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Preservation Month - TPR's In Focus - May 5, 2026 · In Focus with Carolyn Hutcheson

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  Support comes from Troy University's Trojan Cafe,
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  offering handcrafted Starbucks beverages and a wide assortment of meal and snack options.
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  Located on Troy University's Montgomery campus, across from the Rosa Parks Library and Museum.
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  From Troy Public Radio, this is In Focus, and I'm Carolyn Hutcheson. May is Preservation Month,
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  and if you've ever noticed historic designation plaques on houses and other buildings,
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  you may wonder how they were designated. Taylor Stewart, Director of Preservation Services at
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  Landmarks Foundation in Montgomery, routinely works with communities on historic designation
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  projects. She joins us today. Taylor, welcome to the program. You are formally kicking off
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  Preservation Month for our listeners. And that's such an honor. I'm happy to be able to do it.
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  So many communities in our tri-state coverage area are interested in historic preservation
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  designations. Can you walk us through some of the designations that you see or work with?
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  Yes, so in Alabama, we have the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage, and that is done
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  through the Alabama Historical Commission, and it is the state listing. There's no regulations
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  that come along with that listing. And then we also have the National Register of Historic Places,
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  which goes through the Alabama Historical Commission, as well as National Park Service,
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  and that is the federal listing. You see those plaques all over the country.
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  That is the designation that opens you up for applying for tax credit. And then there's also
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  local historic districts, and those are put forward by the community, usually a local
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  preservation commission or a city government. And then those actually come with the highest
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  level of regulation, but it's done by your fellow community members. These plaques seem to have
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  different colors. Is that significant? Oh, there's all different kinds of plaques. So there's the
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  National Register one. Each county in Alabama kind of has their own. Some cities have their own.
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  They're all different, and none of them really interact with each other. So it just kind of
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  depends on where you are. You worked with the city of Prattville on a special project, and Prattville
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  is in our coverage area. So share with us what you did with Prattville. So as the Director of
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  Preservation Services for the Landmarks Foundation, we took on the task of updating the survey for
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  Prattville for their downtown district. And we looked at the outskirts of that downtown district
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  as well to see if there were any properties that had been kind of overlooked because the survey
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  hadn't been updated in a while. Just to give an update for everything that had happened there in
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  the past, I believe it was close to 20 years since they had updated it. So we just kind of wanted to
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  give them a good overview and give their preservation commission better information to
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  move forward with as to what they wanted to do. So is this what you would call a historic district
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  that you were working on? So it was an existing district. It was a local district, and there's also
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  a National Register of Historic Places district. We were working with the Prattville Historic
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  Preservation Commission, which regulates the local Daniel Pratt Historic District. I'm sure your
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  listeners realize that Prattville was the location of Daniel Pratt's gin factory, and he was considered
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  the father of industry in Alabama because of the cotton gin. What did you find out about that?
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  Yes, so the gin shop factory, it was part of that district. It was definitely already listed, of
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  course, and the National Register district had already been done, so we didn't have to do a lot
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  of extra research there, but it was really interesting to see the impact that the historic
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  tax credit program has had on that property now that it is those luxury loft apartments.
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  What was involved in updating the survey? So updating a survey is walking the district and
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  taking photos and seeing what has changed since the last survey photos were taken,
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  what physical changes have taken place within that district. The entire district was still largely
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  intact. One of our recommendations was that it might be interesting for them to look at
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  updating their district to include some of the post-World War II building boom that happened
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  in most towns, but definitely in Prattville, and kind of look at some of those buildings that would
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  not have been considered historic or eligible when that district was first put on the National
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  Register, but that could be considered historic now. I mean, history happens every day, so we have
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  to keep thinking about it. So Taylor, you were advising your listeners to do their homework
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  first, do a little history research, and then what do they do? You can look at all the incentives
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  programs that come with being either on the National Register of Historic Places or having a
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  local district, and some of those incentives are the Certified Local Government Program that the
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  Alabama Historical Commission coordinates, which is a program I coordinated when I worked at the
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  Historical Commission, so it's something that's near and dear to my heart. It's basically a
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  relationship between a municipality and the Historical Commission and the National Park
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  Service. You work very closely with them to make sure you're updating your districts regularly,
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  you get grant funding to be able to do those updates, bring on new districts, or sometimes you
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  can do really fun and cool education projects with them, with those funds, and then there's also the
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  Alabama Ad Valorem Property Tax Benefit, which if you have a historic commercial property that's
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  listed on the National Register of Historic Places, you can fill out that paperwork and it will change
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  your property taxes from class, I think it's two, to class three, so your property will then be taxed
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  as if it's a residential building rather than a commercial property, and there's also the state
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  and federal tax credit programs, which can be a huge benefit to income producing properties
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  that are undertaking a big rehabilitation project. Is there a way to find out what might already have
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  been done in your community? Well, first and foremost, I would recommend going to the Alabama Historical
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  Commission's website because they actually have a really wonderful interactive map that shows where
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  all the federal, state, the districts, and the individual listings are throughout the state, so you can
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  see if your area already has a district. Some have older districts that communities just aren't aware
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  of, and then some will have some survey files that the community might not be aware of, and you can
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  use those survey files, update those, and then go about listing, so I definitely recommend that
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  website first to just kind of get the lay of the land, and then I would recommend looking for a
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  consultant or finding some grant money to get a consultant to do the work. In your work with these
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  communities, have you run across some things that surprised you about their history? Yes, I do a lot of
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  tax credit projects, which being on the National Register of Historic Places makes you eligible
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  for the federal tax credit program. Most of the time, it also makes you eligible for the Alabama
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  tax credit program, and so with that, I get to deep dive on individual buildings. For example, I really got
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  to dive in a little bit on the Jewish community in Demopolis. We have a project down there, and so
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  that was a very interesting tangent to go down. One of our projects is a building in Mobile. They want to
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  make it a mixed-use bar restaurant on the bottom and then apartments on top,
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  and as I was researching it, this is a building from the 1800s. It was always a bar restaurant
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  on bottom and apartments on top, so, you know, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
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  Great story. Do you have any final words of advice? I would just say get as much information as you can
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  from sources like a consultant, the Historical Commission, National Park Service. Go talk to your
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  local city government first. They might know a little more, and they might be able to support you,
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  help you figure out where funds are, and so I definitely recommend starting local and running
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  up the ladder. Well, I want to thank you for kicking off Preservation Month for us here at
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  Public Radio. Thank you so much. That was Taylor Stewart, Director of Preservation Services at
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  Landmarks Foundation of Montgomery. The Alabama Historical Commission has more information on
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  historic designations at the website ahc.alabama.gov. Thanks for joining us today for In Focus,
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  which is a podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
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  I'm Carolyn Hutcheson, and this is listener-supported Troy Public Radio.