Keep it midmod

How to Read a National Register Nomination, Section by Section

A National Register nomination is a long document built on a short form. This page walks through the form’s eleven sections with four nominations for mid-century modern neighborhoods in California, Indiana and Colorado, so that you can read the one for a neighborhood you care about, or picture what yours would need to say.

• The form, section by sectionWhat each of the eleven sections asks, and what four nominations entered.Read the form
• Four nominationsPoppy Peak, Pegfair Estates, Thornhurst Addition and Arapahoe Acres at a glance.See the four
• Contributing or notHow the houses inside the line are counted, and one count that was corrected.See the counts
• BoundariesThree ways a nomination explains where a district stops.See the lines

How to use this page

Every listing in the National Register of Historic Places starts as the same document: the National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, NPS Form 10-900. The form’s own heading says it is used to nominate, or to request determinations for, individual properties and districts, and it points the writer to National Register Bulletin 16A for instructions. Items that do not apply are marked “N/A”, and the long answers go on continuation sheets (Form 10-900a).

That makes a nomination easy to read once you know the order: eleven numbered sections, then maps and photographs. The short boxes at the front hold the facts. The continuation sheets for Sections 7 and 8 hold the description and the argument, and they are where most of the pages go.

We read four nominations for mid-century modern neighborhoods to build this page, the same four that stand behind entries on our historic districts page. Below, each section of the form gets a card: what the form asks, then what the four nominations entered. Everything stays at neighborhood level. We do not repeat house addresses or names of owners, although a nomination may contain both.

Four nominations at a glance

Each card gives the facts from the front boxes of the form, in the form’s own terms.

The form, section by section

The section names below are the form’s. The summaries of what each one asks are in our words.

Consideration G and the fifty-year guideline

A mid-century neighborhood can reach the National Register while some of its houses are still short of fifty years old. The form handles that with Criteria Consideration G, the box for a property that is less than 50 years of age or that achieved significance within the past 50 years. All four of these nominations mark it. The glossary has more under the fifty-year guideline.

• Pegfair Estates. The statement takes the point head on. It says the district appears to meet the consideration for properties under 50 years old, as an exceptional district of Contemporary Ranch architecture.
• Thornhurst Addition. A footnote cites the Park Service’s bulletin on historic residential suburbs for a general rule: when a neighborhood as a whole was laid out more than 50 years ago and most of its homes and other resources are older than that, a case for exceptional importance is not needed.
• Poppy Peak. The box is marked on the form, while the description says that a significant majority of the houses were built within the period of significance and that the district is exempt from the consideration. The two do not say quite the same thing, which is a reminder to read the boxes and the narrative together.

The multiple property listing

A multiple property listing rests on a shared cover document. That document sets out the themes and patterns of history shared by a group of related properties, so a nomination filed under it can lean on that background and spend its pages on the place itself.

Both Pasadena nominations name the same one, Cultural Resources of the Recent Past, City of Pasadena, and the Poppy Peak statement says the district meets that document’s requirements and is eligible under Criterion C at the local level. The Thornhurst form names Historic Residential Suburbs in the U.S., 1830-1970 and says the district meets its registration requirements. Arapahoe Acres names none and makes its whole case on its own pages.

Our reading: when a nomination names a multiple property listing, half of the argument lives in that other document. If you are thinking about a nomination of your own, ask the state office early whether a cover document already exists for your area. Our guide to starting a district covers that early call.

Counting what contributes

A district nomination sorts everything inside the line into two groups, contributing and noncontributing. The four nominations give their own reasons for putting a house in the second group, and one of them had its count corrected at listing.

