Mark Z. Muggli

A Luther College Campus Historic District: Really?

by MARK Z. MUGGLI, Professor Emeritus of English and Decorah Historic Preservation Commission Chair

Some historians argue that Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” was the most wide-reaching domestic legislation in American history. But different parts of the program have had different histories. The 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act have been repeatedly decimated. The 1963 Clean Air Act, the 1964 Wilderness Act, the 1965 Motor Vehicle Pollution Act, the 1965 National Endowments for the Humanities and the Arts, the 1966 Endangered Species Act, and the 1967 Public Broadcasting System have been political lightning rods, but have survived. And the 1965 Medicaid/Medicare package, two national “cultural centers” (one is the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts), and many dozens of education, transportation, and safety programs are taken for granted as seemingly permanent features of American life.

I’m interested here in another Great Society program, the groundbreaking 1966 National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA). It’s less important than many of those other programs, but still worth studying. First, because it illuminates some program features that make for long-term viability. And, second, locally, because it underpins the 2021 Luther College Campus Historic District—one of only a handful of Midwest campus historic districts.

The National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA)

The NHPA had precedents (see Hamar and Sprinkle). Still, the NHPA can without much exaggeration be called the beginning of America’s national historic preservation program. The program has been modified, but mostly by being expanded. And often by opposing political parties. A few highlights: • The original 1966 act established a National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) and individual State Historic Preservation Offices (SHPO). • In 1976, Republican President Gerald Ford ratified the Historic Tax Credits program, which provides financial rehabilitation support for some NRHP properties. (In 2017 the Trump tax reduction bill threatened these tax credits. But a bipartisan congressional group saved the program. One of the group’s leaders was Iowa’s 1st Congressional District representative Rod Blum, typically a fiscal far-far-righter, but who in this case acknowledged the rejuvenation the historic tax credit program had brought to his hometown Dubuque, and perhaps recognized the financial benefits it had delivered to some of his major supporters.) • In 1980, Democrat Jimmy Carter ratified a new Certified Local Government (CLG) program that established local agencies like the 1985 Winneshiek County Historic Preservation Commission and the 2007 Decorah Historic Preservation Commission.

The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP)

To almost everyone’s surprise, a National Register of Historic Places listing is only honorific. Unlike some local or state listings that require design/renovation reviews, a property can be listed on the NRHP one day and demolished the next. That’s pretty much what happened in 2007 with Decorah’s 1896 East Side School. So that’s the first sad lesson about political viability: a program without teeth will be less controversial than one with strict consequences. Or perhaps the lesson is more subtle: the ideal program doesn’t have teeth, but is thought by most outsiders that it does! Despite being honorific, the NRHP designation has great cultural cachet. I’ll suggest two possible reasons. First of all, the original NHPA standards remain unchanged. The four criteria for “Significance” and the seven criteria for “Integrity” all remain, along with their accompanying explanations, even where the language is awkward or obscure1 . This continuity of standards promises a level, unchanging playing field. Second, the NRHP includes a rigorous nomination process involving local nominators, the local CLG, the State Historic Preservation Office, the State Nominations Review Committee, and the National Park Service, often with volunteer researchers and paid consultants along the way. Even a smooth nomination takes two years. More complicated nominations can take several. Many nominations are never completed. I once thought a National Register nomination was something like threading a small needle—challenging, but clear-cut and manageable. Nominating a complicated property or an historic district is actually more like hand-stitching a complete suit—jacket, pants, and shirt, and often including underwear, socks, and neck scarf.

