Preservation Dallas Receives a Prestigious National Award
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Preservation Dallas recently received The National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Trustees’ Award of Organizational Excellence. To be recognized on a national level is an enormous accomplishment.
The Trustees’ Award for Organizational Excellence recognizes a nonprofit organization, large or small, that has demonstrated sustained and superlative achievement in historic preservation.
It’s a testament to the fact a dedicated group of preservationists helps to keep our historic residences and buildings intact and also provides a depth of education about why this is important and how to do it.
The National Preservation Awards are bestowed upon distinguished individuals, nonprofit organizations, public agencies, and corporations whose skill and determination have given new meaning to their communities through preservation of this country’s architectural and cultural heritage.
Preservation Dallas was founded as the Historic Preservation League in 1972 with a mission “to preserve and revitalize Dallas’ buildings, neighborhoods and other historical, architectural and cultural resources.” Within a year, they had a preservation ordinance in place with the city, and without their efforts, Swiss Avenue would not exist.
The award was received for a body of their advocacy work. It included some accomplishments you might not realize were ahead of their time and set national precedents. Their innovative outreach and educational programs provide inspiration to other preservation organizations nation-wide. So when it came time to figure out just what to include in the application, it had to be a hard call.
It’s hard to squeeze everything this wonderful organization does into an application with a word count, but Preservation Dallas Executive Director David Preziosi managed!
“We noted the revolving fund program we had in the late 70s created by Virginia McAlester, Preziosi said. “You were not able to easily get loans for historic homes at that time, so Virginia worked locally with banks and on a federal level with Fannie Mae to set up assistance for homeowners to access money to purchase these homes. It was the basis Community Revitalization Act that is a national program.”
The grant application also included the creation of the demolition delay overlay, which has helped thousands of historic structures from being razed. The Historic Styles Booklet was produced internally, and the Historic House Specialist designation initiated for real estate professionals were also part of the package.
This is a well-deserved and long overdue award, in our opinion, and we are so proud to support Preservation Dallas at CandysDirt.com. We encourage you to check out their website, learn something about our historic heritage, and get involved in preservation!
What a great article. Thanks for sharing the story and pictures.