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Back to NRHP list missing coords

Many of the pages in Category:NRHP list missing coordinates have coordinates for all current listings; they appear here only because of one or more former listings. Do we want the category to include lists that lack coordinates only for former listings? I think we shouldn't: if I remember rightly, NRIS doesn't give coordinates for delisted sites, and its address locations often aren't sufficient (e.g. Borden Institute at Clark County, Indiana is located simply at "West St."), so we simply can't get coordinates for lots of them. It's also not that important, since they're not on the Register anymore. If we want to disable this feature, i.e. make it so that the category and text are only displayed for current listings, we could probably make it so that they don't appear when the |type= parameter of {{NRHP row}} is filled with NRHP-delisted. If we get any former listings that don't have this parameter, some will be errors and the rest will be weird exceptions for which we can use the |nolatlon=yes feature. Nyttend (talk) 20:31, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

If they don't give them I agree we don't need it. Otr500 (talk) 21:59, 27 December 2014 (UTC)
I concur with Nyttend. Magic♪piano 22:44, 28 December 2014 (UTC)
I'm inclined to say coordinates are more important for former listings. Former listings are typically demolished buildings, and these can of course not be identified by sight. Street addresses and other relative location indicators may change over time, and a street grid is especially prone to doing so when the buildings abutting it change. Coordinates, if accurate ones can be found, provide the best record of where an NRHP listing was located when it existed. Knight of Truth (talk) 17:50, 29 December 2014 (UTC)
I don't think anyone would disagree that having coordinates for former listings is something to strive for. There is, however, a practical problem that they may be somewhat more difficult to come by than those for listed properties. Perhaps delisted properties should be placed in a separate category. Magic♪piano 16:03, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

I have some comments that are slightly related. It seems that the coordinates are of the actual site, and it may be hard to find or get there based on that. Within the last week, I've been to Walthourville Presbyterian Church and McIntosh Sugarworks, based on putting their coordinates in my GPS. In the first case, the coordinates took me into a rundown trailer park. That must be the closest point on a road to the site. I had to get back onto the highway and go a bit until I saw it. In the second case, the GPS kept sending me back and forth on a vacant stretch of road (saying that I've reached my destination). Then I discovered that I had to go to an intersecting highway to get to the entrance to the site. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 21:48, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

I recommend checking the validity of coordinates before going on photo trips (they are sometimes significantly off). I use satellite views, street addresses (when available), and descriptions from the nomination (if it's available), all of which may also help to identify from which side to approach a large site. It also helps to have seen photos of what you're looking for. Magic♪piano 22:43, 28 December 2014 (UTC)
Thank you. But I've been trying to provide some photos of things that don't have photos (not on Wikipedia, at least). I guess I could google first to see what it looks like. But in both of these cases, my GPS took me to the closest point on a road it has in its maps. In both I had to stop on a different road and walk a piece to get there. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 01:14, 29 December 2014 (UTC)
Agreed. Some of these locations have more problems than coordinates that are extraordinarily far off, in fact. The Lafayette UMC, which lacks coordinates, was causing National Register of Historic Places listings in Christian County, Kentucky to end up in the coords-missing category, but instead of adding coordinates, I added nolatlon=yes — the coordinates are nonexistent, the location ("Off Kentucky Route 107") is extraordinarily vague, and the one-page nomination form gives no coordinates, no map, and nothing else to identify the location. I even went around on Google Street View and failed to find it; as far as I can tell, the building's gone (no results for a current church of this name), and probably the only way to get the location is actually visiting Christian County and checking some sort of print (or handwritten!) records at the courthouse or historical society. All of this is a reason that I'll often try to check the coords before going out and correct them if possible, and why I've downloaded tons of nonfree online photos, including everything that I could find through Ohio's now-not-working NR pages. You should be able to find online images of most Georgia sites, because NPS has put most Georgia nominations online and most nominations include photos. Go to http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NRHP/Photos/xxxxxxxx.pdf and replace xxxxxxxx with the refnum (for example, http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NRHP/Photos/87001357.pdf is the Walthourville Presbyterian Church), and change "Photos" to "Text" to get the text of the nomination, which will normally include relevant identification details and will often include a map. Nyttend (talk) 17:21, 30 December 2014 (UTC)
Thank you for that help. That must be an old photo of the Walthourville Presbyterian Church because now from that angle there are a lot of unsightly power lines, etc, which is why I got it from a different angle. (Yes, it was photographed in 1986.) Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 03:57, 31 December 2014 (UTC)
There actually are coordinates in that nomination form, but they point to a field west of Lafayette with no nearby buildings; it doesn't even look like something used to be there. (They're printed in the Revision Dates box for some reason, and for all I know they might be coordinates for something else.) Though that just confirms that we need to use nolatlon=yes here; having no coordinates is better than having grossly misleading ones. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 02:55, 31 December 2014 (UTC)
Be careful, though. You can't just plug those coords into Google Earth and get an accurate location. Given the 1977 date on the form, it almost certainly uses the NAD27 datum, while Google uses the WGS84 datum. The differences between the datums can amount to hundreds of feet in many instances. You want to find an application online or a GPS app to transform the coords from one datum to the other, then search them on Google or something else. — Ipoellet (talk) 03:28, 31 December 2014 (UTC)
I found a coordinate conversion tool, and the coordinates only moved to a slightly different location in the same field, so unfortunately that wasn't the problem. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 03:46, 31 December 2014 (UTC)
Oh, well. Points for trying? — Ipoellet (talk) 00:15, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

And this is just my idea - I don't know if it could be done. Have the coordinates of the site, but also allow for coordinates of the entrance from a road, street, or highway that would be in the GPS. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 03:57, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Today I went out all afternoon taking photos of historic sites. I got to all seven places on my list, except one. My car GPS took me to the end of a cul-de-sac and said that I had reached my destination. I looked around and there were several buildings there, but none was marked as historic. And none looked historic and there was no one to ask. I took a few pictures in case one of them was the right one - I'll try to look it up to see what it looks like. (Wikipedia and commons don't have a photo.)

The coordinates of these sites are given to a millionth of a degree, which is a few inches. I think I need a hand-held GPS to get me from where the car takes me to where it actually is. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 01:35, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

What's the site? I can offer a better opinion if I know what it is. Bear in mind that many sites have been destroyed since they were listed — at National Register of Historic Places listings in Pendleton County, Kentucky, more than a third of the sites have been destroyed. A housing development now sits on top of the Brick Church Mound and Village Site (the picture shows the only surviving earthworks I could find in this once-large complex), and see the short D.S. Rose Mound article with its image. Meanwhile, is your GPS easily detachable? My GPS, a Garmin Nüvi 42, comes off its mount and is easily carryable (just be sure to mute it if walking near other people, or you'll get some weird looks when it talks to you :-) and I'll take it out of the car on the occasional situation when I can park but can't easily find a site. And all this still assumes that you have the right location; the best GPS devices won't help if the coordinates are bad, so do your best to ensure that the NPS-hosted images (http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NRHP/Photos/xxxxxxxx.pdf) and information from the nomination match the coordinates that you have. If you really have a bunch of time for working on this, you may even want to spend it on coord work; a year ago, I had a bunch of time for getting photos in Louisville KY, but I ended up using it to verify locations for all 473 of its sites — it made the list better and more useful for everyone, and even for me it was easier, because I knew that I could always trust the coordinates. Nyttend (talk) 06:17, 2 January 2015 (UTC)
What happened to D.S. Rose Mound is a disgrace (in my opinion). Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 06:02, 3 January 2015 (UTC)
The one I didn't find is Cassel's Store, see National Register of Historic Places listings in Liberty County, Georgia. Since then I've gotten more information about it from the National Parks Service (I haven't had time to study it yet). I downloaded their spreadsheet with photos and text. It has photos, and it is not a building that I saw. I don't know whether it still exists or not. But I have more info now. The GPS may have put me on the wrong side of the highway. I can take the GPS out, but I don't know if it can give me the current lat/long. I'm considering getting a hand-held one for cases like this where the car GPS doesn't get me quite there, and I can take out the hand-held one and it will show me the direction and distance to it. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 07:15, 2 January 2015 (UTC)
The description in the nomination, 500 feet south of intersection of Seaboard Coastline Railroad and U.S. Highway 82, makes me think that the location is approximately 31°49′34″N 81°31′34″W / 31.82611°N 81.52611°W / 31.82611; -81.52611, where a house now sits; I think the store's gone. My GPS has a page where I can specify a destination by its coords, and anymore I just almost always rely on this setting: once I've verified the coords, I know that I've got the right spot if I can put them in, while the input-by-address feature can make big mistakes or simply not find the site. Nyttend (talk) 07:27, 2 January 2015 (UTC)
Thanks - I read that description last night. Note that the form says highway 82, but it is actually numbered 84 now. Decades ago Georgia swapped the numbering on part of 82 and 84. I thought that places on the National Register were protected from destruction (by people). Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 16:15, 2 January 2015 (UTC)
For properties that are not actually owned by the federal government, National Register listing doesn't confer any protection directly. Any additional protection from listing is indirect, resulting from the prestige and visibility that goes with NRHP listing, local norms, and state and local laws. My perception (justified or otherwise) from watching discussions on this page is that NRHP listing carries less weight in promoting preservation in southern states than in other parts of the country.— Ipoellet (talk) 19:46, 2 January 2015 (UTC)
I ran the UTM coordinates in the nomination form through a converter and got yet another possible location, 31°49′29″N 81°31′45″W / 31.824634°N 81.529189°W / 31.824634; -81.529189. That one matches up with the boundary description (there's a dirt road to the southeast, at least). It would have been helpful if the NPS had actually attached that "attached topographic map" mentioned in the description. Though we're probably right that the building's no longer standing - it looked abandoned and overgrown 30 years ago, which is never a good sign. It would be nice to get the actual location so we can at least have a picture of the site, but it is what it is. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 00:24, 3 January 2015 (UTC)
That is a little different from the other position, I think, but it is also on the opposite side of the road than where my car GPS took me. I agree that it may not be there anymore. I'll try to have another look sometime. BTW, I ordered a hand-held GPS unit. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 02:44, 3 January 2015 (UTC)
Looking at that location on Google Maps, my GPS sent me across the highway - you can see where the road ends on that side. I looked around there and walked over the railroad. I did drive around to the other side of the highway, but not as far as the mark on the map. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 16:47, 2 January 2015 (UTC)
Seeing that the location is "McIntosh", TheCatalyst31 is clearly more accurate than I, since my spot was nowhere near McIntosh. The nomination gives the owner's name, and GIS websites typically will provide the names of current and previous owners, so I was excited to find that Liberty County has a GIS website. Unfortunately, the site's not running right now (maybe they do maintenance on Sunday evenings?), but if you find it running, you may be able to learn something by looking at lots southwest of US84/SCL Railroad and attempting to find any that were owned by John Tuten of Brunswick as of early 1982. Also, you could check for a book mentioned in the further reading section, in case they have one at a library near you. Final note, let me ditto what Ipoellet's said: most privately owned NR properties aren't protected from actions by the owners (that's why the Rose Mound was able to be destroyed, since the owner wanted it to be out of the way), and the exceptions are locations like Mother of Sorrows Catholic Church in northeastern Ohio, which is protected because of a city ordinance. Nyttend (talk) 22:58, 4 January 2015 (UTC)
Thank you for that information, I'll check on some of it. I believe that John Tuten of Brunswick was an architect (here in Brunswick). I've heard the name. Also, as far as McIntosh, there is a neighboring county named McIntosh and also it seems to be an unincorporated town in Liberty county with that name too. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 00:14, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

More fun with history graphs

Article creation rate
Image upload rate

In addition to the graphs made from the data found on the Progress page over time which can be found at WP:NRHPPROGRESSHISTORY, I was playing around with the data today and figured out a numerical differentiation routine to analyze the rate at which members of the project have created articles and uploaded images. Here are two graphs of those rates for your viewing pleasure. The graphs show the raw (noisy) numerical data in green as well as a continuous best fit approximation in red, which I think is easier to look at since it has less noise. One cool thing that's immediately obvious is the huge spike in image uploads during WLM/WSM/whatever we decided to call the annual summer upload drive this year, although the 2013 drive gets kind of washed out when the data is averaged since there weren't many data points during that period (*disgruntled sigh*). It looks like our "average" is about 10-15 new articles and images per day! Great work everyone! Enjoy!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 06:05, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X is live!

Hello everyone!

You may have received a message from me earlier asking you to comment on my WikiProject X proposal. The good news is that WikiProject X is now live! In our first phase, we are focusing on research. At this time, we are looking for people to share their experiences with WikiProjects: good, bad, or neutral. We are also looking for WikiProjects that may be interested in trying out new tools and layouts that will make participating easier and projects easier to maintain. If you or your WikiProject are interested, check us out! Note that this is an opt-in program; no WikiProject will be required to change anything against its wishes. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you!

Note: To receive additional notifications about WikiProject X on this talk page, please add this page to Wikipedia:WikiProject X/Newsletter. Otherwise, this will be the last notification sent about WikiProject X.

Harej (talk) 16:57, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

February NHL meeting

For those of you who, like me, had been wondering why there was no NHL meeting last fall, the NPS page announcing the Feb. 11–12 meeting explains why: it was postponed till next month. Why I don't know, but it doesn't matter at this point.

There aren't too many proposed new NHLs this time around—about eight. And one withdrawal that I doubt anyone will argue with. All, luckily, are ones we have articles on, even in two cases where they aren't even listed on the Register yet.

First on the agenda there's a theme study: Labor Archaeology Sites of the Industrial Era, which may be worth perusing for background on some possible future NHLs similar to the already listed Ludlow Tent Colony Site.

The new nominations are:

We end with a trio of Federal courthouses in the Deep South notable for the many important civil rights cases handled there by district and appellate judges of the Fifth Circuit:

The designation to be withdrawn belongs to the Old Blenheim Bridge, the only double-bore covered bridge in the East and arguably the longest single-span covered bridge in the country, in North Blenheim, New York. Washed away during Hurricane Irene in 2011.

So, doesn't look like we have much to do as far as taking pictures or creating articles goes. What we need to do with these potential NHLs is expand the existing articles to the degree desired and needed. Daniel Case (talk) 05:04, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Less than 2,000 to go!

Hello everyone. We're almost done with reviewing pictures for Summer of Monuments, but we still have 1,631 pictures left to review, so we could use your help! As a reminder:

  • Step 1: Create an account here.
  • Step 2: Begin rating pictures here. A picture will load; hover your cursor over the pictures and you will have the option to rate between 1 and 5 stars. Rate pictures not just on their aesthetic quality but also their ability to illustrate what the monument is in an encyclopedic manner.

If you were having technical difficulties before, they should be fixed now. Let me know if you have any questions. Thank you for your help! Harej (talk) 22:17, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Regester Log House in SW PA

I've taken a couple of new photos of the Regester Log House now that the leaves are off the trees. This house is within a few feet of the coordinates listed in the nomination form, though that could be random chance, from the 1974 photo, it looks like it was a bit higher up the hill. The house there now is of very similar construction, but really doesn't match the left house in the 1974 photo . It might be a reconstruction from parts of the original house just moved down the hill a bit. Anyone in the area have any thoughts? Generic1139 (talk) 21:09, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Comparing the 1974 photo with File:Regester Log House South and West Facade.jpg, it looks like the right part of the 1974 building was removed. On the left part vs. 1974, just count and compare the placement of the windows and doors. I don't see the chimney on the 1974 pic, but it might be there. You can even count the logs on the front - I get 12 in each case. Seems clear cut to me. Smallbones(smalltalk) 03:43, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
Yes, I spent a lot of time looking at that, and at the relative spacing between the logs. The upper window is different and the frame of both windows is larger. The spacing of the logs is close in most, but not all, areas within the limits of the old photo. My biggest problem is the west facade, the left hand side in the old photo. It seems to show an upper window, or at least a boarded up hole for one, but it isn't there in the new photos, File:Regester Log House East and South Facade 2.jpg is clearer. I was imagining someone moving the house as is, but the far more likely case is that it was disassembled to the logs, and reassembled. That's an easier explanation for for how it was moved, rotated, placed on a new foundation, some of the spacing between logs changed, a window was deleted (requiring new logs, and a new chimney added. Generic1139 (talk) 16:34, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
This is an interesting case study, but I haven't found any place where it has been written up. 1st thing I should say is that while concentrating on details is important, I missed the new foundation. Whoops! The bigger windows might just be the outside boards added around the opening. If you blow up your pix, there is some indication of something around the "missing window." (4 logs above the door) The nomination form is interesting, not just because it's from 1974 and real short. It indicates that the missing right hand side building was older, and that the lhs building originally had a gable end chimney (thought I saw something on the old photo).
BTW, old logs seem to shrink a lot. So I suspect that many of them are reset or replaced more than occasionally. That likely happened here, or maybe the cracks were just refilled. I can't tell anything about moving or rotation from the photos. But it is likely, as you said, that the building was moved down the hill in pieces and reassembled and fixed up. What happened to the older building? Maybe it was just falling down, or the foundation gave way. Hopefully they saved the pieces. Smallbones(smalltalk) 18:03, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

GA listings

I added Dupont Circle Fountain and General Philip Sheridan to the GA section on the project page, but when I look at this page, they're not there. Does anyone know why? I also need to add Major General George Henry Thomas. APK whisper in my ear 16:21, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

The bot runs once a week. It last updated on the 25th so give it until February 4th or so. It will be added when it runs again. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 16:24, 30 January 2015 (UTC)
Ok, thanks. APK whisper in my ear 16:27, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

New Mexico - NAN Ranch

Hello,

I worked on the NAN Ranch article, predominantly using the NRHP nomination form. I heard from the owner, who said that some of the information about the house was incorrect. (Discussion here)

I said that the information could not be changed until we had a source, because that is the general modus operandi, but I have been having second thoughts. I know I should not change the information without a source (i.e., guideline to not replace cited content with uncited content + we're then deeply in original research territory), but should the questionable information be removed, or perhaps put in a note? How should this kind of situation be handled?

Thanks so much!--CaroleHenson (talk) 04:45, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

IMO: If you reasonably believe that information in the article is erroneous, it shouldn't be in the article at all. Source-ability should never trump correctness. If you can't get a reliable source for information you believe to be correct, I would suggest putting neither the sourced incorrect information nor the unsourced correct information on the article page, but adding an explanation for the omission on the talk page (so that future well-meaning editors don't add back the erroneous information). Andrew Jameson (talk) 12:04, 30 January 2015 (UTC)
Perfect, thanks!--CaroleHenson (talk) 17:33, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

nomination request from NPS (hey, that rhymes...)

