CURATOR CORNER: May 2024
Preservation Month

Every year in May, Preservation Month is celebrated across the United States by local preservation groups, state historical societies, and business and civic organizations. Beginning as National Preservation Week in 1973, it evolved into Preservation Month to celebrate and recognize our country’s diverse and unique heritage. More than 95,000 properties across the United States have been listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and two properties operated by the Olympic Regional Development Authority (ORDA) are featured on the list: The Olympic Bobsled Track at Mount Van Hoevenberg and the Whiteface Memorial Highway.

National Register of Historic Places History

The National Register of Historic Places dates back to 1966 when Congress passed the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA). The NHPA created extensive preservation laws that outlined the steps for historic preservation in the country. The National Park Service explains how the need for the NHPA came about:

“After World War II, the United States seemed poised at the edge of a limitless future, and its vision of progress was characterized by the sleek and the new. Urban renewal was seen as a way to clear out the slums, get rid of “obsolete” buildings, make space for an exploding population, and accommodate the burgeoning car culture. Wide swaths were demolished: entire blocks, neighborhoods, business districts, all razed to make way for the new. By the 1960s, urban renewal had altered the face of the nation’s cities.”

Historic landmarks, like the New York Pennsylvania Station, were being demolished, and America was threatened with a loss of unique culture, heritage, and architecture. The NHPA changed that trajectory, and with the law’s passing, it also created the National Register of Historic Places. This register is “an official list not only of individual buildings and structures but also of districts, objects, and archeological sites that are important due to their connection with the past” (National Park Service).

Specific criteria are used to evaluate if a property is eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. The criteria include:

  1. If the property is associated with events that have significantly contributed to the broad patterns of our history.
  2. If the property is associated with the lives of persons significant in our past.
  3. If the property has distinctive characteristics of a type, period, or method of construction, or that represents the work of a master, or that possesses high artistic values, or that represents a significant distinguishable entity whose components may lack individual distinction.
  4. If the property has yielded, or may be likely to yield, information important in prehistory or history.

Criteria C is the most commonly used on property evaluations because of the many pieces of unique architecture across the country.

Lake Placid Legacy Sites Connection to the National Register of Historic Places

Mount Van Hoevenberg’s Olympic Bobsled Track

View Mount Van Hoevenberg Olympic Bobsled TrackIn 2010, the Olympic Bobsled Track at Mount Van Hoevenberg was added to the National Register of Historic Places. The Olympic Bobsled Track met criteria A (contributed to history) and C (distinctive architectural characteristics). The areas of significance the track met included recreation and engineering.

Kathleen LaFrank of the New York State Historical Department helped to direct the research for the application. Phil Wolff, Lake Placid Hall of Fame 2002 inductee, assisted in leading the effort to get the bobsled track on the register. He stated that “this is a tremendous achievement for everyone involved. This bob run has played a significant role in this region’s history and heritage and deserved to be declared a historic site.” (Lake Placid News, February 12, 2010).

1980 Olympic Winter Games MVHPreviously known as South Meadow Mountain, Mount Van Hoevenberg became the site of the first bobsled run in North America. Construction of the bobsled track for the 1932 Olympic Winter Games began in August 1930. German engineer Stanislaus Zentzytski and engineer Henry Homburger, from Saranac Lake, worked together on the bobsled run design. On Christmas Day in 1930, the 1.5-mile track opened to the public, and two years later, as a bobsledder, Homburger went on to win a silver medal in the four-man bobsled event. In the European tradition, each track curve was named. Whiteface, Shady, and Zig Zag quickly became respected and feared curves worldwide.

For the 1980 Olympic Winter Games in Lake Placid, a new bobsled track was built and modernized with cement curves and refrigeration. The first luge track in North America was built almost parallel to the bobsled track and was designed by Jan Steler, secretary general of the International Luge Federation.

View Mount Van Hoevenberg Olympic Bobsled Track listing on the National Register of Historic Places here: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/75317791

Castle and Summit House of Whiteface Mountain

Whiteface Memorial Highway

In 2008, Whiteface Memorial Highway was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Whiteface Memorial Highway met criteria A (contributed to history) and C (distinctive architectural characteristics). The areas of significance the highway met included engineering, recreation and entertainment, landscape, architecture, and transportation.

Whiteface Memorial HighwayConstruction of the highway began in 1929 as part of the Great Depression public works projects. The highway officially opened with a ribbon-cutting ceremony in September 1935, attended by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The elevator, Castle, and Summit House were completed three years later. Just over 8 miles long, Whiteface Memorial Highway is an impressive work of civic engineering that retains most of the original features that clearly distinguish it as an early 20th-century mountaintop highway. Some of those features include:

  • A series of stone retaining walls to support the highway.
  • Stone guide rails and large stone cairns along the route.
  • Scenic turn-off locations to let visitors see the panoramic views

Whiteface Mountain, the fifth largest peak in the Adirondacks, is the only mountain with a path to the summit accessible by vehicle. Once reaching the summit, by either the pathway or elevator, visitors will see spectacular 360-degree views that include over 100 bodies of water, the mountainous terrain of three states, and two provinces of Canada.

View Whiteface Memorial Highway’s listing on the National Register of Historic Places here: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/75317808

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Written by Julia Herman