Historic Preservation
Project Description
The City of Rome is taking steps to strengthen the existing local Scenic and Historic Preservation District by applying for New York State and National Listing on the Register of Historic Places. If successful, the listing would provide enhanced opportunities for funding resources to protect and enhance the local district, as well as provide additional financial resources for building-owners within the district for capital improvements.
Being overseen by Bergmann, a consultant, they will assist the City of Rome in assessing the existing district, work with the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation on identifying contributing structures that would be worthy of nomination, and identify additional properties that are not currently known as historic resources.
The project is a multiyear, multiphase process that will involve research assistance from the Rome Historical Society as well has allowing the public to have a chance to actively participate in the identification and nomination process.
Benefits of Historic Preservation
Historic preservation is recognized largely for its quantifiable economic benefits, such as jobs created through rehabilitation and restoration projects, private investment through tax credit work, increased property values, heritage tourism, and adaptive reuse. Historic preservation is also beneficial to the environment. Historic buildings contribute to the green building movement. Recycling is a sustainable practice - older buildings reflect this concept through embodied energy, which is the energy that was expended to construct the building. The reuse of a historic building contributes to the kind of development that ensures minimal damage to the environment.
Project Background
The Rome Scenic and Historic Preservation District has been a recognized district. Along with the district recognition also comes local laws that provide orderly management and process for overseeing the district.
The local district is not widely known as a place of historic significance, although there are plentiful historic blocks with significant architecture and historical uses that have contributed to the development and growth of the City of Rome since its incorporation in 1870. Over the years, the community has asked the question, 'Why is the district important and what benefit is it to me as a property owner?'
This project will help answer those questions and provide some direct and indirect incentives for those who own or who are thinking about investing into the Rome Scenic and Historic Preservation District.
Community Development & Neighborhood Revitalization
Historic preservation has numerous community-based impacts, including the stabilization of property values, neighborhood protection from inappropriate changes to the public realm, and the promotion of civic pride. When investments are made in lower income neighborhoods, neighborhoods are revitalized and become attractive destinations for tourists, new residents and expanded economic activity.
Important Documents & Resources
What is Historic Preservation?
The term “historic preservation” generally applies to keeping older buildings as a functioning part of living history. It’s not about keeping the details of history in a museum state—usually it includes changes to the original building to meet contemporary needs or for compliance with current building codes. Maintaining older buildings and their historic integrity and materials can be undertaken in a way that is respectful to the building’s design and surrounding historic neighborhood. Proximity to walkable streets and transit facilities, mixed-use neighborhoods, and downtown revitalization are often byproducts of historic preservation.