I e-mailed the NPS today asking for a copy of a nomination form that hasn't been digitized. This is the first time I've made a request. I'm wondering if anyone knows if this process actually works, and if so, how long it usually takes to receive a copy. APK whisper in my ear 04:36, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

It usually works, and you should get a copy of the nomination in about a week or two. I've gotten copies in anything from the next day to a few weeks. The "usually" is because they're digitizing nominations from several states right now, and they aren't sending out copies of those while they're offsite being digitized; there's a list here of what's being digitized. (That also might apply to some of the more recent nominations that weren't digitized in the first go round for their state.) TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 04:42, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
Ok, thanks. APK whisper in my ear 04:51, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
I agree that it usually works. On one occasion, they couldn't provide a copy and gave me the odd excuse that the nomination file had been sent to the National Archives and the NPS no longer had access to it - for a property listed in 2009. They referred me to the SHPO, which in Oregon I've found to be quite a bit better organized than the NPS. — Ipoellet (talk) 18:15, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
The NPS replied. I was told the form is in Fort Worth and it would be best to contact the D.C. Historic Preservation Office. Oh well, hope they can help. APK whisper in my ear 06:33, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Infobox school and embedded nrhp infobox

FYI - something has broken with infobox school where an nrhp inbox with embed=yes is added. I've notified the last editors to make a change to the infobox school template. Generic1139 (talk) 21:47, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Fixed quickly by Frietjes. Generic1139 (talk) 00:36, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi all --- not sure when this happened, but the Maryland Historical Trust moved to a new format for links to their on-line NRHP descriptions. So all the links originally added are now broken. This has happened before --- grrr. So, for example, the original link to the first listing in Allegany County, MD, 16 Altamont Terrace changed from:

http://mht.maryland.gov/nr/NRDetail.aspx?HDID=314&COUNTY=Allegany&FROM=NRCountyList.aspx?COUNTY=Allegany

to

http://mht.maryland.gov/nr/NRDetail.aspx?NRID=314&COUNTY=Allegany&FROM=NRCountyList.aspx

So, in essence, everything after the last "?" needs to be removed to reactivate these links. Any ideas?--Pubdog (talk) 23:46, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

It looks like these can be updated with AutoWikiBrowser, using find-and-replace with regular expressions. I'm going to start working my way through the list, though it might take a while to get through all of them. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 00:50, 3 February 2015 (UTC)
The links to boundary maps of historic districts are also broken, and might take more than a simple regex to fix, if anyone else wants to look into that. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 01:08, 3 February 2015 (UTC)
You guys are the best! I see many of the links have been updated. Cheers!--Pubdog (talk) 17:51, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
Dear Maryland Historical Trust: please never change your URLs again. I (finally) finished updating the links you pointed out with AWB, and I'll take a look at the boundary maps next. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 18:55, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
Updating the boundary map links turned out to be easier than I thought, so they're done too now. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 20:05, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Naming conventions

Does anyone here have handy a discussion of why we have articles titled, for example, National Register of Historic Places listings in Multnomah County, Oregon? There is a discussion taking place in which I'm involved that claims this goes against the encyclopedia's naming conventions. If these are wrongly titled I imagine we will have to move them. Valfontis (talk) 18:53, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Oh, and for context, I'm not canvassing but since the article in question has already been listed at ARS and it is NRHP-related, the discussion is taking place here. Valfontis (talk) 18:59, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
I can't point to a specific discussion, but I do recall that the current "National Register of Historic Places listings in X" was arrived at as a more natural wording than the previous format "List of Registered Historic Places in X", especially given "RHP" was not in usage anywhere beyond Wikipedia. The reason for county-by-county lists is an application of summary style to the NRHP: the object of interest is the single National Register, but with 90K+ entries it couldn't possibly (or at least not usefully) be listed in a single article. Breaking down the whole Register by county was a natural approach because that is a core organizational element of the Register itself. — Ipoellet (talk) 00:12, 9 February 2015 (UTC)
Thanks. I think the gist of the complaint is that the titles lack global context, but I think they are already pretty unwieldy, aren't they? Without adding "United States" to all of them, I mean. And no other country has something with the exact name of National Register of Historic Places. Valfontis (talk) 02:14, 9 February 2015 (UTC)
See section 14 at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Archive 17; it's the final section, but it takes up half the page, because it's where we ended up picking the "NRHP listings in X" convention. Length was part of the discussion, and you're right on there being no other National Register of Historic Places. Nyttend (talk) 13:15, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks! Valfontis (talk) 15:58, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Missing listing?

Having recently driven over the Brecksville-Northfield High Level Bridge near Cleveland OH, I read its article and was surprised to see a National Register-related citation in the references. It goes to this page, which is not currently working because our SHPO has temporarily (?) taken down most of its website, but you can see the page at archive.org. It claims that the bridge was NR-listed on 16 January 1986, giving a refnum that doesn't even appear in NRIS (I ran an Elkman search for the refnum and found nothing, and for Northfield, including delistings, and found nothing that was a bridge in Ohio), so I checked the recent listings and discovered this precise bridge on PDF page 9 of the 1986 listings. Also see the nomination form, which is accompanied by letters from NPS to a couple of local government agencies. How to handle this one? I initially thought that the date was for a delisting (a mistake like nrhp.com makes), but the recent listings says clearly that it was listed on 16 January 1986. If this were in NRIS, it would be a thoroughly normal listing; the confusion arises from its absence from NRIS. Nyttend (talk) 01:38, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Personally, I take the Weekly List as authoritative over the NRIS, so I'd say it's pretty clear that it was listed on 16/1/86 and should therefore appear somewhere in our list articles. But the ref in the article also says that it has been delisted - without citation. If the bridge isn't in NRIS, I don't know how you'd find the Weekly List record of the delisting. The NRHP ref was added to the bridge's article by User:Mapsax on 7/7/12 - perhaps that user can give some guidance on how (s)he knows the bridge was delisted...? — Ipoellet (talk) 03:35, 1 February 2015 (UTC)
[I'm a "he"] Sorry, all I know is what's on the talk page over there, that the bridge was listed at one time but wasn't at the time that I was editing the article. Mapsax (talk) 14:42, 2 February 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for the help from both of you. I've sent NPS an email with most of these links and asking their opinion. Nyttend (talk) 17:37, 2 February 2015 (UTC)
Ipoellet, I heard back from NPS. They say basically "hm, that's interesting; it's in the old database, but somehow it didn't get transferred to our new database" and specifically call it a "database glitch". They're going to contact the SHPO about it, although I suppose I won't hear the results. Any objections if I just add the bridge to the lists where it would go? Nyttend (talk) 13:30, 9 February 2015 (UTC)
Nope. Go. Do. — Ipoellet (talk) 22:01, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Land but not buildings crossing a boundary

I know of two instances in which a listed property is described as having its items of significance on one side of a jurisdictional boundary, with land extending into another. One of these is Bourne Mill, which is almost entirely in RI, with a very small spit of land in MA. The other is Sellers Farm (which I am now looking at its nomination), which is mostly in AR (including all nominated structures), with land only in OK. The nominated land area is small (about 1/4 acre). Should it also be listed in the adjacent Oklahoma county? Magic♪piano 19:53, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

I'd say base it all on the CP locations. If it's just a single property, list in the state where it's located; if it's a district, or a non-district with multiple contributing properties (e.g. a farmstead), list it in a state only if at least one CP is at least partly located in that state. Nyttend (talk) 23:29, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

I've been scanning the postcard collections at the Presbyterian Historical Society for pre-1923 photos in Pennsylvania of mostly Presbyterian churches (a few Reformed, a few non-churches). See Commons:Category:Postcard_collections_of_the_Presbyterian_Historical_Society. When I finish PA next week, there should be over 600 photos uploaded, but it may take awhile to sort out a few entries. The category is meant to include one postcard for each named church in each town in PA (as long as a pre-1923 card is available). I'm guessing that only 5-10% of these are NRHP sites, but perhaps another 5-10% are in historic districts, and another 5-10% are on a list of historic churches kept by the PHS. So maybe 15-25% of general interest to this project, but that's still a guess. A lot of these will end up in List of Presbyterian churches in the United States or a Pennsylvania spinoff.

While I won't be doing anything anywhere as complete for other states (and I won't be doing any scanning on nice days in the summer!), if you know of any special Presbyterian or (German) Reformed churches that need pix for this project let me know on my talk page. Churches in HDs may be particularly hard for me to track down on my own. If nobody asks, I'll just concentrate on those in the List of Presbyterian churches in the United States and on the PHS historic list.

Smallbones(smalltalk) 02:30, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

NRHP Focus

It looks like Montana, at least, is now scanned and available on NRHP Focus. It may be worth investigating other states. Acroterion (talk) 02:25, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Archive 60#Major update on NPS digitization; all but 11 states should be online now. (In my experience it's actually at least 12, since I don't think Louisiana is online yet either but it's not listed there, and there could be a few other states like that I haven't checked yet.) TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 02:36, 14 February 2015 (UTC)
Thanks, I'd missed that update. Acroterion (talk) 02:48, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Litchfield Historic District

Litchfield Historic District seems to be a National Historic Landmark District, though the 68000050 nomination doesn't explicitly say so, but it is tagged as such our usual places. It isn't clear (at least to me), if 78003456 is an expansion of the National Historic Landmark District, or if it is a new HD that happens to have an embedded NHLD inside it. How can I tell? We have an info box on Litchfield (borough), Connecticut marked as an HD. Generic1139 (talk) 17:27, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

I read the 1978 document to describe an expansion of the 1968 designation. See PDF page 63, the start of the statement of significance. It's arguable that the historic district and borough articles should be merged, since the two were made coterminous by the 1978 increase (PDF page 64). Magic♪piano 18:30, 17 February 2015 (UTC)
Is the entire expanded district then a National Historic Landmark District, or just the original 1968 piece? CT Trust seems to draw a distinction, see the notes section where it talks about the National Register historic district being coterminous with the village and borough, but that a portion of the Borough is an NHLD. Generic1139 (talk) 22:03, 17 February 2015 (UTC)
Hmm. The town's district commission certainly makes a distinction. Magic♪piano 22:39, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

New New York Nominations Portal

Hi all --- noted today that New York launched a new fangled portal to get to the NRHP docs and other materials ... CRIS. The old system is still there, but an intro page blocks you from accessing it. The docs are still in the old OPRHP site

See Kibler High School http://www.oprhp.state.ny.us/hpimaging/hp_view.asp?GroupView=2377

The CRIS link is: https://cris.parks.ny.gov/Uploads/ViewDoc.aspx?mode=A&id=36214&q=false

Any idea how long the old OPRHP site might still be up to access the NRHP docs? Not as straight forward a URL change as the MHT.--Pubdog (talk) 19:50, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Ugh, they changed the IDs too, which means there's not an easy automated way to do this. It also looks like some of the newer nominations aren't on the new site yet - Automobile Club of Buffalo and The Baptist Church of Springville didn't show up for me. Unless I'm missing something in those URLs, I'm not sure how we're going to fix those other than manually (and I admittedly don't have the patience to fix 5,000+ URLs manually). If there's any pattern to the new IDs, or a way to figure out which IDs correspond to which properties and forms without manually checking, we might be able to pull off something creative with the bot - but even that's going to be difficult, I think. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 02:17, 12 February 2015 (UTC)
Sent the following email to CRISHelp@parks.ny.gov this morning:
Good morning:
Congratulations on the launch of the new CRIS site. Very impressive. I'm very happy to see that the PDFs of NRHP documents are consolidated. This makes using them so much easier than in the old OPRHP system.
I don't know if you are aware of this, but each of the NRHP properties has an entry in Wikipedia. See the Wikipedia New York project at: https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/National_Register_of_Historic_Places_listings_in_New_York
Each entry is currently linked to the NRHP document and photosets in the old OPRHP system. An example is:
See Kibler High School: https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Kibler_High_School
http://www.oprhp.state.ny.us/hpimaging/hp_view.asp?GroupView=2377
The CRIS link is:
https://cris.parks.ny.gov/Uploads/ViewDoc.aspx?mode=A&id=36214&q=false
Any idea how long the old OPRHP site might still be up to access the NRHP docs?
To continue access to these documents 5,000+ URLs will need to be updated in Wikipedia. Do you have a crossreference or formula that can be used to update the Wikilinks to the documents in CRIS?
Any assistance or guidance you can provide is greatly appreciated
Best wishes
--Pubdog (talk) 10:54, 12 February 2015 (UTC)
Following is the response I received today from NYS OPRHP, CRISHelp@parks.ny.gov
I consulted with other OPRHP staff, and they were unaware of the Document Imaging links used for NRHP listings on Wikipedia. Apparently, these were added to Wikipedia by people outside of OPRHP. We do not have plans to edit or maintain these links; however, other people are welcome to do so at their discretion. The URL format in your example (with the ViewDoc query) is probably the best way to link the files, though I am not aware of any plans to use these as permanent links.
If you have further questions, please let us know!
Matthew W. Shepherd, MLIS
Digital Archive Program Assistant
New York State Parks, Recreation & Historic Preservation
--Pubdog (talk) 21:09, 17 February 2015 (UTC)
Funny that they're saying "apparently..." to the guy who added them to Wikipedia :-) What if you asked for a table of URLs? For example, "Do you have a list of URLs matched to NRHP properties? I'm one of the people outside of OPRHP who's added them to Wikipedia, and I'd like to help update the links; if you have a list, it would make the updating process far easier". Oops, I misunderstood what they were saying; never mind. Nyttend (talk) 13:42, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Weekly List

Anyone have any insight whether what's posted right now for the 2/13 Weekly List represents (a) an actual statement of no actions this week, or (b) a temporary publishing error? — Ipoellet (talk) 20:37, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

I'd guess a publishing error. The only time I remember there actually being no listings (during the government shutdown in 2013), they posted something to that effect instead of a blank listings page. If it's still like that after the 2/20 list goes up we can reconsider, but for now I'd just wait for them to fix it. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 21:15, 14 February 2015 (UTC)
A proper listing page has now been posted for Feb 13. Magic♪piano 15:51, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Pioneer Memorial Bridge

The article Blue Bridge (Washington) states that the bridge is listed on the NRHP, and provides a refnum and citation to nationalregisterofhistoricplaces.com, which I don't consider the best of sources. The bridge is not on our lists, nor can I find it in NPS Focus nor the Washington state database. My suspicion is that the refnum was actually assigned by NPS in the course of an eligibility determination and that the bridge is not actually listed on the NRHP, but I have no way to confirm that suspicion. Does anyone else have any way to check my suspicion? Thanks. — Ipoellet (talk) 20:51, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

According to Elkman's tool, it's listed in the NRIS as "Pending/listed", so I'm pretty sure you're right. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 22:44, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

NationalRegisterBot down for the time being.. anyone know what's going on?

I guess you didn't expect to see that header from the bot creator haha, but I'm seriously stumped as to why I keep encountering errors when trying to run the bot. I posted at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 135#How long does it take for a session timeout? earlier today, but haven't had any responses yet. I left a pretty detailed description of the error I'm receiving, so if anyone has any insight (we have several programmers, right?), please let me know. I've been trying to run it for the past two weeks or so, but to no avail. Any help is appreciated! Until I can get this figured out, it seems there won't be any bot runs, though updating the Progress page (albeit without updated duplicate/NRIS-only/other data provided by the bot) is still possible if anyone wants to take the initiative to do that. Sorry for the delay :\.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 09:04, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Script to speed up process of assessing articles with no quality or importance assessment

Before the Progress page existed, the only way we really had stats about project progress was through this section on the project page, which includes tallies of the quality and importance of all our articles (but only nationwide, not at the state/county level, which was one motivation for the Progress page back then). To make those statistics as useful as possible, it is necessary to continually assess the quality and importance of all new articles, and I and a few other editors used to do a pretty good job at keeping everything up to date, and the unassessed/unknown-importance categories were almost always kept empty.

Since the creation of the Progress page and my subsequent decline in Wikipedia activity due to external forces, however, that task has kind of fallen to the wayside, and now there are over 700 articles without an importance rating (though only 3 without a quality rating.. perhaps because assessment is reflected on the Progress page while importance isn't?). I realized this a few days ago, but I didn't want to take the time to go through and load 700 individual articles, visit each one's talk page, open the edit page, rate the articles, save the page, rinse, and repeat... because it just would have taken forever in my opinion... or at least longer than I was willing to sit there and do it.

So, continuing with my recent apparent obsession with scripting, I spent my free time in the last few days developing User:Dudemanfellabra/AssessNRHP.js, a script that speeds up this process considerably. The script fires on WP:NRHPTODO (an underhanded attempt to get people to visit there and possibly do some other things while at it? :P) by producing a button at the top of the page. When clicked, a GUI loads and lists out all articles that are unassessed or have unknown-importance and allows the user to select an article to load inline rather than having to visit it individually. When the article has loaded, the user gets direct access to the NRHP project template on its talk page (saving another page load) and is able to edit the wikitext directly in a textbox. The script provides some dropdown boxes for valid quality and importance ratings, and when an item is chosen from the dropdown list, the textbox is instantaneously updated with that choice for quick saving. After choosing the assessment options, the user simply clicks to edit the article's talk page with the updated project template and is given options for loading the next page in the list automatically, ignoring a built-in confirmation box meant to stop accidental submissions, and watching/unwatching the target page.

I've used the script to assess a few articles just now, and it definitely makes the process a lot faster and less tedious, though I'm about to go to sleep for the time being, so I won't be continuing until tomorrow at the earliest. I've only tested the script in Firefox, so it may not work in other browsers, but I don't see anything that should be browser-specific in theory. If anyone wants to use the script, as always, feel free to do so. Let me know if you get any weird errors or unexpected behavior. Also if you have any suggestions, I'm open to modifying the script. Good luck!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 07:41, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Pardon my confusion, but why is it important to assess importance? No objection that you're spending your time on it; I just don't understand why I should do likewise. Even aside from WP:NRHPPROGRESS, I can understand the help of quality ratings (it helps people who've enabled the gadget that displays article quality, e.g. as "A start-class article from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia"), but I've never been able to understand how editors or readers benefit from the importance-rating process. Perhaps it would help for a project that had a limited number of articles to improve, but when we have thousands of stubs to expand and tens of thousands of non-existent articles to write, will we treat an article differently because of importance ratings? Nyttend (talk) 17:51, 8 March 2015 (UTC)
PS, the gadget I'm discussing is the one that's described as "Display an assessment of an article's quality as part of the page header for each article". Nyttend (talk) 17:53, 8 March 2015 (UTC)
Importance marks, obviously, how important an article is to a project. Articles with higher importance should in theory be focused on more than those of lower importance. That said, not everyone uses it. The Progress page is similar in that respect. While some people like that its breakdown to the state/county level allows them to focus on problem articles in a given locality, some people would prefer to work on articles that are of great importance nationally, e.g. Top/High-importance sites (mostly NHLs and articles related directly to the Register itself). It's true that most of the unassessed articles will fall under the Low-importance header, but just in case a few of those new articles are high importance (I tagged an NHLD as high within the first few articles I assessed) and someone might want to work on it because of its importance, rating the importance of an article gives them a tool to do so. I personally don't look for importance, but then again I don't really expand many articles at all. The point I'm trying to make is that even if it doesn't seem immediately relevant to you or I doesn't mean we should keep that avenue closed for others to participate in the manner they wish.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:47, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

missing photos and restricted addresses

In National Register of Historic Places listings in Glynn County, Georgia there is Brunswick Old Town Historic District and "Brunswick Old Town", which have different numbers. The address of "Brunswick Old Town" is restricted, but surely it must be around there somewhere. Is there any way to find out where it actually is? (I have the spreadsheet of NRHP.) Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 02:05, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Have you tried the visitor center on US 17 at the causeway to St. Simons Island? They were very nice and generally helpful when I was there. I would think there would be a local historical society, who should know something. I thought the 'restricted' area might be an archaelogical dig site, though that's a bit weird having one in a city proper. But you'll run across that sort of thing now and then when on the NRHP trail.  :) --‖ Ebyabe talk - Inspector General ‖ 03:16, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
That closed a few years ago, to save money. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 03:23, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
You could contact the NRHP to try getting a copy of the submission, but the Georgia version might be a better option. --‖ Ebyabe talk - State of the Union ‖ 03:18, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
Link to that. --‖ Ebyabe talk - Welfare State ‖ 03:19, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
The copy of the nomination you get from the NPS (and probably also from the state) will be redacted - blacking out the most obvious instances of location information. However, with a close reading of what isn't redacted and some study of satellite imagery, you can sometimes intuit the location anyhow. Fair warning: with a lot of address restricted listings, there isn't much or anything left above ground to get a picture of, though I agree with Ebyabe that something in an urban setting may defy assumptions. — Ipoellet (talk) 03:33, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
Also, given the 1974 listing date for Brunswick Old Town, the nomination photographs are almost certainly in the public domain (Commons:Template:PD-US-no notice). If you can get those from NPS/SHPO, they can provide a substitute for a current photo, though admittedly less satisfying. — Ipoellet (talk) 03:39, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
If you're doing a significant amount of work in a particular state, you should try to cultivate a relationship with the state historic preservation office (SHPO), who are the state's keeper of the register. If they're not too busy you may get useful information out of them, and they're not as impersonal as the park service personnel who answer mail addressed to nr_reference@nps.gov (at least the one's I've dealt with). You can get copies of nominations not available from the NPS (although I'd ask specifically about whether they provide redacted ones for restricted sites). In this particular case however, the district nomination at NPS actually mentions the earlier nomination, and places it in some context. NRIS says "Brunswick Old Town" is 110 acres; this is not a very small secret. Magic♪piano 03:35, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

