Two modernist parks joined the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) this month, boosting the often uphill battle to preserve America’s important post-war landscapes. Gas Works Park in Seattle, designed by Richard Haag, and Peavey Plaza in Minneapolis, designed by M. Paul Friedberg, have won official recognition.
“These two landscapes are now part of an august group of seminal works of landscape architecture,” says Charles Birnbaum, President of the Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF), a non-profit organization dedicated to raising awareness and understanding of America’s landscape heritage. Each park represents “the work of a master in a seminal project, and a pioneering effort in its typology." Of more than 88,000 sites listed on the National Register, only some 2,300 are less than 50 years old, and of those, scarcely more than 200 have been classified as landscape architecture. According to Birnbaum, the listing of these two relatively young parks testifies to their exceptional significance, and to a surging knowledge and interest in landscape over the last 20 years.
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