Who Cares? Community Value in the Preservation of Seattle's Historic Public Schools

Abstract

Who cares about historic public school buildings? Seattle Public Schools, preservationists, and local communities, all have a stake in the future of Seattle’s historic school buildings. But they can’t seem to agree on what is significant about these buildings. SPS wants to redevelop its properties for educational needs. Preservationists see them as significant historical artifacts. But communities see them as something more.This thesis examines five historic school buildings within Seattle that have undergone a form of adaptive reuse, to examine the impacts of the process on the communities connected to those schools. In these cases there are alternative values that communities see in historic properties that the legal preservation system, and Seattle Public Schools do not. Within these case studies, it has been found that Seattle’s current preservation regulations favor white communities, and was more difficult for minoritized ones. Power is given to developers, not those with a stake in historic properties. The methods for determining significance are unsuitable for modern understandings of diverse histories, preservation struggles to listen when a community is not well established and defined, and lacks the collaboration or consultation to appropriately investigate the identities and values of communities that are supposed to be included in Seattle’s criterion c.