Should a Parking Lot in D.C. Be Saved in the Name of Historic Preservation?

Aaron Wiener begins his coverage of the parking lot as historic landmark by telling the story of its original development in 1942, as a pioneering suburban retail landmark. The site has changed hands, original developed as a Garfinckel's and some features of the neighborhood have also changed (the end of racial covenants, for instance), but developers are still interested in the site.

"Last fall, Miller sold the Spring Valley Shopping Center on Massachusetts Avenue NW, anchored by the Crate & Barrel that took over the old Garfinckel’s space, to the Washington Real Estate Investment Trust. WRIT, as it’s known, recently announced plans to erect a two-story building on a portion of the parking lot between Crate & Barrel and Capital One Bank, with ground-floor retail topped by offices or additional retail."

And here's the rub. Residents would rather keep the parking lot, and they're pulling the historic preservation card to make the case. The argument isn't that this particular parking lot has some unique design or environmental feature that makes it outstanding. Rather, "what some neighbors do claim is that because the parking lot was built at a time of car-focused retail development, it is an historic landmark," according to Wiener.

Weiner goes on to provide a lot more detail about the specific example of the Spring Valley case study, as well as the larger question about the nature of historic preservation it raises. For the record, the case for parking lots as a signature feature of American development history was made in detail by David Rotenstein on the National Council on Public History website in 2014.