I don't have a complete answer, but after poking around for a few minutes, it appears that "Brunswick Old Town" is indeed an archaeological site. The NRHP.com NRIS copy (which admittedly is not always accurate) calls it a Late Pre-Historic, Early American village site, which is currently underwater. More importantly, it's also known as the "Bay Street Urban Renewal Area," which after a few minutes of Googling turns up Final Report On Bay Street Renewal: Archaeological Salvage Investigations in the Bay Street Urban Renewal Area (reference only, unfortunately). That's not enough information to place the site exactly, but you might be able to either (a) get a copy of the report, (b) do more Googling, (c) chat with someone in Brunswick, or (d) snap a generic shot of the bay shore. Andrew Jameson (talk) 09:32, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

As an added note, archaeological sites seem to have alternate names or designations more often than not; I often find these alternate names are useful when researching history and location (particularly for the archaeological sites, but for other NRHP structures, too). Andrew Jameson (talk) 10:57, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Missing photos

Last year, there was an effort made to secure photos for historic spots that didn't have images. As part of that project, there was a nice mapping feature that allowed someone to easily zoom in and have all National Register locations marked with a green or red flag to show that either a photo existed or did not. The effort has ended, and I can't find any way of accessing the mapping tool. Any thoughts?ProfReader (talk) 17:49, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

The Progress page breaks down where images are needed to the county level. In addition, if you visit a county list that is shown on the Progress page to lack images, you can see directly which images are missing in that county and get a map of all of the sites (illustrated or not) by clicking on link to view them on a map usually found right above the tables in our lists. True, this doesn't give you green or red flags indicating whether an article has an image or not, but it does give you indirect access to that information.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:52, 8 March 2015 (UTC)
Two issues here. First, the original post referred to this link on the wikilabs [1], which was an interactive map that showed the locations of the sites and which did and did not have pictures. Was very convenient, especially on a smartphone. Sadly, that tool seems to be offline. Second, the other handy links at the top of each page to the Google maps are now broken, as Google Maps no longer allows kml files to be plotted directly into the maps. These two losses significantly will hinder me, at least, and probably others, as now there's no visual way to see all the NRHP listing points on a map. Edit: the top page links work for the Bing link still, so it's not a total loss yet...25or6to4 (talk) 19:07, 8 March 2015 (UTC)
Having the KML files is still useful, since they can (limit 100 entries per file and three files per map, IIRC) be imported into the Google Maps Engine (or "My Maps", or whatever they're calling it this week), but the loss of the automatic plotting is a bit an annoyance. Magic♪piano 20:05, 8 March 2015 (UTC)
I was hoping someone might have a better solution. Rats. The problem for me is not that the information is not available; clearly, it is. But the ease of access is in the toilet. I'm planning a trip tomorrow that will take me along the way-off-the-beaten path country roads in rural South Carolina. If I had an easy map of the locations that need a photo, I could easily plan to take a few minutes to go off course and snap a photo. But, each county might take an hour or more to drive across, so not everything that needs a photo is going to happen.ProfReader (talk) 22:17, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
Rural areas are missing a lot of photos. I've done several of them in rural counties in southeast Georgia, and I have mapped out trips to get quite a few more. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 22:39, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
I just added one for Georgia, Glynn County, Windsor Park district. But it is hard to photohgraph some of these "bistoric districts" that go for several blocks. I picked a house in that district, actually it belonged to my great uncle for decades. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 01:43, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
I usually trying taking pictures of several buildings in a historic district, which gives the option of picking the best one for articles. Different kinds of buildings too, where appropriate. In the residential ones, usually that means houses and churches. --‖ Ebyabe talk - Union of Opposites ‖ 03:05, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
Well, I need to go over there and get a wide view showing several houses. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 03:22, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
I'm going to tell you people something I found out on my November 2014 trip to New York; The Bellport Academy is owned by a private resident (I'm not sure I want to mention his name), and you'd more than likely need permission to get a picture of that place. I found this out from some tree trimmers who were working on a house around the corner from it. Also, with or without permission, the George W. Denton House in Flower Hill, New York and Denton Homestead in East Rockaway, New York are a bitch to try to find. I don't even think the address for the house in East Rockaway is correct, because I drove down Denton Avenue, and never saw any structure whatsoever with "60" as an address. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 12:52, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
That's likely because the source information you're relying upon is sorely out of date. I previously discussed the case of the Rose Building in Fairbanks, Alaska, and how it's still listed despite having been demolished in 1998. Furthermore, our listing gives the address 520 Church Street, with a note reading "address has disappeared". Well, not precisely. What happened is that Illinois Street was reconstructed during the early 1960s. Prior to that, one headed north from downtown Fairbanks across the Cushman Street Bridge along North Cushman Street. After a few blocks, the road made a 90 degree turn to the right onto Church Street, then very quickly made a 90 degree turn to the left onto Illinois Street. Prior to the opening of the Wendell Street Bridge in 1953, this made up the southern terminus of the Steese Highway. The 1960s reconstruction softened that S curve. In the process, North Cushman led directly to Illinois, eliminating that particular block of Church. From that point forward, the Rose Building carried a North Cushman address; North Cushman past the point where it turned into Illinois was henceforth a street in name only. It was really more like a driveway leading to the newspaper offices, the railroad depot, the Rose Building and a few smaller buildings in the immediate vicinity, the latter of which were also demolished to make way for the 2012 reconstruction of Illinois. The series of events associated with that reconstruction led to the establishment of the Illinois Street Historic District. The point to all of this: if you're relying upon information which is more than a half century out of date in this case, give some thought as to how such proliferates throughout these listings. Maybe consider consulting sources other than the ones the project is fond of pushing. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 18:34, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
Out of date? The Denton Homestead was registered on November 12, 2014. BTW, I just found the coordinates, and thus realize I was looking at the wrong section of Denton Avenue. As for the house in Flower Hill, that thing was hidden behind some trees on a hill. Snapping a picture of that thing would've required getting out of my car, finding a place to park, and sneaking through the woods. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 00:37, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Images in Indiana

I just ran the bot and updated the Progress page. After uploading the maps generated from each run, I usually check to see what has changed between the last run and this one to monitor article creation or illustration and keep general tabs on the progress everyone is making. I usually don't comment about any changes because they're usually for the better, i.e. adding more articles or more pictures. This week, however, I noticed a rather drastic change in Indiana images.. see the version from a week ago and the current version. It seems a lot of images from Indiana have either been deleted from Commons for copyright issues or are systematically being removed by a single editor or small group. I didn't take the time to look into it since I'm doing other things, but I figured I'd alert the project to it and maybe find out from the involved editor(s) the purpose of removing this images. Anyone know anything?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 02:46, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Looking at several of the affected counties, many of these are archaeological site entries. Generic1139 (talk) 14:33, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Are National Monuments automatically listed on the Register?

Sorry to be posting so many questions lately, guys, but does anyone know anything about Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Monument? It was apparently designated recently as a national monument under the control of the NPS. Does that automatically mean it is listed on the NRHP? It was my understanding that all NPS units were listed on the register, but I can't find anything like a reference number or listing date for this site, and it is not included on National Register of Historic Places listings in Dorchester County, Maryland. Anyone know anything about this?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 06:13, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Likewise, First State National Historical Park. Named a national monument in 2013, then recently named a national historic park by Congress. Lots of mentions on NPS sites, but no refnum for NRHP. Generic1139 (talk) 14:25, 16 March 2015 (UTC)
The First State National Historical Park was created IMHO so that Delaware would no longer be the only state without a National Park within its borders. It's a grab-bag of different disconnected sites around the state, most, or perhaps all, already listed on the NRHP or NHL. Smallbones(smalltalk) 14:17, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

I think "automatically" and "immediately" are two different ideas for the NPS. "Automatically" means they can skip some bureaucratic steps and approvals, but doesn't necessarily mean they will move any faster than otherwise. Just my guess. — Ipoellet (talk) 22:35, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Can anyone come up with a counterexample? Do we know of a national park/monument/similar that is not listed on the Register, despite being designated an NPS unit?
Really, though, my question was more related to assessing the article. Should we include sites owned by the NPS but (apparently) not listed on the Register under this project's scope? If so, should they receive an importance rating of High, like NPS units that are listed, or Related? The latter being akin to contributing properties or delisted sites, i.e. those that have some connection to the Register but are not individually listed.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 05:46, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

NRHP row - commonscat not shown if there is no image

If commonscat is present but an image is not, the "more images" line is not shown. An example is National Register of Historic Places listings in Berkeley County, South Carolina, the entry for Pineville Historic District or National Register of Historic Places listings in Kent County, Delaware for Benjamin Blackiston House. I assume the thought was that if there was a category, there would be an image, or maybe there is an interaction with the "upload image" code, or just that "more images" doesn't make sense if there is no image shown. In the two examples, and more I've been working on, the images in the category are the line drawings, which are very nice and informative, but are different than a photo. I don't want to discourage the uploading of a photo by using the line drawing as the image. Any chance of displaying the commons category even if there is no image present? Generic1139 (talk) 15:56, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

I don't think that including a line drawing in the tables would discourage most folks from replacing it with a photo. Perhaps we have a tendency not to replace images with better ones (in this case "better" only for purposes of the table) since that might result in a bit of conflict. With almost 70% (!) of sites now illustrated, we should now realize that there are many images that should be replaced. For example, I've uploaded many photos that have some flaws, but I figured "something is better than nothing" and hoped that somebody would come along and replace it. Perhaps we can come to an understanding that images will be replaced, and how to do it while minimizing conflict. Smallbones(smalltalk) 14:31, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
Though you are right about replacing, I wasn't thinking of the issue of replacing an image with a better one - I was thinking of new or occasional contributors of images. If the table has the "upload image" link, it increases the chances of getting an image from new users, as I once was. Had that link not been there in 2012 for Mercy Chapel at Mill Run, I probably would not have uploaded, and certainly would not have gotten it tagged properly so someone else could add it to the table and article. And the listing would not have shown up on the (late, lamented) find a monument app. It was an excellent recruitment tool, and three years in, for better or worse, I can now add new articles and expand old ones, watch the maintenance lists for info boxes missing refnums and all that. But I'd hate to cut off that path by using a line drawing as a place holder - unless the object no longer exists. Generic1139 (talk) 15:49, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
I don't think I support displaying a link to a commonscat if no image is present, partly because it would be labelled "More images", which doesn't really make sense if there is no image there to begin with. If you really want to include a link to the commonscat, you could just add it in the description box if you want, so that you can customize the link text, e.g. "Architectural drawings of ____".--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 05:50, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

Confusion in Boston

While assessing the importance of unknown-importance articles, I came across Fort Hill, Roxbury. The article, created in February by User:Chambers617, claims the site is listed on the Register as Roxbury Highlands Historic District, which already has an article that has existed for years. The new article originally claimed it was part of John Eliot Historic District, which is apparently entirely contained within the Roxbury Highlands district, but the creator later removed that claim without explanation. I don't know anything about Boston (I'm posting here in the hopes someone does), but it's probably the case that Fort Hill is a contributing property to one or both of these districts, and the editor, being new, is possibly unfamiliar with the finer details of being listed on the Register, thinking CP status is equivalent to being listed by itself. There is nothing in the Roxbury Highlands district article that leads me to believe it is entirely comprised of Fort Hill, but I could be wrong, in which case, I think the two articles (and possibly the John Eliot district article as well?) need to be merged into a single article. Does anyone have any more local knowledge than I do on this matter?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 02:18, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments, Dudemanfellabra. I did indeed encounter a great deal of confusion for how to ultimately frame the page. I set out to draft a page for the neighborhood of Fort Hill. While in the process, I discovered that the area comprising the neighborhood was already designated on the National Register of Historic Places as the Roxbury Highlands Historic District. That is to say, the Roxbury Highlands Historic District has the same boundaries as the neighborhood of Fort Hill. I decided to use the page of the nearby Mission Hill neighborhood as a rough template for the Fort Hill page because it too functions as both a page for a neighborhood and a historic district.
If you're wondering why a neighborhood would be designated on the National Register under a different name, my guess is that it has lot to do with racial politics. Roxbury has for the last forty or so years functioned as the center of African American professional community in the Boston area. As the city has gentrified, many communities that were formerly considered a part of Roxbury have been relabeled as separate entities that are parts of Boston, similar to how large swaths of Harlem are now referred to as the Upper West Side in New York City. It looks to me like there may have been political or interest groups at some time that may have wanted to point to the area and say, "this is Roxbury," which is an understandable sentiment. Still, the neighborhood has been commonly referred to as Fort Hill in print for at least a half century; many businesses have adopted the designation, and the residents call it Fort Hill. I wanted to give the neighborhood/district its own Wikipedia page while sidestepping the contrasting agendas. So I left the historic district's page as is; I built a new page for Fort Hill that calls it both a neighborhood and a district and links back to the Roxbury Highlands Historic District page; and I labeled the neighborhood as being part of Roxbury (which appears to be the more common usage), rather than Boston (which is how it is listed by realtors). It was the most neutral approach I could think of.
As to the John Eliot Historic District, there are a number of clerical errors on the Roxbury Highlands Historic District page, which I planned to correct but haven't gotten around to. The John Elliot Historic District is located in a suburb of Boston and has nothing to do with the Roxbury Highlands Historic District. The John Eliot Square District is located in the Roxbury Highlands Historic District but the two districts are not coextensive, as the page suggests. Chambers617 (talk) 04:33, 15 March 2015 (UTC)
If the historic district and neighborhood are really coextensive (or nearly so), there's no real need for more than one article (which should be based on the common name). The NRHP listing name doesn't have to be prominent (you don't even have to use {{infobox nrhp}}, but it should be mentioned in the lead, and its listing date should be mentioned somewhere. The naming of the district probably had little to do with racial politics, by the way. It is Park Service policy that listings be given historic names; if the area was historically called "Roxbury Heights", that is the name it would want used. This policy leads at times to idiocies such as Somerville City Hall being listed as "Somerville High School", even though it spent 20 years as the latter and 150 or so (and counting) as the former.
Also by the way, I find it odd that you omitted entirely that the area includes the center of what was once an independent town, that was not a part of Boston until the 1860s, and that you don't explicitly mention in the lead that Roxbury is now part of Boston. These omissions are at best misleading to anyone who doesn't know the geography or history of the area, and doesn't click on links where these relations are explained. Magic♪piano 02:14, 16 March 2015 (UTC)
@Chambers617: Do you have a reliable source that proves the district and neighborhood have the same or roughly the same boundaries? If so, that needs to be cited, and the articles need to be merged. Since you evidently have much more local knowledge than I do, I am hoping you can sort this out for us, but if you need any help, feel free to post here again; that's what the project is for!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 05:52, 16 March 2015 (UTC)
@Dudemanfellabra, I reviewed the Jan. 30 1989 National Register of Historic Places Registration Form. The boundaries are negligibly different on the North and West but it looks to me like there is a difference of three or four blocks on the South. However, I also found a number of sources that cited to boundaries for Fort Hill that more closely resemble those listed in the Historic District paperwork, and sources that suggest that the names Roxbury Highlands and Fort Hill may be used interchangeably. The Massachusetts Cultural Resource Information System lists the neighborhood as Fort Hill, and the historic name as Roxbury Highlands. The Boston Preservation Alliance and Historic Boston Incorporated also put out a white paper that refers to the area interchangeably as Fort Hill, Highland Park or Roxbury Highlands. ("The neighborhood is known alternately as “Fort Hill” for its two Revolutionary War fort locations and “Roxbury Highlands” for its distinct, hilly topography.") There are also more informal sources that discuss Fort Hill and Roxbury Highlands as alternative names for the same area, and show boundaries for Fort Hill that more closely mirror those of the Historic District. I think this suggests that the there is not a need for both a Fort Hill and Roxbury Highlands Historic District page but I will leave it up to someone with more editing experience to make that evaluation. The sources seem to show that many people consider the boundaries of the neighborhood (which I characterized as approximate) to more closely resemble those of the historic district and that I may need to revise the boundaries I have listed for the neighborhood. If we're moving toward one article, please let me know and I'll try to merge the content.Chambers617 (talk) 02:24, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
@Chambers617: After looking through the nomination form myself, as well as checking the other sources you provide, especially that blog, I can see that this is a debate even among locals, so I don't feel as ignorant anymore haha. That said, it does appear that Roxbury Highlands and Fort Hill are the same place, or at least closely related enough to be covered in a single article in my opinion. It seems to me that the broadest term might be Fort Hill, so I would suggest merging the NRHP district article into that one, although I do believe the current Fort Hill article needs to be restructured or at least expanded so as to highlight the fact that there is an NRHP district there. The nomination form seems to be a treasure trove of information (I didn't read the entire thing), so I'm surprised to see that it isn't cited at all in the current Fort Hill article. In a successfully merged article, I would expect to see a clear history of the area, on which you have already made significant progress, as well as a section devoted to the architecture and cohesion of the NRHP district, which seems to be highlighted in the nomination form. I might also mention, though not in any extended sense, the smaller Eliot district, linking to that article which might be ok staying separated out, though feel free to merge it in as well if desired.
I'm tempted to jump in and help with the merge myself, but I really don't have much time to devote to actual development (I'm more of a drive-by maintenance/statistics editor these days, unfortunately, due to outside commitments). I am more than willing to provide guidance or point you to others who can as you proceed with the merge, though. This subject has great potential, it seems, to become at least a good article, if not featured! Though our expertise here will probably be more limited to the NRHP district itself rather than the entire neighborhood, please don't hesitate to post here with any questions or concerns about this or any future articles you plan to write. Thanks again for your helpful contributions!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 05:42, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for the comments, @Dudemanfellabra:. I appreciate you providing your direction and will work towards implementing it. Chambers617 (talk) 03:43, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Progress milestone

As of the latest update to the Progress page, the project has officially crossed the 70% threshold of uploading pictures--70% of all sites on the register are now illustrated! Not only that, but 59% of sites have articles, so we are sure to reach 60% very soon! Great work, guys! Keep it up!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 06:05, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

Congrats to everybody who has contributed images and photos. With spring arriving, I'm sure everybody will be more likely to get outside and get more pix. I've given out multiple barnstars when we've passed previous milestones, but I'm looking forward to the 75% milestone. Barnstars for everybody who adds a pic to a previously non-illustrated site from now to July 7 (just after the holiday weekend). Smallbones(smalltalk) 12:06, 23 March 2015 (UTC)
This includes address-restricted graphics, doesn't it? I see, for instance, that Alger Co, Michigan is listed on the progress page as 100% illustrated, although the illustrations include three AR's. A better count of sites illustrated would exclude these, since they're not really illustrated.
Unfortunately, using AR's to turn a county red might dissuade photographers, image-hunters, etc., from trying to find usable illustrations. I realize that it'd create a discontinuity in the time series of progress maps, but would it be possible to change the algorithm so that we no longer count these as illustrated?
And thanks once again to DMFB for developing the progress page. It's a great tool for finding counties that need illustrating, and the possibility of turning a county from blue to red (or at least to pale orange) is a nice incentive for photographers on the road. — Ammodramus (talk) 17:37, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
I remember there being some discussion around the time the Progress page was being developed about counting AR images. I've even noticed certain editors going around removing AR images from county lists specifically because they inflate the counts on the Progress page. I think (though I may be remembering incorrectly and/or echoing my own opinion) the general consensus of that discussion was that the AR image should definitely not be added to a row by default. When a property is listed, we shouldn't just say "Oh, that site is address restricted, so that means we need to put the AR image there." If a concerted effort, however, has been made and editors were still unable to take a current or even a historical picture, then the AR image could be placed. It should be a last resort image rather than a default.
That said, many sites around the country do not appear to use the image in this manner. There are thus three courses of action:
  1. Go around the country to each of the lists and blanket remove AR images, only adding them back if some involved editor reverts with a reason similar to the above paragraph.
  2. Recode the progress page to ignore the AR image all together, even in cases where it is not likely that an image will ever be placed for those sites.
  3. Do nothing and remain with the status quo.
Both of the first options have drawbacks, but looking long term, I'm inclined to lean toward the first option if we do either, but I also am fine with the status quo. If a consensus develops to change the code of the Progress page, it's a very simple change that could be implemented as soon as the next time the bot runs (likely this weekend).--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 20:02, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

First Baptist Church of Columbus, Georgia--is it not listed?

