Hall in Philadelphia, Restoration Plaza in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, and a Livernois–Six Mile treehouse proposal in Detroit. They were distinct local projects within a national competition, not properties being offered for purchase.
Preservation as a community use
The article recalled earlier Partners in Preservation activity involving national parks. The Main Streets focus instead emphasized buildings, signs and public places associated with daily neighborhood life.
The useful history is the relationship between a grant contest, local organizers and proposed community uses. It does not certify a later grant award, the completion of restoration work or the continuing availability of the historical voting website.
Historical attribution: Original Boston City Properties article, October 2017. Reported claims and attributed assessments have not been independently refreshed.