Sample Nominations - Areas of Significance - Ethnic Heritage

One-story rectangular (31’-9” x 20’) lodge hall or sala, has stuccoed adobe block walls atop a concrete foundation,
Chama Sociedad Proteccion Mutua de Trabajadores Unidos (SPMDTU) Lodge Hall, Colorado

Photograph by Thomas H. Simmons, courtesy of Colorado State Historic Preservation Office

Chama Sociedad Proteccion Mutua de Trabajadores Unidos (SPMDTU) Lodge Hall
Colorado, Reference number: 100003273
Area of Significance: Archeology-Historic, Architecture, Ethnic Heritage: Hispanic, Social History
Period of Significance: 1920-1968

Locally significant for its architecture as an intact example of a SPMDTU lodge hall, or sala, dating to the 1920s, the Chama lodge served the fraternal and social needs of the local Hispanic community. Hispanos formed mutual aid societies to combat prejudice and exploitation, to educate their members about the laws and institutions of the United States, to welcome new arrivals to the communities, and to plead cases of injustice before the appropriate authorities. The society provided such benefits as life, sickness, and burial insurance to its members. It also played an important social role in the community, particularly through dances that were open to all residents of the vicinity.
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3 story brick building on corner of street
Quincy Grammar School, Boston, MA 100001458  

Photograph by Neil Larson, courtesy of Massachusetts State Historic Preservation Office

Quincy Grammar School
Massachusetts, Reference number: 100001458
Area of Significance: Ethnic Heritage: Asian American, Education, Social History, Architecture
Period of Significance: 1848-1976

The Quincy Grammar School was nominated as a very rare example of a public school closely associated with the Chinese and Chinese-American community. Truncated to three (from four) stories after a hurricane damaged its roof, the Quincy Grammar School achieved its existing external appearance in 1938, within its period of significance.
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Houses set back from a street
Collier Heights Historic District, Georgia

Photograph by James R. Lockhart, courtesy Georgia State Historic Preservation Office

Collier Heights Historic District
Georgia, Reference number: 09000457
National level of significance
Area of Significance: Ethnic Heritage: Black, Social History, Community Planning and Development, Architecture
Period of Significance: c. 1915-1979

Collier Heights is the foremost mid-20th century African American suburb in Atlanta and the premier example of a mid-20th century suburb created for and by African Americans in the country. Its preeminence derives from its unique combination of sheer size, the number and range of its single-family homes, the quality of its planning, design, construction, and landscaping, its association with and the prominent role played by African Americans in all aspects of its development during a time of strict housing segregation in the South and nationally.
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A tall, one-story, rectangular building with a raised, finished, full basement, and an asphalt-shingled roof with an arched-front brick vestibule and domed cupolas
St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Church, Wilmington, Delaware

Photograph courtesy of Delaware State Historic Preservation Office

St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Church
Delaware, Reference number: 100006071
Areas of Significance: Social History, Ethnic Heritage: European/Ukrainian, Ethnic Heritage: Black, Exploration/Settlement, Architecture
Period of Significance: 1909-1970

This nomination documents a community-led preservation effort for a former Ukrainian community church, St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Church, now New Calvary Baptist Church. The complex history of this property tells both the story of Ukrainian immigration to Wilmington, Delaware, at the turn of the 20th century and the experience of an African American congregation in Wilmington after the failed urban renewal efforts. The building reflects the ethnicity and Eastern rite religion of the group that built it, as well as specific adaptations that reflect the building’s current Baptist era.
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First page of Clotilda nomination
Clotilda
Alabama, Reference number: 100007119 – restricted,
Areas of Significance: Maritime History, Archeology/Historic, and Ethnic Heritage: Black.
Period of Significance: 1855-1860.

Clotilda is listed under Criteria A and D, at the national level of significance, and is known to have transported 110 African captives purchased on the west coast of what is now Benin to Alabama in violation of federal legislation outlawing the importation of slaves. On July 9, 1860, Clotilda’s captain and builder scuttled and burned the schooner to avoid seizure and examination by federal officials. The vessel is nationally significant for its association with the last known slave trading voyage that brought captives to the United States and the only archeologically recovered example of an American slave trading vessel lost in the transatlantic slave trade whose remains have been located and positively identified. Clotilda assumes additional significance when understood in tandem with the post-Civil War founding of Africatown (itself a nationally significant historic district listed in the National Register) by some of the very individuals who had been forcibly held captive aboard Clotilda. (See Section 8, pp. 40-41 for sample research questions.)
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Last updated: December 20, 2023