Hello. I will create Dr James H. DeVotie's page shortly. In 1856, he became the pastor at the First Baptist Church of Columbus, Georgia. I don't see it listed here, however. Obviously it's not the same church as the First African Baptist Church (Columbus, Georgia) (not the same address, and it was built decades before the black church). Is it not listed on the NRHP? It's very old and beautiful. I hope you can help. Thank you.Zigzig20s (talk) 16:59, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

The First Baptist Church at 212 12th Street is listed as a contributing element of Church Square, which also includes neighboring St. Luke's. Church Square was listed in 1980. nomination form Magic♪piano 18:37, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
Thanks. Should we have two separate articles in this case? Probably not built at the same time, by different architects, with different histories...Zigzig20s (talk) 18:59, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
I would say no to two different articles. I would make an article at Church Square (Columbus, Georgia) and talk about both FBC Columbus as well as St. Luke United Methodist, the only two contributing properties to the small district. The article could start out with a brief history of the district, outlined in the nomination linked above, and point out its significance, i.e. this is the only "church square" from Edward Lloyd Thomas's original plan for the city that is still being used for churches. There could even be a more general description of Thomas's plan for the city and/or the Columbus, Georgia#Beginnings section could be expanded to include more about Thomas's plan and a {{See also}} link could be included in the Church Square article. Later in the article, a section could be included for each of the two churches–FBC Columbus and St. Luke United Methodist–that are included in the district. In each of these sections, a small history of the congregation, building, etc., could be included. If either section becomes too long and starts to dominate the district article, only then should it be split out in a summary style fork.
All of that said, you mentioned that you planned on creating an article for an old pastor of FBC Columbus... is he really notable? Did he do anything else worthy of mention in a Wikipedia article? If all he is famous for is being the pastor of this church, I would say that doesn't meet the notability requirements for a new article...--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 20:19, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
(edit conflict) User:Dudemanfellabra: He was a co-founder of Samford University among other things; there will be enough references. I'm only interested in his church in Columbus, however. Would you like to create the main article about Church Square please, even if it is just a start?Zigzig20s (talk) 20:29, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
I've started an article at Church Square (Columbus, Georgia) (and redirected the FBC Columbus link to it) which gives a little bit of history of the square and the town plan in general and then gives a brief history of FBC Columbus and an architectural description of the historic sanctuary. I couldn't really find any freely available information about St. Luke UMC (though I didn't search very hard), but I did find this book that you may be interested in if you want to expand the article a little more. If you live around the area, the article could be improved by adding a quality image of the church if you are able to take one and upload it. Good luck!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 05:42, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Can't access NRHP

I've tried using the NRHP database for the first time with no success at all. In National Register of Historic Places listings in Monmouth County, New Jersey

{{NRHP row |pos=55 |refnum=87002561 |type=NRHP |article=Merino Hill House and Farm |name=Merino Hill House and Farm |address=Allentown-Clarksburg Rd., CR 524 |city=[[Wrightsville, New Jersey|Wrightsville]] |county=[[Monmouth County, New Jersey]] |date=1988-02-11 |image= |lat=40.185556 |lon=-74.501667 }}

links to http://nrhp.focus.nps.gov/natregadvancedsearch.do?searchType=natregadvanced&selectedCollections=NPS%20Digital%20Library&referenceNumber=87002561&natregadvancedsearch=Search which gives a error. Is it them or me? Thincat (talk) 12:39, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

It's them. The Focus site has always had frequent downtimes, but it's been getting worse and worse. I never go through their search anymore, just using direct links to the PDFs. For example, filling in your refnum makes the URLs http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NRHP/Text/87002561.pdf and http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NRHP/Photos/87002561.pdf. HTH, Ntsimp (talk) 14:49, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
Thank you for both parts of your reply. That sorts out what I was wanting to do completely. Thincat (talk) 15:02, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Given the very high unreliability of NPS Focus, why do we link to it on essentially every row of our lists? If it confused an editor, think what it must do to our readers. — Ipoellet (talk) 22:30, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

I think that's a leftover from when PDFs were the exception rather than the rule. The landing page at Focus at least had some of the info, and if they happened to have the forms scanned, the links were there. I'm inclined to think we should phase out that link. Ntsimp (talk) 22:43, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
NPS Focus went down around the same time most of the forms went up, and the NPS doesn't seem to have a plan for bringing it back, at least not in its current form. I agree that we should take out the links for the time being; we can add something back in if they ever put up a replacement. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 00:31, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
I wasn't aware that those links were no longer working. If that is true, I say we get rid of the link as well, possibly replacing it with a direct link to the nomination form itself, since most are now digitized? Or perhaps we could remove it all together and just wait for the remaining states to be uploaded before linking to the nom forms? Or code NRHP row to detect if the list is in one of those states (using the page name), and also to check if the site is Address Restricted (as we do already for categorization), and only include a link to the nomination form if neither of those is true? We could add a parameter to manually suppress the link if it is an odd case that hasn't been uploaded yet, so we don't go linking to non-existing forms as well.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 05:56, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
I think that's asking an awful lot of the lists - making the lists a one-stop-shop for links to all the information is overloading a table format that is better kept clean and straightforward. If a reader wants greater depth on a listing, the first place we should be sending them is to the WP article. If the reader wants to keep drilling down after that, we can link them to databases or nom forms from the article. In that context, it might make sense to build a link to the nom forms into the NRHP infobox rather than the lists. — Ipoellet (talk) 09:28, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
Thinking a bit further, if we are concerned about having some sort of in-depth information for those listings where we don't have an article yet, then we could put a link in the underutilized "Description" column. Insert the link as the content of the |description= parameter rather than setting up a bunch of new logic and/or parameters in {{NRHP row}}. I would see this as a temporary, stopgap move until such time as someone can write an article. — Ipoellet (talk) 09:40, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
This link still works as of 19 March 2015: http://npsfocus.nps.gov/npsadvancedsearch.do?searchtype=npsadvanced, and can even be used to search for items by refnum http://npsfocus.nps.gov/npsadvancedsearch.do?term1=73000168&npsadvancedsearch=Search&selectedCollections=NPS+Digital+Library. For maximum chance of getting the user something, the link could go to a "possible further information" script, possibly smart enough to know which states are digitized, that populates the docs/NRHP/Photos and docs/NRHP/Text urls, and provides the search link. Generic1139 (talk) 13:45, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
The focus links, including the one at the start of this section, are working again.Generic1139 (talk) 15:59, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Oglala Lakota County, South Dakota

I don't know how many South Dakotans are active here, but Shannon County, South Dakota was recently renamed Oglala Lakota County, South Dakota. I hesitate to move the NRHP page, National Register of Historic Places listings in Shannon County, South Dakota, because I don't know if it would interfere with all of the scripts used by the project. But I thought I would let you all know it should probably be moved to match the recent move of the main article. kennethaw88 • talk 02:59, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

I've moved around some pages, but suddenly I realise that I'm not sure how best to fix stuff at Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Progress. In particular, that page relies on FIPS codes; does the federal government change those for a county rename? I'm clueless, so I'll wait for input from the page's real maintainer or someone else who's better informed than I. Nyttend (talk) 16:39, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
If the Shannon county list is moved, all that needs to be changed on the Progress page is the link so that it isn't a redirect (and probably put it in alphabetical order for aesthetic reasons). Even if the FIPS code does change legally when a county name is changed, we don't have to change it on the Progress page since all it's really there for is to give an ID for the county in the maps we generate. That's why we're able to put a FIPS code of "00000" on all the territories and even "ddddd" on duplicates. The actual values don't matter.. just as long as they match what is in the map. If we do change it in one place, we need to change it in both.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 20:05, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
Okay, thank you. I knew that you used FIPS codes for the map, but I didn't know if you'd want to change it with a county name change. I already moved the list, but I moved it back lest I break things with the codes; I guess I'll move it back back. Nyttend (talk) 21:16, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Help sorting out a dubious claim

Some local websites have claimed that the Durfee House of Geneva, New York, estimated at 1787, is the oldest extant frame building west of Rome, New York. This seems highly unlikely. I just put the article together and found date discrepancies between a couple sources. B137 (talk) 14:36, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

With a quick search, it appears that the Carter Mansion in Elizabethton, Tennessee is both older (1780) and farther west than the Durfee House. Although, really, there aren't a whole lot of 18th century frame structures around, so I wouldn't be surprised if Durfee House is in the top ten oldest frame structures more than X miles from the Atlantic. Andrew Jameson (talk) 15:04, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
Even top 10 would be surprising for the whole country basically outside of New England. I would venture to guess that what they really meant to say but didn't clarify is that they are limiting to New York State. Not 10 miles away to the SSW, there is a large wood frame house that dates to 1790, so it wouldn't be surprising if it wasn't even true for just the western part of the state in which case it is simply a nonsensical claim. Heck, I own a house to the southwest that dates to 1800, but to be fair both of these buildings are older than everything on the NRHP for this area that I have seen. B137 (talk) 15:42, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
I'd find this claim a bit surprising without doing any research, considering Geneva is about the same longitude as Washington, DC; major colonial-era communities in Virginia like Richmond and Charlottesville are west of Geneva, and it would be odd if no wood-frame buildings survived in those regions from the colonial period. Research: Rising Sun Tavern (Fredericksburg, Virginia) (built 1760, 38°18′24″N 77°27′42″W) is west of Geneva (42°52′44″N 76°59′35″W). As B137 says, the claim gains in credibility if it is restricted to New York State, as west of Utica was Iroquois land until the Revolution, where it is reasonable that only the stone buildings of Fort Niagara have survived from the colonial period. Magic♪piano 16:36, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

I guess a lot of it comes down to the whole New York thing. But doesn't this pre date the current boundaries of New York? This was during the time Ontario County, New York was still being split up after it theoretically extended all the way to the west coast. It seems like a long shot but perhaps it is the oldest frame building in the then-boundary of Ontario County still existing. But like I said, with the ~1790 Arnold Potter House being just a stones throw away, it seems very unlikely that there aren't quite a few frame houses of this time period to the west, even bar everything to the south. The house doesn't even seem to be on the register, or even a contributing property to one of the historic districts. Probably because it has been so heavily modified. B137 (talk) 17:31, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

One note, B137 — 1830s relocation and 1840s expansions aren't particularly relevant here. Relocation and modification both hurt eligibility because they take a building away from its historic context. But when a building's been in its current place for something like 180 years and hasn't been expanded in something like 170, it's definitely acquired a sufficient historic context in its current place and condition. If the SHPO decided that it didn't qualify as a colonial-era building, they'd base their full evaluation of it on whether it qualified as an example of the 1840s context, at latest. Nyttend (talk) 12:51, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Cross-county site

I've just photographed Route 66, State maintained from Montoya to Cuervo (refnum 97001395), listed as being in Quay County, New Mexico. In fact, although Montoya's in Quay County, most of the segment, including Cuervo, is in Guadalupe County.

  • Can I go ahead and add this to the Guadalupe County list?
  • If so, I assume that I need to add it manually to the list of duplicates in the NRHP-in-NM list article. Is there anything else that I need to do to make sure that it won't be double-counted on the progress page, etc.?

Thanks—Ammodramus (talk) 18:09, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

I would make sure from the nomination form that the specific section listed (which may not be the entire length from Montoya to Cuervo) actually crosses the county line.. the forms usually have maps for things like that. If the specific section is entirely within one county, don't add it to both lists. If it does, then add it to both lists and add it manually to the list of duplicates in the NM article. If it is added to both lists, provided the reference number is the same in both, the bot will automatically detect it as a duplicate on the next run and update the Progress page accordingly.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:34, 28 March 2015 (UTC)
The nomination explicitly describes it as being in both counties, so it should be on both county lists. Magic♪piano 19:11, 28 March 2015 (UTC)
Done, thanks. I wanted to make sure I wouldn't inadvertently screw up the Progress-page statistics. Ammodramus (talk) 19:30, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

"Address restricted"

Apologies if this question has been addressed before; I haven't seen it.

I know that the Register/nominating organizations have their reasons for listing properties as "address restricted"; I also know, however, from local experience if nothing else, that it's not always difficult to ferret out where such a site is in the first place. A pair of questions:

One: if we know where the site is, is it kosher to provide coordinates? (I'm thinking particularly of the Orange and Alexandria Railroad Bridge Piers, for which coordinates are available. I added them to the list for Fairfax County; someone else added them to the list for Prince William County, and I thought it only fair that they should be listed both times.)

Two: what about photographs? Same principle applies, I should think. (I can think of one site in particular which is "address restricted", but which I believe is marked and celebrated by another entity.) --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 20:28, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

I know we've had a few discussions on this (I think this was the last one) and it's still not entirely agreed upon, but the general policy seems to be using common sense. If the site's marked, or the location's available from an easily accessible source, then it's OK to post the location, but if you have to do a lot of digging or use sources that require special access to get it's probably not a good idea. Photos are more generally acceptable unless they clearly reveal the location, since they aren't as useful to anyone trying to find a site for the wrong reasons (and good luck getting a photo without the location anyway). There's a lot of gray area in that (especially around what counts as an accessible source), but that seems to be the general consensus. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 23:55, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
In the case of the O&ARR piers, it's hard to take any concealment seriously given that the nomination includes a map with the exact location highlighted. Mangoe (talk) 00:49, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
This question has occasionally been contentious when it has come up, with tension between the positions urging caution and restraint for the sake of preservation, and those recoiling at real or implied censorship. Since I know very well that I fall in the former camp, I hope I worded that fairly. But in some cases the location has become such public knowledge that even I can't see any purpose in not publishing the location (e.g. the Fort Yamhill Site in Polk County, Oregon, which has been fully developed as a state park). Also, with regard to photos, many AR listings are archaeological sites such that photos of the location itself would be both uninteresting and uninformative. ("Oh, look. A patch of dirt. There's interesting stuff under it, though!") In these cases, a historical photo or a photo of artifacts recovered from the site can be better encyclopedically than any alternative (e.g. Fort Rock Cave in Lake County, Oregon; bad example Paisley Five Mile Point Caves in the same county). — Ipoellet (talk) 05:05, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
Well, the other site I was thinking about was Santee Indian Mound and Fort Watson, which I may have a chance to see (but then I may not.) Near as I can tell, that's under the jurisdiction of the Fish and Wildlife Service, and they apparently have no problem letting people know where it is, even if the state does. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 05:58, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
Someone has put coords in Siege of Fort Watson.... Another "cat out of the bag" example is also in the Lake County list: the Greaser Petroglyph Site, where the article links to a picture of a sign erected at the site. Mangoe (talk) 12:33, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
I've tended to approach this from an WP:OR POV: if you can find a decent source for the location, the it can (and might as well be) included, but if you have to deduce it or otherwise work it out, it shouldn't be included. The same thing goes for photos: if you have to work out whether you've photographed to the right thing, then that photograph shouldn't be used. Mangoe (talk) 12:34, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
Just closing this out by noting that I visited the mound site today, took a photo, and uploaded it. Considering a.) the site is located on "Fort Watson Road", and b.) Santee National Wildlife Refuge has identified the site on its maps and erected signs directing drivers to the mound, I think I'm OK to do so. I will work out some coordinates when I have a moment - for an "address restricted" site it's terrifically well-marked. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 23:44, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

Fort Laramie National Historic Site

I don't know why I keep falling into these odd ones. Fort Laramie National Historic Site is marked as an HD in NRIS, and therefore in the county list, but with the Historic Site name. It was apparently a historic site in 1966 and is still labeled as such on the big sign out front. The 66000755 refnum points at a 1984 nomination pdf that was marked as "already entered" at the top and "already listed/for confirmation" in section 12. It was not issued a new number. The 1984 form notes that the Historic Site contains 832.45 acres while the Historic District has 536 acres. Is the article and the refnum for the smaller Historic District (though the name is "Historic Site")? Should this be discussed in the article? Do we go with two articles, one for the historic site and a 2nd for the district? Recast the existing article as the Historic District? Unless there is a dissenting opinion, I plan to add a embedded NRHP infobox for the HD, add a section on the contents of the HD with a ref to the 1984 nomination form, and move on.Generic1139 (talk) 19:12, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

I'd presume the historic district encompasses the subset of a larger NPS property that is actually historically significant (i.e. excluding park service areas and buffers that NPS has purchased as part of the park and environs). Definitely not separate articles, and the distinction is IMHO barely worth mentioning ("the historically significant parts of the site were listed ..."). Magic♪piano 22:21, 3 April 2015 (UTC)
"National historic site" and "historic district" are separate but not mutually exclusive statuses. In this case, they definitely refer to essentially the same place, and should have only one article under the NHS title. When you embed the NRHP infobox, it should state the smaller acreage in opposition to the larger acreage in the parent infobox. A footnote will be necessary to explain why the difference. — Ipoellet (talk) 04:56, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

New Photos

I got some new photos during the past week. I got Miltimore House and Wynyate in South Pasadena, California and the Franklin Thomas House in La Cañada Flintridge, California - they're in their respective city categories in Commons. Why is it that these house are all obscured by vegetation? GRRRRR Einbierbitte (talk) 23:09, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

I think that when they're deciding whether a house merits NRHP listing, they also give it extra points if it faces north. — Ammodramus (talk) 01:59, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
It's easy to get a shot of a house without vegetation. Just move it north of California and take the shot in the wintertime. Smallbones(smalltalk) 02:49, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
North of California is Oregon, and lemme tell ya that ain't no solution. Or at least only a partial one. Points to Idaho, though - vegetation is generally only a minor problem there. — Ipoellet (talk) 05:48, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
Arbor Day is coming up in less than three weeks; should we be protesting? — Ammodramus (talk) 12:13, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Elkman's tool

The refnum search function on Elkman's infobox creator hasn't been working for a few days. Search by property name is working. Generic1139 (talk) 22:24, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

What's broken is clicking on infobox links from city and county searches. (At least that's where I see it.) I left a note on his talk page a few days ago. Magic♪piano 02:16, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Search by reference number has been working fine for the last few days - as has NPS focus. Generic1139 (talk) 17:52, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Elkman left me a note that he fixed it (at least what I was experiencing). Magic♪piano 18:49, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Upload Image

