conditions of suitable adaptive uses.” This study created the preservation criteria for one of the country’s most significant early adaptive use projects, Quincy Market. SPNEA’s other signature achievements from this heady decade included the 1966 launch of the “Preservation Management Program” and the 1968 commitment to help establish the graduate program in American and New England Studies at Boston University. Both continue today. The Preservation Management LEFT Abbott Lowell Cummings interviewing women at 47 McLean Street, Boston, 1959. Program, in which the orgaRIGHT Façade of 47 McLean Street, originally built 1825-50, HABS image, Cervin Robinson. nization took ownership of important buildings but Buildings Survey (HABS). Street-by-street surveys in the late maintained them, as Appleton had long ago hoped, on the tax 1950s identified representative buildings for documentation rolls as rental and adaptively used structures, has evolved into and in 1959 HABS, using Cummings’ selections and building Historic New England’s Preservation Easement Program. notes, photographed a series of doomed structures on streets As the 1960s came to a close, Bertram Little retired and that would soon be swallowed by urban renewal. Abbott Cummings assumed leadership of SPNEA. Much of A review of SPNEA’s annual reports shows how involved Appleton’s vision had been accomplished in the sixty years the organization was in the early phases of the preservation since the organization’s founding. As movement. All through the 1960s, Little and Cummings board President Charles F. Batchelder would be called upon to help steer the movement, which noted, Appleton “saw the urgency of “without question” commanded the “major part” of their preserving our architectural heritage, attention. Both men were “cheerfully devoted to bringing the and had the courage to start, and the Society’s experience and consultative services to the…multiquality to establish high standards.” faceted problems in the historic preservation field.” That urgency and courage, and the Little and Cummings contributed to pioneering architechigh standards set early on, bore fruit tural surveys in Boston’s South End and Charlestown areas, in the 1966 Historic Preservation Act, helped organize newly formed state historical commissions supported in large part by work that in New Hampshire and Connecticut; argued against urban Historic New England cultivated and renewal in downtown Newburyport, Massachusetts, and for nurtured over the years and which preservation of Boston’s Commonwealth Avenue and the still invigorates our region today. Back Bay district; spoke to local preservation groups from Historic Salem, Massachusetts, and Historic Boston to the —Sally Zimmerman Greater Portland Landmarks Society in Maine; and lectured, Senior Preservation Services Manager taught classes, and spoke on the radio about restoring houses and organizing for advocacy. The preeminence of SPNEA’s collaborative expertise and leadership culminated in 1967 when it entered into a South Market Street, Boston, study contract with Architectural Heritage Incorporated and the image for Faneuil Hall reuse projBoston Redevelopment Authority to study “the practicalities ect, c. 1967, from Frederick A. Stahl of preserving the historic and architectural integrity of the Archive. Faneuil Hall Markets and Blackstone Area under present-day 14
Historic New England Fall 2016