Mark Muggli

Given the swarms of local, state, and federal history and preservation organizations, all with their own abbreviations, it is understandable that even wellinformed citizens are ill-informed about the National Historic Preservation Act. When I, for example, first joined the Decorah Historic Preservation Commission, as a tentative post-retirement commitment, I knew the difference between a hawk and a handsaw (see the voluminous commentary on Hamlet 2.2.365-74). But I couldn’t have distinguished the DHPC from the WCHPC, nor the WCHS (Winneshiek County Historical Society) from the DGA (Decorah Genealogy Association). I vaguely assumed the National Trust was a government agency. I called the National “Register” a “Registry.” And I surely didn’t know what it would take to get a property Register-listed. (I did, to be fair, have a longstanding passion for buildings old and new. My longanticipated memoirs will document how my interests were fed, first by the 1906 house I grew up in; later by the nineteenth-century Victorian brick house that my sister and her husband restored, and where my wife and I were married in 1976; more recently by our restoration of our 1896 Decorah home; and throughout by the privilege of much international travel.) My first DHPC meeting in late 2014 was deflating, since only two of the seven members were present. Without a quorum, then-chair Philip Younger (husband of then-Luther faculty member Nancy Simpson-Younger) and I just chatted. He outlined two possible DHPC projects: raising $100,000$250,000 for a downtown building restoration fund, or getting the downtown on the National Register. I gulped. I had a brief image of Philip and me cornering hard-pressed downtown business people, using a carefully honed good-cop/bad-cop setup to pressure them into creating our restoration fund by contributing any extra $50,000 they had lying around. I quickly suggested we take a shot at the National Register. Philip agreed. And a few months later he moved to the state of Washington. In 2017, over two and a half years later, the Decorah Commercial Historic District had been included on the National Register. When I went through our Commission files, I learned that this had been a local preservationist dream ever since the Broadway-Phelps Park Historic District had been established in 1976. I also learned that a consultant had in 2003 concluded that Decorah’s downtown was not a viable historic district. And I also learned that when DHPC hosted the 2012 annual statewide Iowa Preservation Summit, after much planning by Laurann Gilbertson, Kyrl Henderson (‘71), Lise Hedstrom, and others, the visiting SHPO staff suggested that Decorah’s downtown might well provide a viable district. Who knows how much SHPO’s judgment was colored by their staying in the newly restored Hotel Winneshiek, or by their lunches in the historic-cool La Rana? So, yes, however fixed the standards and processes, individuals and changing situations do affect outcomes. Establishing the Decorah Commercial district, with its 130 properties, was complex and demanding. We worked simultaneously on a much smaller, but more frustrating project to expand the Broadway-Phelps HD to include St. Benedict Church and the Public Library (née Federal Post Office). I therefore swore off more National Register work, and the DHPC began in 2017 to “catalog and celebrate the work of Charles Altfillisch,” a local engineer/ architect who had more impact on Decorah’s built environment than any other single individual.

The Luther College Campus Historic District

Working on Altfillisch led us to Altfillisch’s Luther College Main III. And before we knew it, Ryan Engelman (then on the Student Life staff and just coming off of a historic preservation position in Dubuque) and I had been asked by a joint Luther College/DHPC steering committee to co-lead a Luther College Campus Historic District nomination. Ryan agreed. And a few months later he moved to Minneapolis. Before he moved, Ryan and I developed a campus “Site Inventory,” a NRHP exploratory format that requires photographs and some basic documentation. Our Site Inventory had two emphases. First, the many mid-twentieth-century Luther buildings that had only recently met the NRHP “fifty-year rule,” a standard in some earlier U.S. preservation programs that was codified in the 1966 NHPA. Ryan and I partly wanted to counteract the popular Midwestern view that “historic” means “late nineteenthcentury Victorian.” Our emphasis on more recent campus architecture also

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Luther College's first National Register property: the ca. 1857 Ashmore Jewell Barn

IMAGE COURTESY OF LORI STANLEY

highlighted the remarkable Altfillisch record of having designed all Luther buildings between the 1926 Preus Gymnasium and the 1966 Miller and Dieseth Halls. Second, we wanted to raise up Luther’s distinctive Jens Jensen landscape. We hoped the Iowa SHPO would rave. Instead, it grudgingly acknowledged that Luther “might” be a designatable district. But that was all the encouragement we needed. Next step: hire a consultant. We were fortunate that Jan Olive Full, an Iowa City historic preservation specialist who had led the Decorah Commercial district nomination, was willing to apply, and also submitted the low bid. (Jan’s Loyola University Ph.D. on Midwest Norwegian immigration patterns made her a natural fit for both districts. She’s also a savvy architectural historian and a seasoned National Register consultant.) What followed in summer 2018 was a blitzkrieg of local research. Volunteer researchers are crucial to this kind of project. Without them, consultant fees would be astronomical. And local researchers often bring specialized knowledge that outside consultants can’t immediately match. We were blessed with around twenty volunteers from the Decorah Historic Preservation Commission and from the Decorah and Luther communities. Naming names is problematic, since some researchers volunteered heroic amounts of time, while others, for completely understandable reasons, had to bow out even before they had assembled the necessary files. In any case, a hearty, hand-clapping thank-you to all these volunteers. Without them, nothing. (Thanks also, of course, to the DHPC and the Luther College administration for supporting the project.) I must acknowledge college archivist Hayley Jackson, since she indefatigably provided the Luther Archive files whether they were indefatigably used or not. And I can’t help mentioning Professor Emerita of English Mary Hull Mohr, who out of her feminist convictions volunteered to research Brandt Hall, the first Luther purposebuilt women’s dormitory. Mary Lou did thorough, professional research. And given her death at 86 in April 2021, it was her last major project in a long, research-filled career.