I like the "upload image" link on the list pages and hope it stays, but isn't it time to remove the wsm campaign from it? Generic1139 (talk) 20:53, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

St. John's Church (Savannah, Georgia)

St. John's Church (Savannah, Georgia) has a plaque on it saying that it is on the NHRP (I took photos today and I have one of the plaque.) But the article doesn't mention NRHP and neither does National Register of Historic Places listings in Chatham County, Georgia. So, is it or is it not on the NHRP? Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 03:30, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

The church is in the large Savannah Historic District, and likely counts as a contributing property. The adjacent parish house is listed on the NRHP as the Green-Meldrim House. Generic1139 (talk) 11:22, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Adolph Boesel House

Lets discuss the Adolph Boesel House. The house was moved from its historic address after it was listed and later noted as destroyed by the Ohio Historical Society. It remains in the NRIS data base. The article has a nrhp infobox photo of the original house in its new location, as well as an nrhp infobox embedded in the nrhp infobox with an image of an unrelated new house that just happens to have been built at the old location. Problem #1, the embedded infobox shows up in the NRHP infobox needing cleanup category. Easily fixed by removing the embedded info box and the photo of the unrelated house at the old location, as the image just shows the new house with little location context. The bigger problem is the use of the new house at the old location in the county list. In that context the new house/old location photo is misleading, given the limited summary available on the page. Moving to the general case, we do try to show the location of destroyed properties, and in cases where the photo is of an empty lot, an empty foundation, a ruin, a HABS photo of the original building or the like, the correct information is relayed, even in the overview context of the county list. In the case of an intact house, I think we're not doing the right thing. We're labeling an unrelated house as the historic house. In cases like this, should we not leave the image on the county list empty - or at least use the image of the original house in its new location? Generic1139 (talk) 04:05, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

So to make sure I'm following this, the original house was moved to a new location but is still standing, but the Ohio Historical Society classified it as demolished, and now we're using a picture of the old location in the county list instead of the actual house at its new location? Assuming that's the situation, it makes a lot more sense to me to use the picture of the house in its new location, even if the move wasn't approved. The closest example I can think of is the Gartz Court in Pasadena, CA, which was moved and is very much still standing, but is still under the old address in NRIS as far as I can tell; I updated that address on-wiki a while ago when I was photographing a bunch of the Pasadena sites, and I got pictures of the moved buildings rather than the original site. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 04:30, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
I agree. Adjustments made. Generic1139 (talk) 05:54, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Atalaya and Brookgreen Gardens

This is an interesting question in how to handle several different, but related, listings, all located in Georgetown County, South Carolina. A 1600-acre portion of Brookgreen Gardens (total size >9,000 acre) was listed on the NRHP in 1978, and adjacent Atalaya Castle was listed in 1984. In 1992, a 550-acre portion of Brookgreen Gardens was combined with Atalaya into the National Historic Landmark District Atalaya and Brookgreen Gardens, which uses the Atalaya refnum. The South Carolina SHPO has a nomination form for just Atalaya Castle, and there is a separate NHL nomination for the combined properties from the NPS. The castle nomination is for one acre.

What's unclear to me are several things. First: how should the infoboxes and categories at Atalaya Castle (US) and Brookgreen Gardens be organized? I've presently described them as "listed on NRHP, contributing to NHLD"; there is explanatory text in the body. Should they be categorized into Category:National Historic Landmarks in South Carolina (Brookgreen presently is, Atalaya is not)? Second: In National Register of Historic Places listings in Georgetown County, South Carolina, should Atalaya and Brookgreen be colored as NRHP or NHL(D) (one is now colored NHL, the other NHLD)? Third: should Atalaya and Brookgreen Gardens appear separately from Atalaya on that list (it doesn't right now), even though they have the same refnum? Magic♪piano 15:10, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Comments requested....

...at Talk:Mount Morris Bank Building#Attempt to own article and Talk:Mount Morris Bank Building#Image dispute BMK (talk) 20:58, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

When new National Historic Landmarks are listed

To folks who update lists and articles when new National Historic Landmarks are designated, please remember to also add proper categories, and to adjust the importance in the talk page banner of the article. (For those who missed the press release, there were five new NHLs, and one delisting). Magic♪piano 17:29, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

I've been thinking for a while that we need some sort of step-by-step guide for handling Weekly List items: how to do a new listing, how to do a delisting, what to check for with "additional documentation", etc. The forgotten step that bothers me is that when a new listing is added to a county list, the state list and national list aren't updated. I'd be happy to take a stab at a step-by-step guide, but it's going to take me probably a couple weeks to get to a first draft. — Ipoellet (talk) 22:51, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

"Creating articles" by just redirecting them to lists of buildings

I've recently been working on assessing the importance of all the unassessed articles under the project's scope and have moved on to now tagging untagged articles, found with the help of the Progress page statistics (Side note: I'm doing this with a script that makes the job faster since you don't have to visit each individual page). In the process I have come across several "articles" which are bluelinks on the county lists and are thus counted as articled on the Progress page but in reality are just redirects to other articles which only mention the building in passing, e.g. as part of a list of buildings that share some characteristic. This is not the first time I've come across this kind of thing, but since it directly affects what I'm trying to do now, I decided to bring it up here. I personally don't think these types of redirects should be created. All they really serve to do is beef up the statistics for that county on the Progress page without actually adding any information about a given building. This is especially true if the target of the redirect is assessed Start or higher because just like that the net quality of that county has shot up without the editor doing a single bit of work.

Take, for example, the recent case of the Sosa-Carrillo-Fremont House, which previously redirected to Arizona Historical Society#Museums, simply a list of museums owned and operated by the society. While sure, this does give a little bit of context to the building, even a small stub that says the building is listed on the National Register and then links to the Historical Society article is much preferable to an uninformative redirect. I created such a stub there and linked to the nomination document so some future editor who is more interested in the site's history can expand it at will. It didn't take very long, especially since the nomination form is available online, and sure it can be expanded probably five- to tenfold, but what's there now gives at least a brief introduction to the house rather than just a mindless redirect to a list of unrelated buildings. I don't see why anyone who creates a redirect like this couldn't take the time to put that much effort in him/herself, but it seems this is a common thing.

I also came across the Vagabond Motel, currently a redirect to an article about an architectural style in Miami. The section to which the redirect links is a list of buildings that exhibit the style and is thoroughly unhelpful. I would have created a small stub in this case as well, but the listing is so recent that the nomination form is not online anywhere to my knowledge, and so I'm stuck. Does anyone have any local knowledge or is anyone willing to search for alternate sources to create a short stub in place of the redirect? If not, I think the redirect should be deleted all together. If there is no more information that an architectural style, that doesn't tell the reader any more than a redlink.

Does anyone know of any more cases like these? I've seen quite a few over the years, but I can't put my hands on any at the moment. Am I the only one that thinks these redirects should not be "allowed" (meaning their creation should be discouraged in favor of stubs [or longer articles if the editor is so inclined] and existing ones should be stubbed or deleted)?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 05:28, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

Imagine that you're using a printed encyclopedia and see "Buildingname. See architectural style". You then turn to the style, and you see it mentioned that "Some of the buildings in this style are X, Y, and Z". Since printed encyclopedias are space-limited, this would make more sense for them than for us. Do they ever do this? This is common in Florida; lots of site names are redirected to lists. See WhatLinksHere for San Jose Estates Thematic Resource Area, and the related links at National Register of Historic Places listings in Duval County, Florida, for an example. I've long wanted to see them deleted, but I've never gotten around to making a nomination. These lists provide nothing more than one can get on the county list, so it doesn't help anyone to redirect site names to them. Nyttend (talk) 11:07, 2 April 2015 (UTC)
University of Arkansas Campus Historic District is a historic district with a large number of separately-listed buildings (in National Register of Historic Places listings in Washington County, Arkansas). Most of the buildings are described in at least stub form in the district article; some have separate articles, while others are redirects into the district article. I've seen this in isolated cases in connection to other university campuses. Magic♪piano 12:12, 2 April 2015 (UTC)
I've definitely come across these (and their cousins, neighborhood historic districts which redirect to city articles) while going through the untagged articles. My rule of thumb is that if the building fits into the article and there's actually some coverage of it, then it's OK, but if the target article barely mentions the building (like with the Vagabond Motel) or if the building's description feels shoehorned into the article (like Coleman Theatre) then I don't tag it and wait until there's an actual article. (In more egregious/recent cases I sometimes just delete the redirect.) I think most of the remaining untagged articles fall into these categories though, so we should figure out something to do with them. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 12:24, 2 April 2015 (UTC)
In general, they ought to be deleted. In the past, I've sometimes just changed the link; lots of "Building at [address]" listings have articles entitled "[address]" (see New York City's 203 East 29th Street, for example), so we could resolve the problem partially by changing the Duval County list so that "House at 3325 Via de la Reina" links to 3325 Via de la Reina, "House at 7245 San Jose Boulevard" links to 7245 San Jose Boulevard, etc. It would avoid the need to go through RFD, and these ones in Florida are generally far too old for R3 speedy deletion. We should distinguish these lists and redirects-to-MPS-pages from what are effectively group articles, e.g. Zaleski Mound Group where I wrote one article for three sites because it was easiest to cover all three in the same page, or a university historic district article where each of the individually listed buildings has a relevant section. Finally, not all neighborhood HD redirects are a bad idea; Kentucky's "Crescent Hill Historic District" quite sensibly redirects to Crescent Hill, Louisville, because pretty much the whole neighborhood is a historic district. The problem's when a redirect's created for a small district, e.g. the ten buildings of the "Placename Commercial Historic District" are redirected to a thousand-person village. Nyttend (talk) 17:26, 2 April 2015 (UTC)
Changing the links makes it more likely that the eventual article will be misnamed, unless whoever creates it knows what's going on with the redirect. Since I imagine most of these aren't that new (and we can use R3 on the ones that are), I feel like the best solution would be to make a list of which redirects we need to address and gradually work through either RfD-ing them or writing the articles. It'll take some time and effort, but otherwise I'm not sure how we're going to keep these from slipping through the cracks. The currently untagged articles are a good starting point, but I'm sure there are a few that are tagged too, if anyone comes across them. (As for the neighborhoods, I was referring more to stuff like West Miner Street-Third Street Historic District - which is a redirect to a section that doesn't exist, no less.) TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 00:44, 3 April 2015 (UTC)
Responses in order:
@Nyttend: There has actually been discussion before about linking to lists/MPS/TR pages (though I'm too lazy to look through the archives for a link), and currently the Progress page code counts any link to a list-class article which has "National Register of Historic Places" in the title as unarticled and all other list-class as stub. I believe I suggested expanding that check to include the terms "Thematic Resource" and "Multiple Property Submission", which would take care of the Duval County, Florida articles anyway. I'm not sure why or even if I was persuaded not to expand to include those terms, but if no one opposes that move now, I'm more than willing to do so. I think I remember there being a valid reason not to exclude all list articles for the sake of some HD articles which consist mainly of a list of contributing properties, so I wouldn't want to do that. Searching for a list of exclusion terms makes more practical sense, though. As for linking to addresses, I think I agree with TheCatalyst31 that we should not modify the links to exclude "House at" but should rather just do something with the redirects directly. I agree about the "group" articles and districts, which would not be affected by the change to the code I proposed above.
@TheCatalyst31: I agree we should make some list, and I was actually thinking in my free time today about a method to get NationalRegisterBot to produce that list since it already goes through every single link from the county lists when I run it ~weekly anyway. The best idea I've come up with is to get a list of all redirects and maybe also links where the |name= and |article= parameters are sufficiently different, i.e. don't trigger if the only difference is a parenthetical disambiguation, "The" or similar modifier, or some other small difference that we could slowly refine until the list got better and better. The latter part will be substantially harder to code but it doesn't appear too far outside the realm of feasibility. From that list the both can check if each page has an NRHP infobox. This would be better than checking for an NRHP project banner on the talk page because some articles are tagged inappropriately while some are completely untagged.. I think an NRHP infobox or some other measure of whether or not an article is about an NRHP listing is better than the project banner. We could slowly refine the code to get a better and better list and use it as a guide for work. Of course I may be over-complicating the issue since a manual list may be less work to compile and definitely trigger fewer false positives. My point is that if it is deemed too big of a job to do manually, I am willing to attempt some level of automation if the project thinks that will be helpful.
I am willing to create short stubs for these articles if the nomination documents and other sources are online if others are willing to help in the effort. For newer listings like the Vagabond Motel I talked about above, I don't know if that will be possible but we can try or else just RfD them. If no one objects to the change in the NRHPstats and Progress page code for redirects to list-articles, I'll go ahead and implement that, and if the project thinks a bot-generated list would be helpful, I can try to write up some code to produce one.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 01:45, 3 April 2015 (UTC)
Just a response on the link-changing: the reason I suggested doing this is that many articles already use the "[address]" name format; it's not as if all such articles are entitled "House at [address]" or "Building at [address]". If I change House at 3325 Via de la Reina to 3325 Via de la Reina, and then someone creates an article at the latter title, I don't think we should consider it to be misnamed. It's completely different with something like Terra Ceia Village Improvement Association Hall: if it were a redirect to its MPS page, we wouldn't have a valid alternate name. Dudemanfellabra, your idea of all different-from-NRIS links sounds like it would require a massive amount of work. Tons of articles are different in ways much bigger than (location, state) or "The"; cf my Zaleski Mound Group example, other places like Canfield Island Site or Bedford Village Archeological Site (both use alternate names because the NRIS just uses their Smithsonian trinomials), or Mother of Sorrows Catholic Church and Court Avenue, for which NRIS uses unhelpfully vague and exceptionally odd names, respectively. Not trying to say "don't do it"; I'm just not sure whether you'd get much benefit from all the work. Nyttend (talk) 02:02, 3 April 2015 (UTC)
I'd also advise you to be careful about excluding all articles with an NRHP infobox; the aforementioned West Miner Street-Third Street Historic District does have an infobox in Yreka, California, but it still looks a bit odd in an article on a city of >7000 people. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 02:19, 3 April 2015 (UTC)
About differently named articles, if we're following WP:NRHPMOS#Naming conventions, we should be linking to the official NRHP title anyway (plus disambiguation/other encyclopedia-wide conventions), and that title should be a redirect to the common name/actual name of the article if it differs from the official listing name. That way if anyone Googles the official title they definitely get the correct article (Google knows how the redirect system works). This is not guaranteed if the official title is not a redirect. So my point is that any link which points directly to an article with a title completely different than the official name is not really following our guidelines anyway and should be changed to be a redirect.
As for the infobox marking whether or not the article is about a site on the NRHP, I can't really think of anything else that could be determined in a programmatic method. Maybe a combination of factors? Like an infobox is 1 point, a variation of the phrase "listed on the National Register of Historic Places" could be another point, etc., and if an article gets some number of points, it's determined to be definitely about an NRHP listing? Can you think of a better way? Or if not, things that could be "points" in this system?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 05:53, 3 April 2015 (UTC)
An example of an article linked from a county (actually, a city) list that does not have an info box, or a mention of NRHP in the article text, or a redirect, but does have a project tag: The Flats for 'Old River Road Historic District' from National Register of Historic Places listings in Cleveland, Ohio ‎. That's a candidate for immediate return to redlink. I'm in favor of the generation of a list of |article= from county lists where the [link|text] form is used, as those should probably be a redirect. Lets see how big it is and then how hard it might be to remove false positives, if any. I agree that list where the |article= is some algorithmic distance away from |name= would helpful, even though iterative tweaking to the algorithm might be needed. A simple removal of words in parenthesis and 'the' might be enough to make it manageable. Such a list is needed to help us catch 'The Flats'-like links.Generic1139 (talk) 14:52, 3 April 2015 (UTC)
I'm not particularly familiar with Cleveland neighborhoods, so I'm not clear how much area The Flats embraces. Normally you could check the boundaries of the HD with the Ohio SHPO's historic district map, but (like a lot of other stuff they run) it's really flaky and currently not running. The HD is a small but homogenous group of commercial buildings (it took a while to find it when I was there in September), but I'd never objected to the current redirect because I wasn't sure whether the popular conception of The Flats embraced just that little chunk of the East Bank floodplain, or if it were a lot bigger. It's not as obviously bad as it would be if Mechanicsburg Commercial Historic District were redirected to Mechanicsburg, Ohio, a 1600-person village with boundaries that are unambiguously far far bigger than the four-building district. Nyttend (talk) 21:44, 3 April 2015 (UTC)
My issue with the flats isn't just size of the district vs the size of the area described by the article, it is that the article makes no mention of the district, other than the template. Of course, it would be much easier to add information if data was more consistently available for Ohio. Generic1139 (talk) 13:43, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
I had to resort to this recently for the 11 archaeological sites of the Dan River Navigation System in North Carolina Thematic Resources in Rockingham County, North Carolina. There are no individual applications available and the number of articles tempted me to create a single one for the TR. I don't think I've had to do this before in the thousands of stubs I've created.--Pubdog (talk) 20:59, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
To me, Nine Mile Canyon is another obvious archaeological case for consolidating multiple listings into a single article: 125+ individually listed, interrelated sites in a single geographic locality. — Ipoellet (talk) 22:56, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
There are quite a few of those giant archaeological site TRs out west, and in many cases the sites don't even have proper names; Hudspeth County, Texas is a particulary egregious example, as is McKinley County, New Mexico. Even for buildings there are some cases where redirecting to a list of buildings is a good idea; Iron County MRA, for instance, where most of the buildings don't have enough individual information to write more than a stub about them. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 04:52, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Why this project is important beyond Wikipedia, part XXIX

The glory that was and is no more

As I prepared to type this up, I chanced across Dudemenfellabra's note that we have passed 70% of listings photographed. It's an important milestone. This story reminds us why.

An edit to our article on the former Brandreth Pill Factory in Ossining, New York, this morning alerted me to the illegal demolition of the main building, the one I took six years ago and used as the article's lead image. Now, that's probably going to have been the last good picture of the building before it got demolished (see right, and compare to the image with the news story I linked).

As many of you know, I have taken lots of those pictures of NRHP-listed properties, mainly in the Hudson Valley where I live but also in other Northeastern states, and even as far as Aspen, Colorado, and environs. Some of those properties have been altered or renovated since I visited them, and I haven't always been able to take an updated picture (yet). Some have suffered fire damage. And some were in bad shape at the time, and have been demolished or collapsed since then (I'm really surprised that what's left of the house part of Beekman Meeting House and Friends' Cemetery is still standing; I would say "much less listed" but anyone familiar with New York's NRHP listings would be utterly unsurprised by that).

This is the first time someone has just up and demolished one of those properties when there was no good reason to do so. I never intended for that picture to be a memorial to what that building was, certainly not so soon. I actually feel sort of used about this. But it's what's left (and all that will be left in a few days' time, whether the village gets a stop-work order or not). And that's better than nothing (but not by much).

Years ago, when I described this project to someone involved in local history, he said offhandedly that it could be the most important historic preservation project since the HABS. I understood, but the full meaning of that has not become clear to me until now.

