Center Harbor Heritage Commission receives Preservation Alliance Achievement Award

CENTER HARBOR — What do an old barn, a demolished tavern, a stop on the Underground Railroad, a family burying ground and the Kona Fountain all have in common? They are all local historic sites that appear on the award-winning Center Harbor Heritage Inventory and Online Map Project.

The New Hampshire Preservation Alliance recognized the Center Harbor Heritage Commission with a 2019 Preservation Achievement Merit Award for the project during the Statewide Preservation Conference in Littleton.

The day-long conference explored the effective strategies and the relationship of historic preservation to health, well-being and community and economic development.

“In a world that is constantly changing,” said keynote speaker Thompson Mayes of the National Trust for Historic Preservation said, “old places ... provide people with a sense of being part of a continuum that is necessary for them to be psychologically and emotionally healthy.”

N.H. Preservation Board member Jeanie Forrester presented the award to the Heritage Commission, represented by Karen Ponton. Noting that “[t]he theme for today's conference is why old places matter,” Ponton said, “...the question raised by the Center Harbor Heritage Inventory and Online Map Project was which old places matter to the residents of my town.”

Although some of Center Harbor's historic buildings had been inventoried in the early 1980s for the first Town Master Plan, this project was the first townwide survey ever undertaken. Members of the Center Harbor Heritage Commission and preservation consultant Mae Williams worked together to develop and implement a strategic and cost-effective survey model that married professional expertise with local volunteers.

The Center Harbor Heritage Inventory differs from the more familiar academic historic resource inventories that contain only architecturally and historically significant properties eligible for listing on the State or the National Register of Historic Places.

“For my town, this would have meant fewer than 10 historic sites. Instead, our inventory consists of over 150 buildings, barns, roads, cemeteries, demolished sites, a bridge, a fountain, the home port of the MS Mount Washington, and more that Center Harbor residents identified as old places that matter.”

Over 18 months, Commission members conducted windshield surveys, researched property deeds, interviewed longtime residents, and completed Historic Resource Inventory forms. Using that information, Williams wrote a narrative report of Center Harbor's growth as a town within the context of its history and remaining historic resources. Titled “Center Harbor: Community Planning Survey,” it is available online on the Town's website and also at the James E. Nichols Memorial Library in Center Harbor.

Williams' work was funded through a Federal Storm Recovery and Disaster Planning grant awarded to the N.H. Division of Historical Resources.

The Heritage Inventory also includes 35 historic barns in Center Harbor that have been surveyed thus far by volunteer Richard Kipphut. Several local barn owners requested their barns be surveyed, while other barns were found by researching tax records.

The Center Harbor Heritage Inventory is now a map layer on the online Town GIS maps. Local historic properties and sites are color-coded on the maps according to decade built, whether located in Slab City (an historic area in west Center Harbor that was home to many lumber mills), historic barns, cemeteries/burying grounds and demolished sites. More than 150 “Historic Resource Information” forms and “Farm/Barn Inventory” forms are linked to their respective properties.

Center Harbor's online GIS maps are accessible through the Town's website, https://www.centerharbornh.org.