By late fall 2018 we had a box of files documenting all extant college buildings, the landscape, and various campus “objects” like sculptures. Probably unknown to many Lutherites, Luther already had two NRHP properties. In 1979, perhaps to push the college to repair buildings then falling into disrepair, student Rebecca Hanson— evidently encouraged by anthropology professor Dale Henning—successfully nominated the Luther College Farm, a half-dozen buildings surrounding the 1857 Ashmore-Jewell Barn. At that time, a property could be listed on the National Register without the property owner’s permission, and from what I’ve heard, this was not a Luther College initiative. (The story of the farm’s striking restoration in the 1990s by Hans Peter Joregensen belongs to another essay.) Then in 1984, in preparation for a major building renovation, researchers led by then-assistant registrar Mary (Housker) Klimesh (‘76) placed the 1921 Koren Library on the Register. Both nominations are available on the DHPC website <www.decorahia.org/ historic-preservation/decorah-historicsite>.

Most early U.S. historic preservation was focused on individual buildings, although a few cities did establish historic districts from the 1920s onwards. The 1966 NHPA encouraged historic districts, but provided few guidelines. There is a story that Decorah resident Lucille Price dreamed of a Decorah historic district, but that the Iowa historic district legislation wasn’t yet in place. So she pushed local Iowa representative Semor Tofte to sponsor the necessary legislation. And soon after, in 1976, Broadway-Phelps became one of the earlier historic districts in Iowa. The Broadway-Phelps nomination was based on local research by the Luther College AAUW (The American Association of University Women). The nomination is signed by Price, “with assistance of Marlys Svendsen-Roesler, Division of Historic Preservation Staff member.” This level of named involvement of SHPO staff is, because of regular staffing cuts, no longer possible. (According to Library Emeritus Professor Duane Fenstermann, Svendsen [‘75] later became the first full-time City Historic Preservation Director in Iowa.) A comparison of the length and depth of the Broadway-Phelps and Decorah Commercial historic district nominations demonstrates how much expectations have increased in the last forty years.

Boundaries

Individual buildings typically have obvious physical boundaries, usually their property lines. The NHPA emphasizes that a visitor should also be able to sense a district’s boundaries. Geological boundaries are easily recognized. Many districts have notable anchoring buildings that mark potential boundaries. Broadway-Phelps HD, for example, runs along Broadway from the monumental Decorah Lutheran Church and the old county jail and the Courthouse, up through to the end of Phelps Park, which includes the one-of-a-kind Schulze Brick Kiln. The downtown Commercial district runs on Water Street--along with three intersecting one-block spurs--from the classic brick three-story 1876 Arlington Hotel/Vesterheim building on the west through to the rare gingerbready 1888 wooden train depot on the east. But district boundaries should not be “gerrymandered” in order to squeeze individual buildings in or out. Part of the game here is that buildings within a district have since around 1980 been designated as “contributing” and “noncontributing,” and a viable district must include a preponderance of contributing buildings. It’s therefore a disadvantage to incorporate areas with scads of noncontributing buildings. So what are the natural boundaries of Luther College? Those many beautiful acres of green hills and rocky valleys that surround the Luther campus were clearly not going to be included, given their paucity of buildings of any kind. And the Luther Farm only became Luther’s in 1935, and is already individually listed on the Register, so there was no good reason to stretch the district east across College Drive.

What about the lower campus? It was first developed in the late 1950s and the primary building, the 1963 athletic center, has been renovated often enough that it doesn’t retain historic integrity. Our consultant was especially bothered by the athletic center’s very unhistoric blue roof and its matching blue football field. But would excluding the athletic center and adjacent playing fields also exclude the 1966 Tower and 1991 Farwell dorms? I wanted to exclude Farwell, partly because it is so recent and would therefore be non-contributing; I wanted to include the Towers, partly because they meet the fifty-year rule, but especially because they are such distinctive buildings and are the brainchild of Charles Altfillisch, who was the impetus for this whole National Register project in the first place. So I made the case that Farwell Hall, although its bridge links to the upper campus, is essentially part of the newer, lower campus, where the bulk of its mass lies. But the Tower dorms, despite having foundations below the bluff like Farwell, actually feel like part of the upper campus. That’s one happy result of a project like this: it makes you see buildings and their relationships in new ways. By this point, then, we were leaning towards a district organized around the historic upper campus, with its natural geologic border running along the bluff line to the west and north, and roughly contiguous with the original 32 acres selected by Ulrik Vilhelm Koren in 1861. Still, boundary issues remained. Clearly the Center for the Arts and the Jenson-Noble Hall of Music, although

