The National Register of Historic Places

 

Time has ways to change the importance of certain issues. Survival of a culture is directly related to economic viability, legalities, and keeping up with technological inventions. For a culture to continue, tradition and creativity must coexist in harmony.

 

The Recognition Letter

With Skinner’s help, and before we began the housing rehab program with CDBG funds, the proper steps to enter the Barrio into the National Register of Historic Places were completed. The application was received by the Archives on August 14, 1978, and published October 18, 1978. We were recognized for contributing to this effort among many others. We received an official letter, addressed to me, confirming our entry into the Register. The official report published three years later, by which time we had made more progress, states in part: (underline is mine)

Historic American Buildings Survey

Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service

Department of the Interior

Washington, D. C. 20243.  1981.

“PART VII. PROJECT INFORMATION

This project was undertaken by the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) of the Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service's National Architectural and Engineering Record (NAER) in cooperation with the Tucson Barrio Association, Inc.”

 

Also, on page 7 of the official Historic American Building survey of the Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service, it elaborates:

Fortunately attitudes toward historicity is constantly changing. The preservation of the Barrio Libre is an example of changing historical focus. An area virtually "ignored by the City throughout its history, the Barrio has only since the 1970s been recognized as the last remnant of Tucson's earliest residential dwellings, deserving of efforts made to preserve and document the neighborhood -

The Tucson Barrio Association is a non-profit organization having as its goals the development of programs to assist Barrio residents and property owners to maintain and rehabilitate existing structures, to encourage new construction on vacant lots, to reverse the de-population trend, and to increase the economic base through skills workshops and creation of new jobs.   

 

Three neighborhoods in Tucson were entered in the National Register of Historic Places at that time in this order: El Precidio, Armory Park, and Barrio Libre. I was told that these were among the first entire neighborhoods in the U.S. to be entered in the Register. Previously, you found only buildings, monuments, even historic sites as entries. Thus, after the other two, with them, we were part of setting a new precedent.     

In El Precidio, where the town and then the City of Tucson started, has a wider range of wealthy and imposing buildings, exotic adobe tradition, and more cultural wealth than other areas, although it has not preserved the same historic cultural uniformity. This neighborhood is tops and it is a fascinating place full of mixed historic characters. It has individual adobe buildings older and more magnificent than those in the other neighborhoods. It also shows the progressive intrusion of important Anglo construction influence along the years.

Across from Barrio Libre is Armory Park, designed from scratch with one main purpose which is to accommodate the personnel and workers as the railroad came to Tucson in 1888. At the advent of a new lifestyle and new technology, Armory Park is also a unique Historic neighborhood.

The whole City of Tucson and the Hispanic heritage was enhanced by the entries on the Register. We helped in the process of setting a new precedent; it gave the Barrio more power if we knew how to use it. Each neighborhood has its unique strengths. The two neighborhoods and one barrio cooperated very harmoniously, proof that choosing elements that create unity rather than division is an effective path to progress. Let it be stated that it was the most forgotten, ignored, and disregarded neighborhood that surfaced its quality to galvanize a force towards diagnosing the equal validity of recognition by the top national agency and able to share the value with others as well. What may seem like the greatest weaknesses, crumbling adobes, can be the greatest strengths: history. Piss on the demeaning word ‘minority neighborhoods’ that negative individuals try to impose.