So, when you next head out with your cameras to shoot buildings, structures, objects or sites, remember that sooner than you think the picture or pictures you take could be all that future generations have to see of these. Remember Jobbers Canyon. Daniel Case (talk) 18:41, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Tell me about it. Not even six months after this photo (the first time I ever set out to purposely photograph a NRHP listing), Gudgeonville Covered Bridge was hit by arsonists and destroyed. Thanks to KLOTZ though, we actually do have a photo of another covered bridge that had burned after having been struck by lightning in 1996. Niagara ​​Don't give up the ship 23:50, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
I caught Ehlers Round Barn less than a month before its roof collapsed under a heavy snowfall, leading to its delisting. I missed several other Nebraska sites by months.
Because of expriences like that, I've got a directory on my hard drive called "Insurance shots": very bad photos that I'm keeping in case a building burns down or is tornadoed away before I can get back to it under better photography circumstances. Ammodramus (talk) 00:35, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
This is a big reason I've been involved in Wikipedia photography. A big reason that I spent tons of time on non-NR photography while living in southwestern Indiana (see how many files are in the subcategories of this category). A big reason that I'm currently finishing a non-Wikipedia project of photographing every building in my city, especially because that project resulted in a pre-fire image of File:House fire in Beaver Falls, front.jpg and pre-destruction images of at least two buildings that have been destroyed in the last month. And it's why I'm thankful that I've gotten images like File:The Chadwick, Indianapolis.jpg, which burned a few months after I took the photo; the Indiana SHPO has used this photo on their website, along with many others that I put on Wikipedia. Nyttend (talk) 23:44, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Savannah Railroad Museum and Terminal and Shops

I've asked about this on two pages, but gotten no replies. It is relevant because at least part of it is on the NHRP.

Can someone familiar with Savannah look at these three articles:

It seems to me that they can be merged into one or two articles. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 05:05, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Definitely merge the museum and the Historic RR Shops: the articles say that they're the same place. No opinion on the first one with the other two, because I, like most of us here, aren't familiar with Savannah. Nyttend (talk) 12:16, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Need a Commons admin

User:Generic1139 posted on my talk page here alerting me to the fact that we are still using the Wikipedia Summer of Monuments (WSM) campaign upload link in all our county lists. While I think the upload link should stay to encourage photo uploads, I don't think we should still be associated with WSM any longer. When the link is clicked now, several categories/templates are automatically added to the uploaded image that do not need to be there. It has been suggested that we just remove the campaign all together from the row template, but one good benefit the campaign has is that it allows us to tag new uploads with the NRIS reference number included in the template row. If we just flat out remove the campaign, this tagging won't occur, so instead what we need to do is create a new campaign that still tags the uploads with the refnum but does not include WSM categories. The way to do this would be to create a page (commons:Campaign:nrhp?) at Commons that mimics the already existing commons:Campaign:wsm. In order to create this page, though, one has to have special privileges on Commons, which I do not have. Do we have any Commons admins here that might be able to do this?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 07:22, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

You sure? Commons:Template:WSM-is-running should prevent any old templates. Can you do a test upload? Multichill (talk) 09:01, 25 April 2015 (UTC)
Yes, it is still running. Harmony Borax Works was just uploaded using the upload image link. Oldid provided because I plan to make corrections. Of course, we don't want to turn just turn wsm off, but have NRHP row point at a new campaign that adds our tags. Generic1139 (talk) 14:44, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

Picture of a replaced building

The Jacob Spori Building was listed in 1989, and although it burned down in 2000, has not been delisted. The building was replaced by a new one, and that's the only picture we have. Someone added the photo to National Register of Historic Places listings in Madison County, Idaho, but I boldly removed it because it wasn't the historic building. Now I'm questioning that choice. I've certainly posted a few photos of empty lots where listed properties have been demolished. Should this picture be on the list? Ntsimp (talk) 15:20, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

Once a building's gone, a photo of the site (with a replacement building or not) is unfortunately the best we can do for a list, unless we get really lucky and find an editor who took a picture before it was demolished, since the fair use policy only lets us use the photo in the article about the building itself. A photo of the site does have some encyclopedic value, though we probably should be careful about photos of replacement buildings, since our readers might think the replacement building is the listed one. I'm not sure it's better to just leave a blank space in the list, though.
In the specific case of the Spori Building, we might be able to sidestep the issue; BYU-Idaho has a photo collection of the building, and several of the photos predate 1923. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 17:10, 25 April 2015 (UTC)
The problem with using a photo of a non-associated new building (that is, not a reconstruction or modification that makes the building no longer historic, but just something that is now on the lot), is that a photo of that building gets picked up on all of the sites that mirror the wikipedia NRHP list or article, and the wrong building turns up in web searches. My thought is that an empty lot, ruin, empty foundation and the like are acceptable, but a new building with no ties to the old does more harm than good. Generic1139 (talk) 01:08, 26 April 2015 (UTC)
Idaho in fact has quite a few destroyed buildings that have never been delisted. When I find one, I check to see if the photos from the nomination file are in the public domain, and if so I use one of those. Personally, I would not use a photo of a replacement building - it is simply not the building that was listed and therefore not relevant. I also wouldn't use a shot of an empty lot, because I don't see any encyclopedic value in that. In the case of the Spori Building, the nomination photo is in the public domain. I've uploaded it and added it to the Madison County list. — Ipoellet (talk) 01:28, 26 April 2015 (UTC)
Photos of the present state of the property are fine in the article (but should preferably not lead). IMHO only something that meaningfully resembles the historically significant parts of the listing should be used in lists (i.e. not signs or plaques, or non-contributing elements of a district). Magic♪piano 01:57, 26 April 2015 (UTC)
Sorry, you're right, I overstated the case with regard to empty-site pictures. They do have some minimal encyclopedic value, but not editorially sufficient to illustrate a county list or infobox. — Ipoellet (talk) 18:35, 26 April 2015 (UTC)
The site is still on the National Register, regardless of the fact that its only contributing property has been destroyed. Much better to show a picture of the site, demonstrating the building's destruction, than to give no image and give the reader a chance to think that it might still be standing. This precise situation has been helpful for me: last week I spent a day in Philadelphia, photographing NR sites for my personal collection, and when preparing my list of sites to visit, it was far more helpful to see File:Race and 12th Philly.JPG and File:NE corner Pine and Quince.JPG than to see nothing at all, or even to see the unreferenced statements of "Destroyed to build the Pennsylvania Convention Center" and "Destroyed see old photo at [2]". And even if we have good referencing for destruction, it helps to have an image of the current building if you're trying to visit the site (much easier to find the location) and get a sense of that location's space and place. Nyttend (talk) 01:30, 27 April 2015 (UTC)
Certainly get an old photo if you can. To me the main use of photos and empty lots and replacement buildings is that folks won't waste their time trying to photograph these sites again! Sometimes it's not easy to find out where the site even is, e.g. an expressway was buildt through the neighborhood and streets get re-routed or just paved over. A note in the comment column of the table should be helpful as well. Smallbones(smalltalk) 16:04, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Oglala Lakota County, South Dakota

The new FIPS code is now in effect for Oglala Lakota County, 46102. This give a new name and number to the former Shannon County 46113. I see the name of the county list has been changed, and that while the actual county code used on the WP:NRHPPROGRESS doesn't matter, it needs to match what's on the map. If the change is simple, I suggest that it be made to both. Generic1139 (talk) 14:57, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

A site not on NRHP, even if it should be

Some of you are familiar with my fledgling campaign to add the original Hewlett (LIRR station) house to the National Register of Historic Places. If it were actually listed, this is what the article would look like, minus the imaginary date of registry. Of course, if the article is tagged for deletion (and I'm sure it will be), I'd gladly support it... unless the National Parks Service actually does decide to have it registered. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 16:59, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

Even if it was listed, would we necessarily have a separate article on the old depot? I'd think that it would still make sense to keep everything in the Hewlett (LIRR station) article, like we do for Dempster–Skokie (CTA station), for instance. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 18:24, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
I concur with TheCatalyst here. Unless adding material on the NRHP building to the main station article makes it cumbersomely long, it seems like we ought to keep all the material on the station in a single article. The alternative would be to create an NRHP-depot article that substantially duplicates a section of the station article; or to deliberately withhold material on the historic depot from the station article and make the reader follow a main-article link, which seems contrary to the principles at WP:LINKSTYLE, including "Do not unnecessarily make a reader chase links". — Ammodramus (talk) 15:48, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

Formatting issue

Does anyone else see the red dot in the photograph, rather than the map of Tennessee, in the Shields' Station infobox? Bms4880 (talk) 15:14, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

Yes. The coordinates given are for a point in Ohio. Magic♪piano 15:27, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
Fixed it - it was 39 degrees north, but should have been 36 degrees north. Smallbones(smalltalk) 15:36, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

See also vs NRHP Pennsylvania template (or both)

I've done a lot of work illustrating a large part of the 551 NRHP sites in Philadelphia. They are divided into 7 sublists. This is appropriate but causes some problems going back and forth between lists. Ever since I can remember this has been taken care of by having 2 links in the See also section to the main Philly NRHP article National Register of Historic Places listings in Philadelphia as well as to National Historic Landmarks in Philadelphia. There's also a navigation box for the whole state of PA which has about 90 links in it, including those 2. See below.

The 2 "see also" links are now being removed, with the justification of WP:Seealso. I find this much harder to work with.

The relevant part of WP:Seealso is

"As a general rule, the 'See also' section should not repeat links that appear in the article's body or its navigation boxes.... Whether a link belongs in the 'See also' section is ultimately a matter of editorial judgment and common sense."

I think common sense in this case would be to keep the see also links (the links in the navbox are pretty difficult to find sometimes), and that WP:NRHP should be the folks who exercise this common sense, since we deal with the tables the most. Any feedback appreciated. Smallbones(smalltalk) 14:40, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

I say we use common sense and keep both. The "See also" links are useful for navigation, especially in states where half the counties are still in a unified list, and I wouldn't expect people to find them (or realize their significance) in a navbox that's usually collapsed by default and has a bunch of other links. It's not like we're dumping half the navbox in there; those are easily the two most important links in a group of 100 or so, and we want them to be prominent. Besides, we don't even have a navbox for each state right now, so we'd have "see also" sections in like half of our county lists but not the other half, which just looks inconsistent (and will just lead someone to ask why this convenient link is missing from the articles with a navbox). Let's not use policy as an excuse to make our articles less navigable and more confusing (we have a rule about that, after all). TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 01:18, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
I agree. I think that the guideline to not list things in See Also that are linked in the body is misguided. Quite often I'm looking for something that I think should be in the See Also without having to go through the whole article. Other readers are probably that way too. So put them in the See Also. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 01:58, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
We don't need to debate the general case for See Also. In the case of NRHP list articles, which are in large part about navigating, having two navigation mechanisms does more good than harm, we should keep the nav box and the see also links. Generic1139 (talk) 03:55, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the input. The editor who was removing the links hasn't responded, so I assume he has rethought his position. Smallbones(smalltalk) 00:35, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

I have to say, in new articles I'm creating I am not including a link back to the county NRHP list in a See Also link. The link to the county is included in the NRHP navbox for that state. If I'm editing an article with a See Also link, I do not remove the link.--Pubdog (talk) 10:00, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
The whole question was the See alsos in the county lists; I normally don't include the see-also to the county list in individual articles, basically because it's not generally helpful, but the situation's completely different when you're navigating from the child list to the parent list. Nyttend (talk) 01:26, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

Wawona listed at Requested moves

A requested move discussion has been initiated for Wawona to be moved to Wawona (ship). This page is of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. —RMCD bot 22:48, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

What's going on with Arkansas Preservation's nomination forms?

It looks like Arkansas Preservation changed all the links to their nomination forms, which means we're going to have to update yet another state. I was going to run the Arkansas NRHP articles through AWB like I did with Maryland a while back, except it seems like some forms haven't moved to the new URLs yet (see the nom for AR 289 Bridge Over English Creek, for example, which doesn't seem to exist at either URL). I checked their website, and the links that come up in their search point to where the new forms should be - there just aren't any forms there yet. Anyone have any idea what's happening here? TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 00:36, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

They've redesigned their website, and while there are links to PDFs, they're all broken, and different than the old ones. I've not yet made inquiries as to when it might be fixed, but I'm guessing all the old links will not be maintained. Magic♪piano 01:25, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
It appears as though the nomination forms will, once the PDF links actually work, at least use the same resource ids in the filename, so it may be possible for a bot or semi-automatic process to update links. Magic♪piano 14:58, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
PDFs are available for some counties (e.g. Ashley and Lafayette) but not others (e.g. Garland). Magic♪piano 16:07, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
In a brief exchange with the Arkansas SHPO, they are working on restoring access to the missing PDFs, but have no timetable for completion. Magic♪piano 15:04, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

More missing forms

It's odd...I just went over to the Virginia DHR looking for one of the forms for Alexandria, and it seems that all of the forms and photographs relating to Alexandria City are currently missing. It's not a DHR-wide problem; a cursory examination reveals that at least one county's forms (can't remember which) are where they should be. So I presume that there are others working. Any idea what gives? I know they migrated some things on their website, but that was a while ago and I should have thought that something like this would have been caught between then and now. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 16:38, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Pennsylvania missing forms

CRGIS seems to be undergoing some change. At least some of the forms have moved from an address like https://www.dot7.state.pa.us/ce_imagery/phmc_scans/H096936_01H.pdf to https://www.dot7.state.pa.us/CRGIS_Attachments/SiteResource/H096936_01H.pdf The CRGIS ask ReGIS function gives a usable address for some forms, but others have links that don't work. CRGIS and I had been getting along together so well lately. Anyone have any info on this? Generic1139 (talk) 19:22, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

I've not heard of this at all. I always try to download forms before going on a photo-taking trip, and I don't remember any issues over the past few weeks when getting sites in Washington and Fayette Counties. Nyttend (talk) 19:47, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
I first noticed it just a few days ago - when trying to sort out architect vs builder. Generic1139 (talk) 20:11, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

category: wars on the NRHP

This discussion about Category:World War II on the National Register of Historic Places began on my talk page, but once it involved more than two editors I figured WP:NRHP talk would be a better place for it. — Ipoellet (talk) 19:35, 2 June 2015 (UTC)


I liked the idea of the category World War II on the NRHP. Are planning to do the same with the Revolutionary War, Mexican War, Indian Wars, Civil War, Spanish-American War, Korean War and Cold War? Einbierbitte (talk) 01:02, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

I have no plans to develop more war categories myself, but I would consider those to be entirely worthy additions to Wikipedia. Also, I don't think of it as a "war" category so much as a "theme" category: other such categories could include African American history, Women's movement, Industrial Revolution, Presidential sites, Arts, so forth... — Ipoellet (talk) 05:17, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
Previously (see talk page for Category:World War II on the National Register of Historic Places), I asked about the name of the category itself. I still question the name, but I do like the concept and see value in having similar categories for other themes/wars, too. Maybe post a note at WP:NRHP for feedback? ---Another Believer (Talk) 14:10, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
I've long thought having theme categories would be a great idea, as in the ideas Ipoellet suggests. Although looking at the WWII cat it is getting large. Perhaps a subcategory for WWII monuments and memorials on the Register could be split off? Daniel Case (talk) 22:03, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
Never thought of the idea. I agree that (1) it's an awkward name and (2) getting a better name would be hard. I'm surprised to see that it doesn't exist; I thought that the Battle of Sacramento (Kentucky) article, for example, would be in such a category. At the moment, there's no category that would embrace both the Sacramento battlefield and the David Yeiser House, except for the general "NRHP in Kentucky" category of course; it would help if we had "Civil War on the NRHP in KY" or something of the sort. But we should set some sort of boundaries: for example, would GAR halls count toward the Civil War categories? The oldest World War II monuments are surely old enough now; would they count? I'd say that we should leave memorials out of these categories: they should include locations that actually were involved in the conflicts in question, which isn't the case for most memorials; yes, the USS Arizona Memorial should be included, but that's because it's closely tied to the location, in contrast to the Colonel Robert A. Smith Monument, located "ninety poles distant" from the spot it commemorates, or the Union Monument in Perryville, placed at a rather average spot on the Perryville Battlefield. Nyttend (talk) 22:35, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
Oops I forgot Vietnam War. Ah, well. I like the theme idea. I think that memorial/monuments should be spun off if there is not a direct connection as I think Nyttend suggests. It seems a consensus is building for the wars (kinda sorta), but how do we then consider what the other themes should be? Einbierbitte (talk) 00:13, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
Also, it should be a criterion for inclusion in the cat that the property's historical significance be significantly related to the war in question. For example, just because Dwight Eisenhower, George S. Patton and Omar Bradley were cadets there would not qualify the United States Military Academy for inclusion in the WWII cat. However, it would easily make the cut for a "Revolutionary War on the National Register of Historic Places" category, because as West Point it was first fortified and developed as a military post. Daniel Case (talk) 04:43, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
I like the idea of the categories. Name-wise: what about Category:World War II-related sites on the National Register of Historic Places and the like? It's unwieldy, but we use other unwieldy category titles. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 13:31, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
How loosely do we define the word 'site'? Ships aren't considered sites per se (just sayin). Einbierbitte (talk) 13:48, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
"Listings", then, perhaps? --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 13:52, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
Let's just petition our congressmen to sponsor legislation: Resolved, by the House of Representatives and Senate in Congress assembled, that all locations entered in the National Register of Historic Places be, and hereby are, known as "Registered Historic Places." It would obviate the reasons that led us (properly) to get rid of the much simpler "RHPs" several years ago. Probably the "listings" idea is our best bet; if we think of a better one, we'll need to consider beginning to use it in the lists. Nyttend (talk) 22:36, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

architect OR builder =

As I'm sure most of you know, Elkman's fine query tool puts this in its constructed infobox: architect OR builder = whatever. I'm guilty of sometimes, but not always, just pasting that in without picking one or the other,or adding the other if both are known. I've gone back and fixed all I've botched in the past, in most cases the architect and/or builder is laid out more completely in the nomination form text. I'm thinking that I'm not the only one to have done it wrong. Can we add an error report that flags infoboxes that have architect OR builder = where it is set to something? Or, is there an easy way to do a text search through source to find them as a one time scan? Generic1139 (talk)

I suspect that a lot of the NRIS-only articles have this problem, since a few of the more prolific article-creators just copied in the infobox without changing anything. The error report would probably be nice to have, but I'm not sure that we could do much with it yet because of how many NRIS-only articles there are. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 03:52, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
See this change that I made to the template's sandbox. What if we adopted it? We can just make architect OR builder= produce a "designer" line, and it would display whatever's in that parameter. What's more, this change would implement a proposal made here several months ago, of getting rid of the rather useless governing_body= parameter. Note that (1) virtually all of the architect OR builder names are architects to an extent, so it would also be safe to have this one duplicate architect= instead of making it display "designer"; and (2) this parameter in the generator was originally architect=, but Elkman changed it as a result of one of the complaints that ultimately got Doncram topicbanned from the NRHP. Nyttend (talk) 00:01, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
I don't recall the discussion about |governing body=, but I'm not in favor of getting rid of it. Can you provide a link back to the earlier discussion? In particular, I'm wondering how the "rather useless" judgment came about - I don't consider it that. — Ipoellet (talk) 05:10, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
See the "Infobox fields" section of Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Archive 60. Nyttend (talk) 11:33, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
Thanks. I remember that discussion now - I just didn't participate because I didn't feel I had anything to add to what was said, especially by MagicPiano. Upon rereading, I would not take that discussion as any sort of consensus to remove the governing body field from the infobox - there were simply some differing opinions offered without any sort of resolution on a single change outcome. Someone could, however, be bold and change the label for the infobox field to something like "Ownership", which is useful information for a reader who is approaching the NRHP as a historic preservationist rather than as a historian. — Ipoellet (talk) 19:08, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
That's why I only referred to it as a "proposal", not a "decision" or anything of the sort; since it just got floated out there, I felt like I should raise the issue without making it seem like I was finally doing what we decided long ago. The problem with the field in general is that it doesn't particularly reflect the true state of things in many cases (I've seen downtown HDs get listed with US POSTAL SERVICE as the governing body, just because there's a post office in the HD), and unlike unchanging elements such as the date of construction or the architect, the owner/governing body/whatever can change easily. Nyttend (talk) 19:42, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

With regard to this thread's original issue, architect and builder are distinct points of information that the NR forms and NRIS unfortunately conflate. Given that Elkman's tool can only dump that NRIS field into a single template parameter, I would support displaying |architect OR builder= with a "Designer" field name — but the template documentation should make clear that |architect OR builder= is deprecated and editors are encouraged to manually disaggregate its contents into the appropriate |architect= and |builder= parameters as much as possible. — Ipoellet (talk) 19:22, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

I agree with deprecating |architect OR builder= but displaying something if it is used. Currently, |architect OR builder= displays nothing. I'm not sure "Designer" is the right choice though - I've looked at several of these in the past two days, when there are two names, it is sometimes true that both are architects, but a only a little less often it is an architect and a builder. In some cases a single name is the builder. I'm not sure we have a single word for architect or builder, but designer isn't it. Developer might be a choice, but it has another common meaning in the case of a multi-building tract. How about "Designer or builder", it takes up the same amount of space as "Architectural style" and we live with that. Generic1139 (talk) 20:27, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
The NRIS field sometimes contains names of people who are neither builders nor architects. I've seen NRIS-based articles that (wrongly, of course) credited a building's construction to Rufus Porter, whose only actual role was painting on its walls. He's not the only artist whose name I've seen in that field. Magic♪piano 00:02, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

When settlement = historic district, do we need a separate article, revisited

Some of you may recall that a few years back, we had this thorny problem caused by many historic districts in Connecticut being pretty much coterminous with their eponymous settlements, which we already had articles on. There was a difference of opinion as to whether, in that circumstance, we should have separate articles on the settlement and the historic district (I don't remember at the moment when this was or I would have posted links; I suppose if anyone does and finds those discussions relevant they should feel free to post them here). The best known example I can think of is Litchfield Historic District, an NHLD which we sort of resolved by ... well, read the hatnote.