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IMAGE COURTESY OF BONNIE T. JOHNSON

Tudor Revival house at 408 High Street lege registrar J. Magnus Rohne, the father of one of Will’s Luther classmates. The public assessor (incorrectly) dates the house to 1925. But until I discovered a short Decorah Newspaper article, none of us had known that it was designed for Rohne in 1927—by Charles Altfillisch! Eureka! Another Altfillisch property on the Luther campus, and now a part of the proposed Historic District, even without gerrymandering.

non-contributing because of their age, were part of the historic upper campus and would be included.

But what about the Luther houses along Center Street? Most were built by college professors, are all now collegeowned, and are mostly used for student and faculty housing. Still, they wouldn’t be included, since they were not originally college buildings. And what about the Luther houses along High Street? • Sperati House was built in 1905 by Carlo Sperati (‘88) when he returned to Luther as a faculty member. It was later used as the Farwell and Anderson president’s house. And, besides, the building hovers close to the CFA. It gets included. • Gjerset House, built for the first college president, Laur. Larsen, in 1897 as he neared his 1902 retirement—and the first permanent president’s residence, after forty years of residence in Main I and II—seemed a natural to include. • And if you draw a more or less straight north/south line along that eastern boundary (including Gjerset, but excluding the Center Street houses), you’ll have included the 1927 Tudor Revival college house at 408 High Street, just east of the Jensen-Noble Music building. The house is significant because in 1932 it became the residence of President Preus. Wilfred Bunge had told me the house was built by the colnominations had shifted to Criterion A “History”—that is, toward the social, political, economic world that a building or district epitomizes. In fact our consultant checked both the “History” and “Architecture” boxes for Significance on the Commercial District nomination, but was asked by the State Historic Preservation Office to un-check “Architecture.” On the Luther project, the same consultant checked “History” as the source of Significance, but was told by SHPO to also check “Architecture.” Evidently our argument about Luther’s important mid-century buildings had resonated.

In NRHP nominations, significance is grounded in a particular “period of significance.” For Luther, the beginSignificance ning date was easy: at its 1861 founding A National Register property has four areas of potential significance: Luther became the first NorwegianAmerican institution to grant a baccalaureate degree. Being first made A. History Luther influential, through inspiring B. Association with important people later Norwegian-American colleges like St. Olaf, Concordia (Moorhead), C. Architecture and Pacific Lutheran, and by providing D. Archaeology these colleges with presidents, faculty, and staff from its own ranks and alumni. Like most pre-1966 historic preser- This founding era is embodied in the vation, most early National Register oldest surviving Luther building, the nominations emphasized architecture 1867 Brandt Parsonage (a.k.a. Campus (Criterion C). The Broadway-Phelps nomination includes some local history, but says that “The district’s significance rests primarily in the fact that it encapsulizes, intact, examples of virtually all of the major architectural movements found in the American Midwest from the 1850s to 1910, with scattered examples of later styles.” By the time of the Decorah Commercial District (2017), perhaps because so many architectural gems nationally had already been NRHPlisted under Criterion C, the focus of Luther College Pastor Nils Brandt and family in front of the 1867 Brandt Parsonage, known today as Campus House

Larson Hall, built in 1907, with original roofline and entryways

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House). The nomination’s end date is the college’s last fifty-year-old building, the 1969 Preus Library. As Professor Emeritus of Religion and Classics Wilfred Bunge and I worked with our consultant to periodize this long hundred-year history, we settled on two key turning points: first, the college’s 1931 dropping of its Classical Curriculum (a move closely tied to the college’s 1936 shift towards co-education); and, second, the gradual waning of the college’s ethnic identification, symbolized by the 1963-81 presidency of E. D. Farwell, the college’s first nonNorwegian-American president. Before the 1960s, architectural and historic significance was identified with national importance. The 1966 NHPA introduced a novel distinction between “national, state, and local” significance that led to a great expansion of the National Register. It is at first jarring to see the “local significance” box checked on the Luther Campus nomination— “What? Only ‘local’? Aren’t we more important than that?” (The Decorah Commercial HD is also “locally significant.”) Truth be told, it’s always easier to prove “local” significance than “statewide” or “national,” and once a nomination is listed, the level of significance is for most purposes invisible.

