I just wanted to see what the official ruling on Historic Houses with Historic Plaques. The reason I ask is I know houses that are privately owned are 100% not allowed. The reason I’m asking is I live in Rockville CT which is an Old Civil War Town. I’ve been working with our town council and town historical society to get our town mapped as part of the towns initiative to give tourists more access to the history in our town.
The main reason for the question is cause all the houses with these plaques are also part of our towns historic walking trail through Rockville which is a audio tour around the town which you can visit each location from publicly accessible sidewalks but the grey area is some of the houses still have descendants of the original family living in these places. Once they move out the town buys and preserves them.
So what would be allowed for submitting and what wouldn’t be allowed? If so what could the town or I do so we can make these locations available for submitting?
Please note that “privately owned” may not equal SFPRP - single family private residential property. The clarification on SFPRP is very clear. Those plaques on those homes (and the homes themselves) are ineligible if the homes are still being used as single family private residential property.
If there are other markers for the walking trail, those might be eligible, depending on where they are placed.
Much thanks for the clarification. Would adding signs on the sidewalk/public easement make it acceptable as it’s on publicly owned property then? Trying to get the best feedback so I can bring it up to the council next meeting.
Also note that if the houses have been converted to uses other than single family residential, and this can be proven, they would most likely qualify (unless the new use is a school, child care, or otherwise excluded).
I mention because I have seen cases of pre-WWII era homes (in Southern California) being repurposed as medical, legal, dental, or psychiatric offices, restaurants, veterinary clinics, architectural offices, and the offices of various types of home service companies such as concrete contractors, carpentry/roofing contractors, etcetera. In fact, from 2005-2007 I worked for a pest control company whose offices were in such a building.
I could understand why it’s a maybe depending on where placement is. Thanks again for the clarification that will make it a lot easier to submit and bring up. I’ve been working on this project with our local historical society for about a year now. Each year we get funding to add more and more. Slowly it’s coming together.
Cary has a lot of historic homes which are now hosting businesses. That is why I wanted to be clear what you meant by private property. Only SFPRP is not allowed.
That makes sense we have a couple of those already. A lot of our old mill buildings in town are now apartments and have stops already as we added dedicated history information stations/plaques
I’m not even gonna try to attempt to prove a non converted house as it probably will be rejected. For example, four of the houses above are actually just fully empty and aren’t on the market as the town bought them. But there hasn’t been plans to do anything with them other then our parks and recreation making sure the lands are cut and taken care of. It’s a lot of approvals town/state side before being able to convert to something more “official” looking.
Like for example. We have given up on this location in our main park. It’s an old quarry rock from the old quarry before it was converted into the park it is now. This is the last piece of history of the old Quarry. The only reason we thought it was acceptable was cause of the engraving from back then. Plus how it’s near one of the entrances of the park. But no matter how many times we have asked to get town approval for a sign about the rock. It gets shot down due to the little info we have other than a single photo from 1940’s that shows the same rock. We at the historical society just call it “the rock” cause it’s a funny name for something we have little info on other then it’s the last part of history from the quarry.
