Focusing on the Present While Honoring the Past: LGBTQ Preservation as a Model for Revised Historic Preservation Practice

Abstract

As the field of historic preservation seeks to tell more complete stories, there is a disconnect between efforts to engage with diverse histories and many of the tools available to historic preservation practitioners. Traditional historic preservation tools are designed to preserve historic fabric and are, therefore, not always in alignment with community-based preservation in these underrepresented and historically ignored communities. Many marginalized groups have not historically had access to the stability of property ownership or have lived transient lives shaped by discrimination and displacement that have permanently affected the way they relate to and form attachment to place. This treatise explores these ideas through an analysis of Chicago’s LGBTQ community from the early twentieth century through the formation of its most visible gay neighborhood in Northalsted in the 1970s. In response to this disconnect with traditional preservation tools, this treatise proposes suggestions for how preservationists can support current LGBTQ communities by incorporating sense of place into preservation work and deferring to community values. Two community-based development projects in Northalsted provide one potential model for a more flexible approach to historic preservation that doesn’t rely on the strict preservation of historic fabric.