Integrity

With a district’s boundaries set and its significance explained, a National Register nomination describes the extant buildings that embody the district. Even if a building or district isn’t “significant” for its architecture, its architecture is foundational. Thus in addition to establishing each building’s history, the nomination evaluates each building’s “integrity”--the degree to which it still conveys its original character. The NHPA identifies seven aspects of integrity: “location, setting, design, materials, workmanship, feeling, and association.” (Of course many Luther buildings with obvious integrity are not “contributing properties” because they don’t meet the fifty-year rule.) Those final two qualities of integrity, “feeling’” and “association,” may seem almost comically impressionistic, but it’s actually a strength that the National Register allows—even insists upon— acknowledging that an art form like architecture has a subjective, emotional dimension. Yes, the 1907 Larsen Hall has lost its original front entryway, and the stone roofline cornice has been reworked and stuccoed over, and the east entrance has been filled in with glass block, and there are additions to the rear—but it does still “feel” like an important historic campus building and it exudes its “associations” with the college’s optimism as it built its first free-standing accommodations for students after almost forty years of housing students (and most teachers and administrators) in Main I and II.

In consultant Jan Olive Full’s opinion, three Luther properties potentially qualify for “individual nomination,” in addition to being “contributing” properties in this district nomination: the 1867 Brandt Parsonage, the 1933/36 Larsen/Pioneer Memorial, and the 1952 Main III. After years of championing the qualities of Charles Altfillisch’s 1952 Bauhaus-inspired International Style Main III, I felt vindicated by Jan’s judgment. And if Luther College ever manages a full-scale restoration of the building’s exterior (along with some much needed interior modernization), I think others will shed some of their nostalgia for the more ornate Main I and II, and come to realize that Main III is a classic building in its own right. Luther needs to recapture the excitement that led the editors to dedicate the 1952 Pioneer Yearbook to this important new building. Main III’s central tower evokes the mostly decorative, non-functional towers of I and II, but announces

Architectural sketch of Olson Hall by Charles Altfillisch, featuring the original windows, circa 1950s

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its own modern functionality and solidity. The south wing’s south entryway and window openings are distinctive. Unlike the small, raised entryways of I and II, Main III’s central entry is large, open, and close to the ground. For years people have said to me, “Main [III] is just a couple of boxes thrown together.” True, and so are most buildings, more or less. It’s the differing sizes of these three boxes, the differing angles at which they fit together, and their acres of glass that create such a strong, transparent, blufflining, arm-welcoming symbol of the whole campus. The judgment that Luther’s campus is significant for its architecture as well as its history, and the nomination’s appreciation for Luther’s mid-century buildings, especially for Main III, all more than satisfy the first goal of Ryan Engelman’s and my 2017 Site Inventory. And our second goal, to raise up Luther’s Jens Jensen landscape? That’s a little more complicated. Landscapes are inherently different from buildings: a building’s integrity usually depends on how little humans have intervened to change the exterior; a landscape design’s integrity depends on how much humans have managed the inevitable natural changes. Local resident Jim Iversen, Iowa State Aerospace Engineering Professor Emeritus, and Luther English Professor David Faldet (‘79) did a marvelous job documenting the original Jensen design and its current state. Drawing on the earlier work of Luther History Professor Emeritus John Christianson and on the 1987 Harrington/Grese landscape/ campus plan, Iversen’s and Faldet’s detailed research, map overlays, photographs, and tree and stonework census constitute a major contribution to our understanding of Jensen’s Luther work. (One by-product of a National Register nomination is the high quality research that it sometimes generates. The Luther NHRP files reside in the Luther College Archives as a permanent resource for future researchers. Christianson’s and Harrington/Grese’s work are also available there.) Although Iversen and Faldet acknowledged particular changes, they concluded that a surprising amount of Jensen’s original plan survived on the Luther campus. Faldet quoted Harrington/Grese’s conclusion that “The majority of [the] design elements that Jensen initiated at Luther College over 70 years ago . . . can be recognized as existing on the campus today” (4). Unfortunately, as noted by our consultant, Harrington and Grese in other places referred to these “existing design elements” as “traces.” At one point they acknowledged that “it is uncertain as to how much of [Jensen’s] plans were actually implemented” in the first place (H/G 1) and noted that in the twenty years prior to their study (1965-1985), new buildings and roadways, replacement of aged plants, and new plantings had “resulted in a movement away from Jensen’s concepts” (H/G 9). As I’ve hinted, the National Historic Preservation Act draws strength from the commitment of local, state, and federal government personnel. That can also be one of its challenges. The director of the Iowa State Historic Preservation Office at the time of the Luther nomination was an architectural historian who had co-written with Robert Grese the National Historic Landscape nomination of the Jensen-designed landscape for the Edsel and Eleanor Ford House in Grosse Pointe Shores, Michigan. She was very interested in and aware of Jensen’s work at Luther, but, in the end, could not be convinced that the existing Jensen landscape was complete enough to constitute a “contributing” element. This was a major disappointment, but not something we could do anything about. As established in the National Historic Preservation Act, the individual SHPOs play a central gate-keeping role in the development of National Register nominations.

