Monday’s meeting marked the night both preservation supporters and opponents have long been awaiting: Evanston City Council aldermen finally made a decision about the Northeast Evanston Historic District.
And they passed it 6-3. But the boundaries of the approved district include less than half the land of the original proposal. Aldermen selected a northern boundary at an alley between Colfax and Lincoln streets, which is about seven blocks south of the originally proposed line at the Evanston/Wilmette border.
The other boundaries of the district remain the same: Emerson Street to the south, Sheridan Road to the east and Sherman or Ridge avenues to the west.
But just because the boundaries have been established doesn’t mean the controversy is over. The question that remains in the minds of Evanston residents is what the district really means.
When the Northeast Evanston Historic District Association presented the district to the city’s Preservation Commission about six months ago, they did so with the purest intentions. According to NHEDA board member Mary McWilliams, the main objective of the district was to identify and preserve the single-family homes along Sheridan Road that represented the architectural styles dominant from the 1860s to 1949.
To achieve this goal, McWilliams and fellow board members Mark Burnette, Judy Fiske, Jeanne Kamps Lindwall and James McGuire identified about 960 structures within the district’s proposed boundaries that met the criteria of the 1995 Evanston Preservation Ordinance.
The criteria mandates that any designated historic building meet one or more of the following requirements: It must be a site of a historic activity; a home of a significant person; an example of an architecturally significant style; a product of a famous architect; an example of innovative urban design; an emblem of historic social or cultural trends; an important archeological resource; or a visual emblem of the neighborhoods of a particular era.
The process of nominating the historic district took a long time, and now it seems that much of the effort expended by the NHEDA board has gone to waste over what has become a political debate.
City Council proved through its discussion Monday that that the approved historic district isn’t about preservation. It’s about getting back at Northwestern.
Even Ald. Arthur Newman (1st) admitted that his primary motivation behind voting for the district in any capacity was preventing NU from “purchasing any more houses on the west side of Sheridan Road.”
Some of the most beautiful and historic homes located in the north end of the originally proposed district have been excluded because of homeowner discontent, while all of NU’s properties have remained a major part of it.
And it’s not as if the university wanted to be in the district anymore than those north-end residents, who identify themselves collectively as the Evanstonians for Responsible Preservation, a neighborhood group opposed to the historic district.
It’s too late to take back the vote and reconsider NHEDA’s proposal.
But it’s not too late to reconsider the meaning of preservation in the city.