A few months ago the potential for this issue to revive raised itself when New York's State Historic Preservation Office approved the nomination of Canajoharie Historic District to the Register. Unlike most other HDs of the "X Historic District" variety in the state, where X is the name of the village, city or hamlet of which the district is usually at the core of, the Canajoharie district, as shown in the map on page 138 of the above-linked nomination, includes almost all of the developed village and a portion south of the village boundary (in the town of the same name) along NY 10.

When I added this to the Montgomery County NRHP list a little while ago, I chose to link the listing to the village article. This is because I do not feel the listing, as bounded, really justifies a separate article (pretty much the first time this has ever happened with an NY listing, in my experience). Instead, much of the nomination could be used to improve the village article, and the district boundaries could be discussed in the article's geography section.

However, in light of the heat some of those earlier discussions generated I am holding off on categorizing the village article into the NRHP categories and the other things we do with NRHP articles, like adding the navbox and project banner. I'd like some input here. Anyone? Daniel Case (talk) 18:01, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

I don't remember the previous discussion, but will note that I used to be very firmly in the "one article" camp. If you've got a town of 5,000 and it is all an HD, what is possibly gained by having two articles? I still very much believe in that, see e.g. Rose Valley, Pennsylvania. Nevertheless it always seems like something extra usually creeps in: a boundary extension, a current big news item, etc. that makes 2 articles more attractive. For Cape May Historic District, for me it was just that there is so much material on the historic resort and architecture, and the article on the current resort Cape May, New Jersey has a lot of material that is so far removed from the historic stuff, e.g. presidential voting records and elected officials. Ultimately, I suggest just dealing with it like any other article. Start with the presumption that it's all one article until there is just too much material to fit in it. Smallbones(smalltalk) 20:31, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
I tend to agree with the above. Though personally I'm in favor of considering a separate historic district article wherever possible. (Viz the Capitol Hill Historic District (Washington, D.C.) - personally I think it does the neighborhood no favors to conflate the district article with it, and if I ever a.) have the time and b.) can find the forms I intend to do something about it.) That said, when an entire town is coequal with a district I don't see that the two need to be disengaged. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 13:28, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for confirming my judgement. I have gone ahead with the rest of the changes that bring the village article into the orbit of this project. Daniel Case (talk) 16:38, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
I remember the village/district issue clearly, as I was trying to mediate it. Consensus boiled down to what you described in your original post, that a village that substantially coincides with the historic district doesn't need separate articles about the district and the village. The argument mostly involved the degree of hair-splitting associated with substantially. In general, the project-wide one-subject, one-article guideline is applicable. Acroterion (talk) 16:44, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Map - number per county or per 100 square miles?

The legend of the map at National Register of Historic Places listings in Georgia says that it is the number of NHRP sites per 100 square miles, but it actually seems to be the number per county. Which is right? Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 04:49, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

Now I see - # is the # in the county, color code is the density. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 05:13, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

2015 Charleston, South Carolina shooting

Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church where the shooting took place is part of the Charleston Historic District at 110 Calhoun Street. On the map its at the north end of the district just east of Marion Square and across the street from the Buist School. The NPS has a page on it at [3] which includes a 1989 HABS Jack Boucher photo after Hurricane Hugo, but I can't locate the photo at the LOC or on Commons. Any help appreciated. Smallbones(smalltalk) 14:45, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

New photos

I added new photos to Commons for The Oaks (Monrovia, California) They're in the Monrovia, California category Einbierbitte (talk) 17:07, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

I added one of them to the article. As long as you tag the images with the NRHP template, which you did, they will (usually) be noticed and integrated. If you upload several images to commons, you can build a category, and also tag it with the NRHP template, and the category will be added to the county list as well. Generic1139 (talk) 19:20, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

photo

National Register of Historic Places listings in Brantley County, Georgia shows a house on the NHRP that burned. There is no photo there, but I found a low-resolution on Google Images, as well as two after it partially burned, which are also on this website. These two images are copyrighted, but the one before it burned that I found doesn't say anything about copyright. Is it OK to use that photo without violating the copyright? Can it be justified as fair use since it no longer exists? Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 19:43, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

The nomination photos were published in 1982, so this condition should apply, making those photos public domain. So it wouldn't be fair use, since we have a free alternative... but the free alternative's much better anyway, since there's no ugly copyright notice across the middle of the photos. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 00:44, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
I can't get the NPS thing to load right now - it gets to a certain point and stops (it gets to 320KB and then locks up IE). The photos after the fire have the copyright on the photo but the one before the fire does not. But I see your point about using the nominating photo. I'll do that when I can get the NPS site to work. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 01:01, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
Well, I was able to get it in Firefox - slow at first, but I got it. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 01:32, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

 Done That's all it took to turn that county red (on the progress map, that is). Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 02:01, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

One small problem: Photos submitted in nomination forms are NOT public domain. Photos submitted are still protected by intellectual property laws. Here's the copyright page from the NRHP [4]. There may be a fair use loophole, but I'm unsure how that works. 25or6to4 (talk) 04:48, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
Well, it was in that 1978-89 period. Also, I think it is "fair use" since the place was destroyed by fire 10 years ago, so we can't go out and take a photo. And if I have to, there is a contact person on that page. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 05:04, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
I'm not sure what the 1978-1989 period means. But I do agree on the fair use criteria, as it passes all 10 of the WP:NFCCP non-free content criteria. 25or6to4 (talk) 05:08, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
US copyright law states that if a photo was published between 1978 and 1989 without a copyright notice and its copyright was not registered within 5 years (which it wasn't, I checked the Copyright Office's online records), then it's in the public domain. Only nominations from 1989 onward are automtically copyrighted. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 12:25, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
But were the nominations really published? A copy was submitted to NPS, but did it involve "the distribution of copies or phonorecords of a work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending", or offering to do the same? As far as I know, nominations weren't published until NPS started sending copies to people upon request: but when did they start doing that? Unless they started before 1989, this image (unfortunately) can't be used. Because this is just a list of topics without illustrative images being absolutely necessary, we can't use the image under fair use; it's not as if we had something like a list of company logos, a page where the nonfree images themselves were the subjects and without which the page would hugely suffer. To answer the original problem, many of us routinely fill these holes with images of the site; for a random example, see the Port Jefferson School at National Register of Historic Places listings in Shelby County, Ohio. Nyttend (talk) 17:07, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
But this house was destroyed by fire 10 years ago. I'm close enough that I would go get a picture if it was still there. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 17:11, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
I frequently upload images (such as) from pre-1989 nominations under public domain logic. I take submission of an NRHP nomination as publication (as of the form preparation date). I would suppose no court case has actually tested this, but it seems to me that placing a work into a public process subject to copying, review, and redistribution by various parties not controlled by the author constitutes "distribution" by "lending". If nothing else, FOIA was passed in 1967, meaning that after that date any nomination received by the NPS (received, not listed) was subject to release to any interested party (subject to certain exceptions that address restricted listings fall under). That's gotta amount to publication. No, FOIA status doesn't involve active marketing of the material, but the quoted definition doesn't require that. I agree that after 1989, publication is not especially relevant, since it doesn't trigger any short-term public domain status after that date. — Ipoellet (talk) 19:06, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
The one you gave is a very similar example - done in the 78-89 time frame and has since been destroyed. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 19:12, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
I wouldn't consider including a 1978-79 image in a NHRP form to be a publication. In a deletion debate, I would vote to delete it since there's significant doubt per the precautionary principle. And I'm a Commons admin. Royalbroil 01:34, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

The terms we're talking about here are at Publication#Legal_definition_and_copyright and can be summarized as "distribution of copies to the general public with the consent of the author". I'm sure that distribution was done by the NRHP since at least the 1970s via photocopies as well as displaying the nomination forms and photos at their several libraries (and at state historic libraries). There shouldn't be any doubt that that is publication. My only question is can we be certain that the copyright was not registered within 5 years via the Copyright Office's online records? Smallbones(smalltalk) 15:20, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

I hadn't considered the fact that FOIA, by itself, constitutes an offer to make records available in a way that satisfies the definition. Best to wait to hear back from TheCatalyst31 on the records checking; many of these online editions of US Copyright Office records are fragmentary and not hugely helpful for anything except confirming that something's been registered. Nyttend (talk) 00:48, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
A few days ago @Catalyst31 said that he checked on the 5-year thing. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 00:53, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
No, I mean: how did he check, with what website/web service did he check, that kind of thing. Nyttend (talk) 00:57, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
TheCatalyst31 said "I checked the Copyright Office's online records". Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 00:59, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
I repeat: many online editions of US Copyright Office records are not hugely helpful. For example, the renewals database from Stanford University only gives books, so one can't use it for checking for the renewal of photographs: doing that would be reckless. Before we start depending on his check, we need to know that he used a database in which this post-publication registration would necessarily appear if it existed. If that's not necessarily the case, due diligence has not been exercised, putting us at significantly greater risk of copyright infringement, and on a much less significant side, significantly greater risk of the image getting deleted here and/or at Commons. See the Recklessness (law) article for what I mean. Nyttend (talk) 01:07, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
I checked the official online records catalog of the U.S. Copyright Office, which includes "Copyright registrations for all works dating from January 1, 1978, to the present, as well as renewals and recorded documents", so it should include the copyright notice if it exists. I searched under the photographer's name and various iterations of "Sylvester Mumford House", and I didn't get a result for anything to do with the nomination. So I think we're clear on that front. And for the record, I'm a woman :) TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 02:09, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
Nyttend, I think we have to use the best information we have. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 02:38, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
I didn't know that the Copyright Office itself published any of these records; thanks for correcting me. No objections remain on my part. And Bubba, the thing is that these records are also published in print (things like the Stanford database are digitized versions of the originals), and due diligence requires that we check the print source when we know that the online source is inadequate, because the print sources are the best we have. Nyttend (talk) 03:54, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
As far as I know, I don't have access to any printed source. The database shows six pieces of software that I've copyrighted, so as far as I can tell, it is OK. The database after 1978 seems to be good:

The Copyright Office is an office of public record for copyright registrations and related documentation. Copyright registrations for all works dating from January 1, 1978, to the present, as well as renewals and recorded documents, are accessible through the Copyright Office online records catalog.

Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 04:42, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
Yeah, as I said, I didn't know that they had all stuff from recent decades online. Meanwhile, regardless of the quality of digital editions, you do have access to the original printed copies; perhaps you can get them in Georgia, but even if not, you can drive to southern Indiana and look at http://iucat.iu.edu/catalog/14456873 whenever the library's open: it's not impossible to do that or to hire someone in Bloomington to look at them, so as far as due diligence is concerned, you definitely have access to them. Nyttend (talk) 04:53, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
I think that is ridiculous. I see no reason to doubt the copyright office. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 05:06, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
There is no reason to doubt them. The point is that they don't have all stuff online for all years, and this is what you have to do (minus the long driving) for years when they don't have stuff online. Nyttend (talk) 05:28, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
But they say that they do have everything since Jan 1, 1978 online, and the photo in question was from 1981. And the printed book may be published from the database. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 05:40, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
Let me quote myself for the second time: I didn't know that they had all stuff from recent decades online. Meanwhile, except for recent years, all online sources are digitisations of printed books, unless they were working with digital databases in 1919. Nyttend (talk) 02:42, 20 June 2015 (UTC)
So then, I don't have to drive to Indiana to look at the physical book? Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 03:20, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

Good discussion. When I've uploaded nomination photos as PD, I've always done due diligence at copyright.gov but I hadn't considered the pre-post-1978 issue for what records are online. So I'll have to go back and review what I've uploaded now. Ah, well... — Ipoellet (talk) 18:03, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

The rule before 1978 was just "published without a copyright notice", so there was no option to register it within five years. I'm not sure if that means the notice would have to be on the nomination itself or if it could be registered separately at the time of publication, though. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 01:01, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

As an illustration of some of the issues this discussion has touched on, here's an example of a pre-1989 nomination photo that I would not upload due to the precautionary principle and inability to complete due diligence: Nez Perce Snake River Archeological District (nomination with photo), nomination prepared 1977-04-04, listed 1978-12-22, no copyright notice, haven't bothered to check for registration. The issue I see is that the photo is from 1969, author David G. Rice, both of which match to a paper listed in the bibliography section. I don't have access to that paper to assess publication status/date, copyright notice, or whether the photo is in it, so I don't believe we can assume PD and I won't upload the picture. (Even though I like the picture and think it would be very useful.) — Ipoellet (talk) 06:52, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

Download nomination form

How can I download a copy of the nomination form (74000683 in particular)? If I click on the link (under date listed) that is supposed to take me there, it doesn't do anything. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 02:15, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

The links below "date listed" haven't worked for some time since the NPS started to redesign its website; we should probably just remove them at this point. As for that specific nomination, it apparently hasn't been digitized since it's an address-restricted site; you can request a copy with the address information redacted by emailing the NPS at nr_reference@nps.gov. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 02:32, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
Thank you, my state agency sent me a PDF of another one today, so I'll ask them. (The rough address is mentioned in 79000727, which encompasses the area of 74000683.) Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 02:36, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
The NPS-hosted nominations have a consistent URL; the only difference from one to another is the reference number. Go to Elkman's infobox generator and supply the refnum, and if it's in a state with nominations online, you'll get a link to the nomination. Georgia's are online, so your nomination is available at http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NRHP/Text/79000727.pdf. If the 74000683 nomination weren't restricted, it would be at http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NRHP/Text/74000683.pdf. Nyttend (talk) 21:25, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
Thank you, it says that the 1974 one hasn't been digitized. That is because the address is restricted, right? The 1979 one available there is a little different from the one that my state agency sent me. It is from a "file copy" made before some of the things were filled in, and it also includes a three-page "list of intrusions" 1927-77. These are apparently things that had been built in the last 50 years in the historic area and were not considered historic. The fourth paragraph of the second page of the 1979 document gives some good clues to the location of the restricted address of the 1974 nomination. And I asked the person that sent me the 1979 form to send me a copy of the 1974 form, but I got no response today. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 00:08, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
Well, the list of intrusions is in there, just in a different place. The downloaded one has a list of property owners which the one they sent me doesn't. Also, the maps are different. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 01:02, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
They replied today. They didn't send me a copy of the form, saying that it was an archeological site only. But it is easy to figure out where it is. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 19:25, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
Bubba73, not trying to get on your case here, but making a general point. This gives us another snack out of the can of worms about how much information about restricted sites we want to be including here. This is an encyclopedia, not a detective agency. And if you have to piece together clues, even if easy to do, are we running afoul of WP:NOR, and in particular, about original research: "... includes any analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to reach or imply a conclusion not stated by the sources". Generic1139 (talk) 20:26, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
Well, the later NHRP says that it is three blocks by seven blocks on Bay Street. It also says that the area was leveled in 1974. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 20:49, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
WP:OR prohibits "material—such as facts, allegations, and ideas—for which no reliable, published sources exist". Clearly they exist, whether the NR nomination, [5], or any published sources within the Arnall T. Connell Papers held by the Atlanta History Center. Nyttend (talk) 03:18, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
Thank you for those links. I thought it was probably in the local newspaper too. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 03:42, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
Yes, agreed, if there is a reliable published source that says the location for Y is X, then yes, put X in the article with a ref. If, however, source #1 says the location of Y was within M general area, in a section that was dug up and paved over, and other source #2 lists several areas X, Y, and Z that were dug up and paved over in the area, one of which was in general area M, then stating that Y is at X is OR, and WP:OR prohibits synthesis. Otherwise, all you can say is Y is within M. Generic1139 (talk) 15:01, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

That is what I did at National Register of Historic Places listings in Glynn County, Georgia, for the description of the 1974 HRHP "Brunswick Old Town". A few months I go I was reading about the "old town" and the "old town historical district" on web pages. I thought that "old town" was referring to the original plan of the city. Actually, according to the history of Brunswick website, it was referred to that way. The "old town" was the original plan and "new town" was built later outside "old town".

I put a description of the 1974 NRHP "old town" as basically being the same area as the 1979 "old town historic district". The NRHP "old town historical district" is slightly larger than the original city plan and (for instance) specifically lists the old courthouse, which is two blocks north of the original city plan.