Jens Jensen’s original landscape plan for Luther College, traces of which still exist as design elements on the Luther campus

Our consultant nevertheless artfully incorporated substantial Jensen materials into the Luther nomination. Drawing on her own dissertation research on Norwegian immigration patterns, she discussed the prairie/oak savannah intersection as the original Luther College setting. She demonstrated that Jensen drew upon that natural setting for his landscape designs. She identified the changes Jensen’s plan brought to the campus, and, using the work of Christianson, Iversen, and Faldet, documented subsequent changes to Luther’s campus, including additions of the last thirty-five years that are indebted to the Jensen legacy. The final result is that the Luther College Campus Historic District designation fully acknowledges the significance of Jens Jensen’s work, even though his contributions aren’t a “contributing element” in the nomination.

The Future

And what does this National Register designation mean for the future? Maybe not much. Since the National Register does not restrict an owner’s property rights, Luther might continue the modernizations that have maimed some campus buildings and undermined the Jensen plan. Most buildings are at their best when they are built. At that point they reflect the combined attentiveness, artistry, and spirit of both designers and owners. Main III typifies the diminishment caused by minor tinkering and major “improvements.” The windows have been altered from the original design, though window openings remain mostly intact. On the interior, the biggest problems are claustrophobic lowered ceilings, space squeezes caused by a badly-designed air conditioning system, and the loss of the sixth floor lounge. Olson Hall has suffered similarly, although less obviously. Loyalty and Koren, on the other hand, have been beautifully rehabilitated back to something resembling their original condition. And the extensive 2008 Valders Hall renovation did preserve the distinctive south-facing Altfillisch entryway and canopy. So there’s always hope that NRHP designation will make us more careful with all our campus buildings, including our Midcentury classics. But the 1966 National Historic Preservation Act also had a larger educational purpose. Along with the high-minded intentions of other Great Society programs like PBS, NEH, and NEA, and the Civil Rights, Voting Rights, and Endangered Species acts, the NHPA intended to make us a better people–to help us appreciate our common history, and to more fully live our founding ideals. The NHPA in particular was meant to draw upon local, state, and federal energies to help us recognize our architectural legacy, and to invigorate it for the future. Architecture is the most public and widely-available of the arts. You don’t have to buy a ticket. You just need to look around and live within the power of the buildings and designed landscapes that have been gifted to you. So maybe, just maybe, the Luther Campus designation as a National Register historic district will make us all more aware of the artful environment in which we are fortunate to work and live.

A Brief Annotated Bibliography

Two scholarly sources available at Preus

Library that I have found useful: David

Hamer, History in Urban Places: The

Historic Districts of the United States (Ohio State UP, 1998), and John H.

Sprinkle, Jr., Crafting Preservation

Criteria: The National Register of Historic

Places and American Historic Preservation (Routledge, 2014). All Decorah NRHP nominations are linked from the DHPC city webpage https://www.decorahia.org/historicpreservation/decorah-historic-sites. Federal Rehabilitation standards and the hundreds of accompanying bulletins illuminate NHPA’s intellectual and practical implications. The latest standards edition is at https://www. nps.gov/tps/standards/treatmentguidelines-2017.pdf. For the work of Charles Altfillisch, including a survey of his dozen-plus

Luther buildings, see the new DHPC

Altfillisch Historic Tour, a combination of a small printed brochure and extensive website materials: https://www. decorahia.org/historic-preservation/ historic-tours.

Notes

1. The standards are widely available, including in NPS Bulletin 15: https://www.nps. gov/subjects/nationalregister/upload/NRB15_web508.pdf