Arts & Entertainment

Michigan gets four Historic Place designations

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By ERIC FREEDMAN
Capital News Service
LANSING — The roster of Lower Peninsula sites on the National Register of Historic Places has grown by four with new designations in Saugatuck, Elk Rapids, Alpena and Detroit. Among them are a 1904 pump house and a turn-of-the-20th-century church, both now serving as local history museums.

“The National Register is the official list of the nation’s historic places worthy of preservation,” according to the National Park Service (NPS), which administers the program. Sites must be significant “in American history, architecture, archeology, engineering and culture” and “possess integrity of location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling and association.”
Under NPS guidelines, they are “associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of our history or with the lives of significant persons in our past.”
In West Michigan, the brick Saugatuck Pump House on the bank of the Kalamazoo River marks where Saugatuck developed its water system after devastating fires wiped out a hotel and other buildings. No organized fire department existed at the time, and the village was gaining popularity as a tourist destination, connected by steamship to Chicago and by rail to Grand Rapids, according to the nomination. The building was abandoned in the 1930s because its pumping and generating functions were inadequate, and it was later renovated as a cottage by private tenants.

Arts & Entertainment

Lawmakers seek to ease restrictions on historic districts

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By JASMINE WATTS
Capital News Service
LANSING— State lawmakers are pushing to change a law that preserves historic districts so that residents will have a greater say in how they can modify their homes. A coupleof  Republican legislators want to rewrite the 45-year-old Historic Districts Act so that the people it affects will be able to modify their homes without being easily denied by the historic preservation committees in charge of them. Historic districts are areas with buildings deemed significant to a city’s cultural history. They allow communities to preserve the richness of the past, while providing continuity for the present and future, according to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. There are 78 in Michigan, including ones in Cadillac, Grand Rapids, Holland, Manistee, Three Rivers and Traverse City, according to the Michigan State Housing Development Authority.