Abstract
In post World War II America, cities across the nation witnessed dramatic changes to their urban landscapes as federal urban renewal policies initiated redevelopment projects designed to invigorate and reshape deteriorating city cores. Early policies encouraged wide-scale demolition to renew blighted inner cities. Historic preservation policy was yet in its infancy in terms of authoritative advocacy. Citizens interested in preserving their historic buildings and sites had little recourse but to helplessly watch as city planners and their redevelopment agencies directed bulldozers to raze their neighborhoods and downtowns. In Sacramento, California, preservationists and historians organized to save the oldest section of the city, long regarded as one of the West’s most historic. Meanwhile, city and state officials were implementing modernizing plans, which looked toward the future, not the past. In the end, a compromise between all interested parties created one of the nation’s first historic districts using urban renewal funds. A Past for the Present is an oral history-based research project that explores the creation and planning of the Old Sacramento Historic District. It seeks to examine Sacramento as a case study of how one city utilized federal urban renewal policies to both reshape its central core and preserve its most historic district. In addition to primary and secondary sources, the project utilizes recorded interviews with three individuals who played principal roles in the creation and development of the Old Sacramento Historic District. While institutional documentation about this subject is available to researchers, there are few records of personal experience from individuals who had leading roles in shaping the historic district. A Past for the Present will fill that gap.