National Preservation Month, National Park Service

Places

Hampton Mansion

Historic view of Mutual Building
Mutual Building, historic view

Gardens of Alcatraz

Capitol Music Hall

Hampton National Historic Site, Baltimore, Maryland
Built as a country seat just after the Revolutionary War by a prominent Maryland family, the Georgian mansion and its grounds have been wonderfully preserved. Now, the site is embracing the future. As part of the National Park Service's Centennial Initiative, the park is implementing a geothermal-based heating, ventilating, and cooling system for Hampton Mansion, demonstrating that the best of new technologies can work in harmony with the places of our past. Hampton National Historic Site is at the forefront of reducing the environmental impacts of park operations.

Mutual Building, Lansing, Michigan
Now known as the Christman Building, this 1928 National Register listed property was originally constructed to house an insurance company that insured many of Michigan's industrial mills. The recent rehabilitation of the building as the headquarters of a construction and development company was certified by the National Park Service for the Federal Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credits. It also earned the first double platinum LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification, demonstrating that historic preservation and green design can work in tandem.

Gardens of Alcatraz, San Francisco, California
For more than a century, gardens played an important role for officers, families, and prisoners confined to Alcatraz by duty or sentence. In partnership with the Garden Conservancy and the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, the National Park Service is restoring the gardens. A Save America's Treasures grant provided funding to restore the garden's structural elements, rehabilitate plantings, and develop the garden infrastructure needed to sustain them.

Wheeling National Heritage Area, Wheeling, West Virginia
The Wheeling National Heritage Area celebrates the city's dramatic setting along the Ohio River, providing experiences in Victorian architecture, waterfront parks, historic city markets, renovated industrial buildings, and West Virginia Independence Hall, the birthplace of the state of West Virginia. The Wheeling National Heritage Area Corporation is leading efforts to bring the Capitol Music Hall back to life. Since its opening in 1928, this grand Beaux-Arts theater played a vital role in Wheeling's economy and image. Through historic preservation efforts, the theater will once again bring life and economic stimulus to historic Wheeling.

Historic preservation involves more than buildings. Objects and structures are eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. The Saturn V rocket, which made the first manned orbit around the moon in 1968 and was later used in all lunar landing missions, was listed in the National Register in 1978. The rocket was restored with a Save America's Treasures grant and it reopened in Houston in July 2007.