• Thornhurst Addition. The description says the homes its designer built there between 1956 and 1971 are all contributing. Seven later homes are noncontributing. They stay inside the district because, as the form puts it, the layout of the addition is historic and all of the developed land along its streets is within the boundary. The form also counts two noncontributing objects, and the boundary description mentions two non-contributing walls.
• Poppy Peak. 34 of 51 houses contribute. The description says the others do not represent the Modern Movement, are in styles the multiple property document does not address, or were not built during the period of significance. It adds that a significant number of them are still compatible with the district in siting, massing, scale and roof lines.
• Pegfair Estates. 22 of 25 houses contribute. The description goes house by house, and where alterations have left a house with poor integrity it says the house is not a contributing resource.
• Arapahoe Acres. The copy opens with a Supplementary Listing Record. It says Sections 5 and 7 of the form gave different numbers of noncontributing resources, and it sets out the correct count: 122 contributing buildings, 2 noncontributing buildings and 1 contributing site, 125 resources in all. The record gives the date listed as November 3, 1998.

Our reading: a noncontributing house is still inside the district and still counted. And when the numbers in a nomination do not agree with each other, look for a correction sheet at the front before deciding which one is right. Our districts page has more on contributing and not contributing.

Boundaries and why they are drawn

The boundary justification is short, and it tells you how the writers thought about the place. The four nominations use three different arguments.

• By what survives. The two Pasadena nominations draw the line around the parcels tied to the significant houses from the period of significance that keep a high level of architectural integrity.
• By the plat. Thornhurst follows the addition as it was platted in 1955 and expanded in 1957, and it leaves out parcels that were never developed as part of the addition.
• By the builder’s parcel. Arapahoe Acres takes in the entire parcel historically associated with the neighborhood as its builder developed it. The boundary description leaves out one property.

Our reading: for a tract of mid-century houses, the recorded tract map is usually the natural starting line, and the question is whether anything inside it should be left out. The plans and archives guide explains where tract maps are kept.

Draft, nomination, listing

A nomination is not the same thing as a listing, and the copy you find may be from before, during or after the decision.

• Drafts. The two Pasadena copies open with a cover note from the California Office of Historic Preservation. It says nominations are drafts until the Keeper lists them, and that they can change at the State Historical Resources Commission meeting in response to comments.
• Listing dates come from elsewhere. For those two, we took the dates from the City of Pasadena’s list of designated properties: December 23, 2009 for Poppy Peak and January 18, 2010 for Pegfair Estates.
• Corrections at listing. The Arapahoe Acres listing record says the property is listed in accordance with the attached nomination, subject to the amendments it sets out. Section 4 of any form is where the Keeper’s action is recorded.

How a nomination moves from the state office to the Keeper, and how owners are counted along the way, is covered step by step in our guide to the National Register path and how owners are counted.

Finding and reading one yourself

The four nominations read for this page are linked in the cards above: two on the California Office of Historic Preservation’s site and two on NPGallery, the National Park Service’s site for National Register records. Our historic districts page links a source record for each neighborhood it lists, so that is the place to look for a mid-century district near you.

When you open one, try reading it in this order: Section 5 for the counts, Section 8 for the criteria and the period of significance, Section 10 for the boundary justification, then the narrative for Section 7. That is ten minutes of reading, and it will tell you what the district is, why it matters and where it stops.

More on our site

• Mid-century modern historic districts: the neighborhoods on a register, with a link to each record.
• How to start a mid-century historic district: the path from a conversation with neighbors to a listing.
• The National Register rules in plain words: 36 CFR Part 60, the federal rule behind the form, read section by section.
• The California Register in plain words: the state register’s rules, read section by section.
• Mid-century preservation glossary: the terms used on this page, each with its source.
• The ten rehabilitation standards, read for a mid-century modern home.
• Sacramento’s Eichler historic district plan: a local district’s written standards, section by section.
• Keep It Midmod: records, standards, repairs, local rules and easements in one guide.
• Eichler plans and archives: where plans, tract maps and permits are kept.
• Southern California modern architects A to Z and the California mid-century modern timeline.

Questions and answers

We want mid-century neighborhoods to stay recognizably mid-century, and a nomination is one of the clearest records of what makes a neighborhood worth keeping that way. If you own or are thinking of buying or selling an Eichler or other mid-century home in the Bay Area and want to talk through what the records say about it, call the Boyenga Team at (408) 373-1660 or (650) 383-8606, or write to MidMods@Boyenga.com.