Facing development and decay, endangered US sites hope national honor can aid revival

To the casual visitor, Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo district might appear to be the thriving, downtown heart of the city’s Japanese American population, rife with boutique shops and cafes offering ramen, mochi and Japanese bar snacks.

But early this year, when skyrocketing rent prices forced the closing of the venerable Suehiro Cafe, a neighborhood fixture since 1972, it was another sign to longtime observers of the slow erosion peeling away the identity of one of the country’s last remaining Japantowns.

Now, Little Tokyo is among the places named to the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s annual list of America’s 11 most endangered historic sites, a distinction advocates hope can bring the attention and support necessary to preserve the site and prompt locally influenced development that maintains its character.

“It really underscores that Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo is a place that matters while recognizing the threats this neighborhood has been facing,” said Kristen Hayashi, director of collections for the district’s Japanese American National Museum, which opened there in 1992.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation’s annual list, now in its 37^th year, looks to highlight sites with historic significance, a definition encompassing more than just the homes and landmarks linked to American founders or political and military leaders.

“Our aim is to map out a commemorative and historic landscape in this country that honors the achievements of all Americans,” said Carol Quillen, the trust’s president and CEO. “The stories those sites hold matter and help us understand who we are as a people – and who we can become.”

This year’s sites include Eatonville, Florida, among the first self-governing, all-Black municipalities in the U.S.; New Salem Baptist Church in the former Black coal camp community of Tams, Virginia; Roosevelt High School in Gary, Indiana; and St. Croix’s Estate Whim Museum in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Quillen said that in compiling the list, her team looked for sites of historical significance facing imminent challenges while considering the level of local commitment and the suggestions advocates have recommended for moving forward.

In Los Angeles, Hayashi said Little Tokyo is the city’s second oldest ethnic neighborhood, a central part of the local Japanese American community for more than a century. This year marks its 140^th anniversary, dating to the opening of the neighborhood’s first Japanese-owned business.

Threats have faced the community before; the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II turned Little Tokyo into a virtual ghost town gradually claimed by Black Americans who came to the area to work in the war industry, Hayashi said. With the war’s end, it was revived as a safe haven to help Japanese community members get back on their feet.

Despite some movement into the suburbs, “this area remains the hub where Japanese people come to dine, to shop, to worship and to attend cultural activities,” she said.

But more recently, she added, transit construction and eminent domain actions have disrupted daily life and brought gentrification, and longtime small business owners have faced rising pressures as a result.

In that sense, Little Tokyo is emblematic of other sites on the list; along with threats of development, they face threats ranging from decay and neglect to structural issues posed by changing weather patterns.

Endangered sites face encroaching development

Quillen said most sites are not opposed to development. They just want a more thoughtful approach.

For instance, in Gary, Indiana, a coalition of local organizations is working to restore Roosevelt High, which opened in 1930 to serve Black Americans. The school, whose alumni include athletes, actors and members of The Jackson 5, has been unoccupied and deteriorating for several years, according to the national trust.

“What that group wants to do is retrofit and repurpose the building for uses that the community itself will determine,” Quillen said. “Our hope is to enable the solutions that the community wishes to see happen.”

Another example is the community of Eatonville, Florida, most commonly known among literary enthusiasts as the longtime home of African American novelist Zora Neale Hurston, who set many of her narratives there.

“Zora Neale Hurston and Eatonville are two sides of the same hand, because she includes Eatonville in so much of what she writes,” said N.Y. Nathiri, executive director of The Association to Preserve the Eatonville Community.

Eatonville was also home to the Hungerford School, a school for Black students modeled after the Tuskegee Institute and at one time comprising more than half the town’s geography. Educator and author Booker T. Washington once cited the community as a model of African American advancement, Nathiri said.

Now, the town faces challenges from developers eager to cash in on the largest undeveloped parcel of land in Florida’s Orange County, six miles north of downtown Orlando.

“When people are looking to develop and you are sitting on prime real estate, you are a target,” Nathiri said.

Nathiri said community revitalization advocates hope to nurture investment and community-driven development that preserves the area’s history while allowing Eatonville to become a hub of cultural heritage tourism.

“We are at a very important juncture,” she said.

Inclusion on list can galvanize preservation efforts

For sites on the list, Quillen said, the selection can draw attention from philanthropists, elected officials who can push needed policy changes and developers interested in working in cooperation with communities.

“We’ve had good success,” Quillen said, noting only a handful of the 350-plus sites featured throughout the program’s history have failed to survive. “The list is an effective mechanism for generating the resources that these places need to realize their plans.”

That’s what community advocates are hoping for in Tams, a once-thriving Black coal camp in isolated, rural West Virginia, where the New Salem Baptist Church remains its lingering vestige.

Trustees of the African American Baptist congregation approached the owner of the fledgling town, formed in 1908, about building a house of worship. The church, erected in 1921, is among the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s 2024 selectees.

Danielle Parker, executive director of the Preservation Alliance of West Virginia, said the designation highlights the African American experience in twentieth-century Appalachian coal mines, a story typically underrepresented in national historic preservation efforts. More than a quarter of Appalachian mine workers in 1920 were Black, she said.

With its early 20^th-century Gothic Revival-style architecture, including lancet-arched windows and ornately carved pews, the church became a town centerpiece, hosting Sunday school for local children and occasional community dinners and summer picnics.

The coal mine shut down in 1955 and its related camp structures were demolished, Parker said, and while the church remained, it has since fallen into disrepair. Community advocates have raised funds to address the needs, but it hasn’t been enough.

“Though the Church has stood for over 100 years and community support for its preservation is very strong, the building needs more upkeep and repairs than the small congregation can currently handle,” she said.

Parker hopes the national recognition can help church preservationists connect with people whose families lived and worked in Tams during its coal camp heyday. By spotlighting the little-known history of Black coal miners, she said, it could also bring more tourism to the area and highlight the working-class legacy of those whose coal-producing work helped create modern America.

Other selectees for 2024 include a Civil War battlefield in Virginia, a lighthouse in New York and the Tangier American Legation in Morocco, which became the first American public property located abroad after being gifted to the U.S. by the Moroccan Sultan in 1821.

Reimagining the past for the present

In Los Angeles, Hayashi said Little Tokyo's inclusion on this year's list will allow district preservationists to tap the network of previously named sites – notably two of last year’s selectees, Philadelphia Chinatown and Seattle Chinatown-International District – for guidance about how best to proceed.

Efforts are underway to promote local ownership and mixed-use projects favoring legacy businesses. Ideally, she said, Suehiro Café, the cherished community restaurant that two Japanese sisters opened more than a half-century ago before it closed in January, could make a return.

“They’re imagining a Little Tokyo that is vibrant and surviving and serving people in the present,” Quillen said. “They don’t want to dip it in amber…. Our job is to hold up the efforts of these communities and help them attract attention.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: US historic sites in danger could get boost from national honor