District added to national historic register

Downtown Columbia is on its way to traveling back in time. On Friday, the National Park Service announced that the Downtown Columbia Historic District has been added to the National Register of Historic Places.

The district includes properties encompassing 28 acres on East Broadway, Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, Locust, Walnut, Cherry and Hitt streets. They date from 1836 to 1956.

Becoming an officially recognized historic district means that property owners within the district can apply for tax credits that go toward historic rehabilitation of their properties.

“It makes it easier for individual buildings to get on the register and get tax credits, which means we have a lot more people fixing up buildings,” said Carrie Gartner, the director of Columbia’s Special Business District. “The second (benefit) is it’s a great thing to advertise to vacationers or tourists or even people in Columbia who may not come downtown. A historic district says something; it says unique architecture, it says this is the history of Columbia, and it’s not generic, it’s unique.”

Gartner said the historic designation tends to increase resale value and rental rates, and ensures buildings will last longer thanks to tax incentives available for major rehabilitation projects.

Being listed on the register alone doesn’t entail significant future regulation, but being eligible for tax credits does, said Deb Sheals, a Columbia historic preservation consultant. A 20 percent federal credit is available for properties rehabilitated for commercial, industrial, agricultural or rental residential purposes, but not for the property owner’s personal residence, according to the National Park Service’s preservation tax incentive guidelines. A 25 percent state credit is available for commercial as well as residential purposes.

“They’re giving you a good chunk of money, and they want you to follow their rules,” Sheals said, referring to the Department of Interior, which oversees the National Park Service.

The Department of Interior’s standards require preserving construction features and techniques that characterize the historic property, repairing rather than replacing deteriorated historic features and avoiding additions or alterations that would destroy the historic nature of the building.

The Special Business District hired Sheals to research which properties were old enough and intact enough to be part of a historic district in 2003. She worked with the state historic preservation office, which is part of the Department of Natural Resources, last spring, to write the district’s nomination. Upon approving the nomination on Sept. 22, the state office sent it to the National Park Service.

The new district is defined by a total of 102 historic structures, including 62 contributing newly listed resources, 19 noncontributing resources and 21 previously listed resources. The National Park Service defines a contributing building as one which “by location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling and association adds to the district’s sense of time and place and historical development.” A noncontributing building is one that falls within the confines of the historic district but does not fulfill these requirements.

Some downtown property owners have already started working to restore their buildings to the Victorian and Neoclassical styles in which they were originally built. Building facades along Broadway, for instance, are in various stages of restoration since the concrete canopy — which was erected in 1968 — was dismantled over the summer.

Mike Menser, who owns commercial property on East Broadway, is currently working on a tax credit project and started installing canvas awnings at his building this weekend.

“You’re going to have a wide range of rehabs from people just trying to get their buildings buttoned down, because when the canopy came off, some buildings literally had holes in them, so that’s number one,” Sheals said. “Some people were luckier than others, like Wren’s Birkenstock (1009 E. Broadway) was just about fully intact under the canopy, where others are just going to take a little more work.”

Today, more than 80,000 sites are listed on the National Register, including 37 buildings, districts and other historic resources within Columbia. Tiffany Patterson, the National Register Coordinator for the State of Missouri, said her office processes 70 to 100 historic nominations per year.

The Downtown Columbia Historic District is not the first historic district in Columbia to be listed. The Francis Quadrangle Historic District, bounded by Conley Avenue and Elm, Sixth and Ninth streets, was established on Dec. 18, 1973. The East Campus Neighborhood Historic District, which includes the area bordered by Bouchelle Avenue, College Avenue, University Avenue and High Street, as well as parts of Willis Avenue, Bass Avenue, Dorsey Street and Anthony Street, was listed on Feb. 16, 1996. The North Ninth Street Historic District, which includes properties at the addresses of 5 to 36 N. Ninth Street, was listed on Jan. 21, 2004.