Restoring Women's History through Historic Preservation

Although women have been the primary force in making the historic preservation movement as effective as it is, their contributions have been grievously underrecognized. The same is true of the role that historic sites play in telling the stories of women's contributions to society throughout American history. This welcome new book admirably fills those gaps, and deserves to be read by everyone eager to know of the indispensable role women have played in shaping and preserving the American experience. -- Richard Moe, President, National Trust for Historic Preservation If it is true that history begins at home, then this important book should interest us all. The essays present strategies by which activists in historic preservation and women's history, perhaps unaware of what the other can offer, can meet, learn, enlarge the scope and significance of both disciplines, and in that exchange, create even more effective public history. -- Margaret Supplee Smith, Wake Forest University Restoring Women's History through Historic Preservation will be a welcome contribution to the existing literature and will likely serve for a long time to come as the definitive work on women and historic preservation. The inclusion of specific case studies makes this book especially useful because it provides potential blueprints for similar women's history initiatives. -- Gabrielle M. Lanier, James Madison University

This volume reflects a growing commitment to historic preservation and shows how practitioners in both fields can benefit from an exchange of insights and create more effective public history.Historic sites are visited by millions of people every year, but most of these places perpetuate the public notion that men have been the primary agents of historical change. This book reveals that historic sites and buildings have much to tell us about women's history. It documents women's contributions to the historic preservation movement at places such as Mount Vernon and explores women's history at several existing landmarks such as historic homes, as wells as in a wider array of cultural landscapes ranging from nurses' residences in Montreal to prostitutes' quarters in Los Angeles. The book includes essays on six exemplary projects that have advanced the integration of women's history into historic preservation and closes with three perspectives on preservation policy and practice. National in scope but applicable in any locality, Restoring Women's History through Historic Preservation combines the most important recently published information with the best new research and covers many national, state, and local initiatives of the past decade. It collects in one volume the seminal work of twenty academic historians, preservationists, and professionals at parks and monuments throughout the country who examine practical ways to represent women's history through historic preservation programs. Over the past several decades, work in the areas of women's history and historic preservation has done much to change not only how we regard history but also how we might broaden the very notion of what we consider historical. This volume reflects a growing commitment to historic preservation and shows how practitioners in both fields can benefit from an exchange of insights and create more effective public history.