Then when I got the 1979 nomination form of the "old town historical district" a few days ago, I saw that I had been mistaken - the 1974 NRHP "old town" is a small part of the original city plan, and thus not the same as what was locally known as "old town". It has a few sentences about the 1974 "Brunswick Old Town" NRHP and I put that into the description of the 1974 "old town". Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 16:47, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Copyright Violation Detection - EranBot Project

A new copy-paste detection bot is now in general use on English Wikipedia. Come check it out at the EranBot reporting page. This bot utilizes the Turnitin software (ithenticate), unlike User:CorenSearchBot that relies on a web search API from Yahoo. It checks individual edits rather than just new articles. Please take 15 seconds to visit the EranBot reporting page and check a few of the flagged concerns. Comments welcome regarding potential improvements. These likely copyright violations can be searched by WikiProject categories. Use "control-f" to jump to your area of interest.--Lucas559 (talk) 22:27, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Civic Stadium (Eugene, Oregon)

Project members may be interested in Civic Stadium (Eugene, Oregon), an NRHP site that was destroyed by fire yesterday. All constructive contributions welcome. We can add the 'Former NRHP sites' category after it is officially delisted. ---Another Believer (Talk) 13:53, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

If the Oregon SHPO follows the example of Pennsylvania's, delisting may take decades. Smallbones(smalltalk) 15:50, 30 June 2015 (UTC)
ORSHPO is variable on that. Sometimes they're quite prompt, other times they take years. — Ipoellet (talk) 16:41, 30 June 2015 (UTC)
Noted. Is it best to go ahead and add the 'former' category, or should we wait until it is official? NRHP participants would know best practices better than me. ---Another Believer (Talk) 17:34, 30 June 2015 (UTC)
Entries remain listed until they are formally delisted, regardless of the physical status of the property. There are many listed-but-demolished properties on the register. Magic♪piano 18:11, 30 June 2015 (UTC)
There's also at least one demolished-then-listed property, Site of Ferdinand Branstetter Post No. 1, American Legion in Van Tassell, Wyoming, which was a vacant lot when listed in 1969, and which remains a vacant lot, albeit one with a historical marker. — Ammodramus (talk) 02:14, 1 July 2015 (UTC)
And one listed-then-demolished-then-listed-again property, the John Marshall House Site in Old Shawneetown, Illinois. And if that wasn't strange enough, the house was demolished so a less-accurate reconstruction of the house could be built. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 02:52, 1 July 2015 (UTC)
However, the Branstetter site was listed as a site, intentionally commemorating where the American Legion post had been; it's not like they listed a building after it was destroyed. See Holy Rosary Catholic Church (St. Marys, Ohio) for that kind of situation: the building was listed a year after being destroyed, and the NR gives no indication that they knew of its destruction. Ohio's bad on that kind of thing; I've visited a lot of NR-listed empty lots that have been empty since the 1990s or 1980s. For example, see the Lockington Covered Bridge, destroyed in 1989. Nyttend (talk) 21:47, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Delisting success

I've seen a number of people express frustration about demolished properties staying on the Register for a long time. I've been making my own list, some of which is at Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/NRIS information issues/Utah#Demolished but still listed. Late last year I tried reaching out to the Utah SHPO, and I emailed them a list of 10 demolished properties. They thanked me and said action would be taken after appropriate bureaucratic delays. The July 2 weekly list shows two from my list: the Utah Slaughter Company Warehouse in Salt Lake City and the Utah-Idaho Sugar Factory in Salt Lake County. I know my report was the impetus for at least the first one, because the SHPO official told me they had extensively searched the records and found no one had noticed that building had been gone since at least 1991 to make way for what is now EnergySolutions Arena (aren't building projects supposed to be checked for impact on historic places?). So it can be done; I recommend you give it a try! Ntsimp (talk) 16:43, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

I've also had success with the Maine SHPO -- there are a few delistings on the pending list now, one of which I brought to their attention. There will also likely be further ones, as I recently asked them about two properties, which they had apparently petitioned for delisting some years ago. I really ought to work on the SHPO of Massachusetts, where there are a significant number of "issue" properties. Magic♪piano 19:05, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

Requested move of Independence Park (Houston, Texas) to McCullough Park (Houston, Texas)

I have started a discussion on the talk page about moving Independence Park (Houston, Texas) to McCullough Park (Houston, Texas), as this reflects the current name of the park. Your feedback would be appreciated. 0x0077BE (talk · contrib) 20:45, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

New UNESCO World Heritage Site

Morning, FYI, the San Antonio Missions were added to the UNESCO World Heritage Site list today [6]. The list does include all 5 missions, including the Alamo. 25or6to4 (talk) 12:59, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

Rebuilt house?

I was completing photos of NHRP sites in three rural Georgia counties today (Appling, Pierce, and Jeff Davis). However, the Pace house at National Register of Historic Places listings in Jeff Davis County, Georgia was destroyed by fire in 2011 and rebuilt as accurately as possible. I added my photo of the rebuilt house - is that OK? Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 02:32, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

It's fine to add a photo of an empty lot, or a lot where a different building has been built; at worst it's that. Definitely not a problem. Nyttend (talk) 22:50, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
I'm not sure if it was rebuilt at the same location - I can call the historical society and ask. But I think it probably was built on the same site because most of the bricks at the front stairs are old bricks, except for a layer of new ones on the top. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 03:34, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

NPS site - search / direct link to specific National Register of Historic Places broken?

Hi, history nuts! Am I missing something obvious, or is the NPS search function broken? Looking for direct link to NRHP Reference # 91000254 for Robert_E._Lee_Monument_(New_Orleans,_Louisiana). As embedded in my citation needed tag, could not find Lee Circle from 2008 cited link of http://nrhp.focus.nps.gov/natreg/docs/All_Data.html nor on advanced search by reference number, name, or location at http://nrhp.focus.nps.gov/natregadvancedsearch.do?searchtype=natregadvanced; found on 7.8 MB spreadsheet at http://nrhp.focus.nps.gov/natreg/docs/Main.xlsx. Can we do better? Thank you! -- Paulscrawl (talk) 09:15, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

Try http://www.crt.state.la.us/dataprojects/hp/nhl/attachments/Parish36/Scans/36053001.pdf that's from the Louisiana state SHPO. NPS Focus is notorious for going down and being otherwise difficult to work with. You can however send an email or snail mail to the NRHP and they will send you a copy of the nomination form. There are also photos (usually we presume they are copyrighted, but ...) that you can also get through some SHPOs. For this one go to http://www.crt.state.la.us/cultural-development/historic-preservation/national-register/database/index search in the "Historic name search" for Robert E. Lee and you'll get a list of the nomination form (above) 3 pix and a map. Sometimes you can't link to the pix, but this is an attempt seems to work. Note that somebody, somewhere is always trying to patch the system, so that these links tend to be unstable.
BTW this nomination form is very short, but very interesting with material on the "cult of the Lost Cause" and the "deification of Robert E. Lee." Smallbones(smalltalk) 13:16, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
Thank you! That helps. -- Paulscrawl (talk) 17:28, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

North Carolina ostensibly done

Happy to report that stubs and updates to existing articles to link to nomination forms at NORTH CAROLINA LISTINGS IN THE NATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES done. Some counties are not quite 100 percent because nomination forms from April 2015 not yet posted and NC does not post nomination forms for archaeological sites. Cheers!--Pubdog (talk) 13:12, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

Congratulations! That's a big state, and one that was near the bottom of the Progress table until you started working on it. Any plans for the next state? (Maybe the last Southern colony left, now that its nominations are in NPS Focus?) TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 15:34, 11 July 2015 (UTC)
Bravo!! I know how much of an encouragement it is to others (e.g. photographers) working on the state when you come in and write articles for the whole state. Well you didn't ask "What should be my next project?" but I can make some suggestions: Georgia, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Maine would complete your east coast romp. But somebody is doing some great work in Arkansas, so I'm sure some articles there would be appreciated. Or talking about great work, why not Nebraska (though Ammodramus never seems to need encouragement!). Once again, Bravo! Smallbones(smalltalk) 16:23, 11 July 2015 (UTC)
Yes. I'm working on photos of NR places in Georgia. I feel more likely to get a photograph of something if it will also go in an article about the place, instead of just "List of NRHP in X county", which few people see. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 16:37, 11 July 2015 (UTC)
Or you could hit Indiana, where virtually everything's illustrated. Nyttend (talk) 00:03, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
Thanks to all! Let me ponder a bit. I really dread the thought of using Focus.--Pubdog (talk) 11:24, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
That's an advantage of doing Indiana; virtually everything's online through the Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology. Nyttend (talk) 13:45, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
Nice work, Pubdog! Not only have you created good stubs to replace redlinks, but it looks like you've gone through existing bluelinks and expanded two-sentence NRIS-only substubs into something that a reader might actually find useful (e.g. this version to this one). If you're keeping a count of articles that you've created, I think you have every right to add those to your list. Ammodramus (talk) 14:19, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
OK Nyttend ... how does this first stub look. Devised template for Indiana NRHP county links, citation, and county stub.--Pubdog (talk) 17:42, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
Thank you; if you keep this up, it will be a huge help. Curious, though: are you doing anything with the SHAARD site besides using it as a way to access the nomination form? If not, why cite it? You can just cite the nomination form; see what I did at John L. Nichols House, for example. Meanwhile, be sure to check Commons for a relevant category; around 350 of the state's sites, i.e. nearly 1/5 of the sites statewide, have their own Commons categories. Nyttend (talk) 23:31, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
Well, the articles themselves may be finished, but they're far from fully illustrated. Check out National Register of Historic Places listings in Wilson County, North Carolina. There's a historic church that I'm sorry isn't listed on NRHP. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 04:10, 13 July 2015 (UTC)
I like doing photos, but that is a 6-hour drive for me. Perhaps someday I can talk my family into a vacation there. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 04:22, 13 July 2015 (UTC)
Although perhaps this old AME Zionist Church is part of a historic district.
Yes, that's a contributing property in the Wilson Central Business-Tobacco Warehouse Historic District. Ntsimp (talk) 08:45, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

I just found out one of the reference links to the Roslyn Village Historic District was changed, so I tried to fix it, and it still doesn't work(http://www.historicroslyn.org/Pages/RoslynNY_Bcomm/historic/index). I don't know if it's just my PC, but it keeps going to my anti-virus site's safety search page. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 14:57, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Right now it is working for me. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 15:25, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
The HDB link that had been giving a 404 error works fine here in firefox, chrom, and IE after you made your 14:51, 20 July 2015 change. The nomination form uses the older link to a system that requires java, that will result in security messages of various types depending on the brower and java plugin you have. I replaced it with the newer link that doesn't need java as long as I was there. Generic1139 (talk) 15:28, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Photo?

Fort Argyle lacks a photo. This PDF about Fort Argyle, page 8, figure 5 has a photo that looks like it can be used. Since this is the work was done by the US government, it is OK to use the photo, right? Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 22:55, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

I looked at the PDF and I don't see where it credits the author of that photo. We would need to see that or know who took the photo in order to determine if it's public domain. Jonathunder (talk) 00:45, 16 July 2015 (UTC)
There is no copyright notice and it is a publication of the US government. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 01:43, 16 July 2015 (UTC)
The DoD doesn't employ many archaeologists (unlike e.g. the NPS), so it's highly likely that the dig and photo are the work of private contractors and not the US government itself. Without more author/license information, we can't make the assumption that the photo is PD. (And don't get me wrong, the same would apply to a pic in an NPS document as well.) — Ipoellet (talk) 04:58, 16 July 2015 (UTC)
Well, there is a historical marker on public land near where I'm going this weekend - I'll try to photograph it. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 02:21, 16 July 2015 (UTC)
Well, I drove three times through the area where it was supposed to be but I didn't see it. Since then I got the coordinates for it, which should help. I put them into Google Maps and the street view shows it there. I'll be back in the area sometime... Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 01:06, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

Moving images to the commons

Can somebody move File:Hortonpoint.jpg to the commons? Wikimedia took my ability to move images to the commons away from me when they reformatted their tool for doing a while back. A category already exists for that lighthouse and it only has one image. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 14:27, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

 Done, using commonshelper--Ymblanter (talk) 17:50, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
That's pretty much what I used, and it didn't help me. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 18:32, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
The first time you use it is says you are not logged in and gives a link. You need to follow he link and log in (or possibly be recognized by the software). The second time everything is ok.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:51, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

Problem after going to Windows 10

I went to Windows 10 today. Now, in IE, when I click on the lat/long and click on "Google Maps", it brings up a map briefly, but then some things in the upper left corner drop down, the map disappears, and I can't get it back. OpenStreetMaps works, but I often need to look at the Google Earth from Google Maps to see if a site is accessible. Is there a fix for this problem? Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 05:25, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

Firefox doesn't have the problem. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 05:31, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

degrees/minutes/seconds

Where does the degrees/minutes/seconds in "NHRP sites in X County" come from? Many of them are not accurate.

I hit four cities the other day, taking photos of NRHP sites. A lot of the time I spent more time looking for one NR site than it took to drive from one city to the other. If I enter a street address into the Tom Tom GPS that I've had for a few years, it will say "you have reached your destination" - often when I'm not even within sight of the destination. My old Garmin got me closer AND would even say which side of the street it was on.

So when the GPS tells me I'm there, I start walking looking for the address. Most buildings these days don't have the street address, which makes it hard. So I figured that when that fails, I will use the latitude and longitude, and that will get me right to it, since if degrees/minutes/seconds are accurate, that will get within 70 feet. But some of these are off by 2 blocks (or more).

So where does that data come from and why is it so inaccurate? Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 04:46, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

Copying this from the coordinates note that's sometimes on the state/county lists:

The latitude and longitude information provided in this table was derived originally from the National Register Information System, which has been found to be fairly accurate for about 99% of listings. For about 1% of NRIS original coordinates, experience has shown that one or both coordinates are typos or otherwise extremely far off; some corrections may have been made. A more subtle problem causes many locations to be off by up to 150 yards, depending on location in the country: most NRIS coordinates were derived from tracing out latitude and longitudes off of USGS topographical quadrant maps created under the North American Datum of 1927, which differs from the current, highly accurate WGS84 GPS system used by most on-line maps. Chicago is about right, but NRIS longitudes in Washington are higher by about 4.5 seconds, and are lower by about 2.0 seconds in Maine. Latitudes differ by about 1.0 second in Florida. Some locations in this table may have been corrected to current GPS standards.

So basically, it's mostly NRIS errors that we unwittingly propagated, with a bit of a mapping oddity thrown in. If you see any locations that are a bit off, please go ahead and fix them. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 05:06, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
On my next trip, I plan to take my hand-held GPS too, for when the car GPS doesn't get me close enough. I'll see how it corresponds to the data we have. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 05:31, 10 July 2015 (UTC):::
I've found that it reduces frustration on my photo-trips if I locate my targets in advance using Google Maps/Earth/Streetview. While the coords and addresses provided in our lists are typically sufficient for this purpose, more often than not I will also review the nomination file and photos to glean any location and appearance details. Just going out with my GPS and camera without the advance prep often leaves me irritated and dissatisfied. — Ipoellet (talk) 06:54, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
As a rule I'm opposed to working out locations in the field or from maps. It's one thing to correct obvious typos, but pulling out the GPS is original research. You can always reduce the precision of the coordinates; that's what I do for lighthouses when I don't have a light list entry or Kraig Anderson available. Mangoe (talk) 12:48, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
Errors are plentiful especially in 20th century entries. In the field I use the GPS in my camera and the better GPS in my camera phone, and get more errors but usually different errors which can be worked out. When bad listings make me miss the target completely it takes a lot of web searching and other study to get right. Sometimes it's a couple miles off. When it comes to correcting our WP coords, I treat Google Earth aerials as authoritative. Across the decades they only vary by a few meters in the New York area. In Pittsburgh there's often a ten, sometimes twenty meter variation, caused perhaps by the higher altitude. Perhaps we should have a standard method of specifying the source of our coords. Jim.henderson (talk) 14:00, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
Back to Bubba and Ipoellet — a couple of years ago, I did exactly this, going through all the Louisville nominations and tightening the accuracy of the coordinates for all 400+ sites. A good deal of work, to be sure, but it saved tons of wasted effort when next I visited the area. Nyttend (talk) 16:38, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
@Mangoe - I couldn't disagree more. The core piece of information that we're drawing from our sources here is "location". "Coordinates" are just one of numerous different means of expressing/specifying the "location". Others in our source documents (NRIS and nominations) include prose, maps, photos, addresses, etc. Coordinates themselves can be expressed as lat-long or UTM, and in different datums like NAD27, NAD83, or WGS84. It is not OR to translate among these different means of expression as long as we're still expressing the same "location" idea from the source. Nor is it OR to correct errors as long as we're still expressing the same "location" intended by the source. Nor is it OR to synthesize multiple location expressions in the source to publish one that describes the fundamentally same "location" even if it looks superficially different. (Synthesizing information from multiple sources is OR, but here I'm talking about synthesizing multiple expressions of the same information in the same source.) At minimum, we owe it to our readers to standardize our source data to express coordinates in the same format (lat-long) and datum (WGS84 - Wikipedia's unstated default, the current nomination form's stated default, and the datum that Google uses) and with features that work with the geographic tools our readers are most likely to use (see {{GeoGroup}}). This demands departing from a verbatim transcription of the coordinates in the nominations or the NRIS. — Ipoellet (talk) 19:44, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

latitude and longitude

Here is an example of an incorrect lat/long - The Bryan County Courthouse, in Pembroke, GA. National Register of Historic Places listings in Bryan County, Georgia lists 32°08'00" N, 81°36'39"W. Since the listing just says "college st", I put in the lat/long. The GPS took me to an industrial park and it was obvious that the courthouse was not there. I found the courthouse and parked right at the front of it (on the city street). My GPS said that I was at 32° 08.007' N 81° 37.318' W. That is 32° 08' 00" (correct), but 81° 37' 19" - 40 seconds of arc off. It isn't an apparent typo (at least in D/M/S). About 1,050 meters off. I haven't corrected it yet, but I plan too. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 04:03, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

In decimal degrees the listing is:

  • lat=32.133333
  • lon=-81.610833

but I measured (my car GPS, parked on the street closest to the main entrance):

For what its worth, the nomination form gives the location as zone 17, easting=442390 northing=3555200. The actual location, where you found it and using a point near the center of the nominated block is easting=441390, northing=3555400. This is an error of easting=001000 and northing=000200. Possibly a mis-reading of the original topo map when the nomination form was written? In any case, human error reading the map, multiple conversions and rounding from decimal and d/m/s, its a wonder it all works as well as it does. Generic1139 (talk) 20:28, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
Thank you. I didn't know what Easting and northing were until just now. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 20:40, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Another one I failed to find is the CW Deen house, listed in National Register of Historic Places listings in Appling County, Georgia. Taking the lat/long in that article and converting to easting/northing and comparing that to the nomination form gives a difference of 194 meters in northing - similar to the 200 meter difference above. (Only a 5-meter difference in easting.) I read Universal Transverse Mercator coordinate system and it says "... current UTM northing at a given point can be 200+ meters different from the old". (I think the system changed in 1984.) So I think that is probably the reason for the ~200 meter differences in northing. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 05:01, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Datum shift (what you described) is a very plausible explanation for a part of the difference you describe. Since the Deen House was listed in 1982, the nomination almost certainly uses the NAD27 datum, while your contemporary tools probably use NAD83 or WGS84 (very similar to each other). The map here suggests the shift between NAD27 and NAD83 in Appling County should be in the high 20s of meters. I imagine much of the rest is just measurement error in the preparation of the nomination. In the absence of GPS, I imagine most nomination preparers in 1981/82 likely just guesstimated easting and northing from paper USGS maps, attempting to trace lines in from the map border. Depending on the scale of the paper map, this could cause some large error. — Ipoellet (talk) 17:17, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
This geographic stuff is pretty new to me, but it is interesting. Not knowing what the CW Deen house looked like, I misidentified a house, photographed it, and uploaded it to Wiki Commons and the list of NRHP in Appling Co. Then I looked at the nomination form, and it was certainly the wrong house. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 19:51, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Created my first NRHP article

I just created my first NRHP article, West Darien Historic District. I borrowed the infobox from another article and altered, so please check that I did it correctly. For instance, I copied "NRISref|2009a" - is that right? Also, what about the lat&long of a historic district? Should it be somewhere in the middle of the area? The nomination form gives about 7 or 8 corners. I used the one in National Register of Historic Places listings in McIntosh County, Georgia - is that OK? Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 22:13, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

Historic districts get nrhp_type = hd. Also, if available, always put in a reference to the nomination form, and the photos, both of which are available in this case. The easiest way to get them, for listings prior to 2010 or so, is to use elkman's infobox generator as a starting point: http://www.elkman.net/nrhp/infobox.php. You can steal the location from the county listing after checking to make sure it is valid and somewhere near the center of the district, and somewhere in the district for odd shaped listings. Take a look at elkman for this one, you can also use the location info and the nris info. Generic1139 (talk) 22:40, 1 August 2015 (UTC)
Hey, thanks! That also creates the infobox and does a lot of work to get the article started. I wish I had known about that earlier. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 00:56, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
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