America's 11 most endangered historic places
Keep clicking to find out what other places in the U.S. made the list.
Cruise ship visits pose dilemma for Charleston
Historic sites endangered as states cut budgets
Jazz legend's historic home on threatened list
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According to the organization, when Chinese immigrants arrived in 1877 to the newly-established San Joaquin Valley town of Hanford, Calif., they found themselves in an unfamiliar place, with no reminders of home, facing cultural barriers and often out-right racism. Despite segregation and oppression, the Chinese community in Hanford flourished and developed a vibrant Chinatown, known as China Alley, which soon boasted restaurants, herb stores, laundries, gambling houses, grocers and a Taoist temple
A short, densely-lined street, China Alley was a vibrant hub where immigrants met to talk politics, share a meal, read Chinese newspapers and play Mah-Jong, according to the National Trust for Historic Preservation's website. Reaching its peak in the pre-World War II years, China Alley increasingly served a more diverse population, especially as racial barriers were challenged and eased.
Cruise ship visits pose dilemma for Charleston
Historic sites endangered as states cut budgets
Jazz legend's historic home on threatened list
Special Section: Eye on Parenting
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According to the National Trust for Historic Preservation's website, after World War II, the Chinese population in Hanford declined and today, most of the historic buildings along China Alley, including the famed Imperial Dynasty restaurant and the L.T. Sue Herb Building, sit vacant, suffering from rain damage, vandalism and years of deterioration and disuse.
Cruise ship visits pose dilemma for Charleston
Historic sites endangered as states cut budgets
Jazz legend's historic home on threatened list
Special Section: Eye on Parenting
Special Section: Back to School
Though China Alley is located in a local historic district, the City of Hanford has neither trained preservation staff nor a historic preservation commission, leaving the buildings vulnerable to insensitive development or reuse, according to the National Trust for Historic Preservation's website.
Cruise ship visits pose dilemma for Charleston
Historic sites endangered as states cut budgets
Jazz legend's historic home on threatened list
Special Section: Eye on Parenting
Special Section: Back to School
Cruise ship visits pose dilemma for Charleston
Historic sites endangered as states cut budgets
Jazz legend's historic home on threatened list
Special Section: Eye on Parenting
Special Section: Back to School
Cruise ship visits pose dilemma for Charleston
Historic sites endangered as states cut budgets
Jazz legend's historic home on threatened list
Special Section: Eye on Parenting
Special Section: Back to School
Cruise ship visits pose dilemma for Charleston
Historic sites endangered as states cut budgets
Jazz legend's historic home on threatened list
Special Section: Eye on Parenting
Special Section: Back to School
Cruise ship visits pose dilemma for Charleston
Historic sites endangered as states cut budgets
Jazz legend's historic home on threatened list
Special Section: Eye on Parenting
Special Section: Back to School
Cruise ship visits pose dilemma for Charleston
Historic sites endangered as states cut budgets
Jazz legend's historic home on threatened list
Special Section: Eye on Parenting
Special Section: Back to School
Cruise ship visits pose dilemma for Charleston
Historic sites endangered as states cut budgets
Jazz legend's historic home on threatened list
Special Section: Eye on Parenting
Special Section: Back to School
A Battle of Mobile Bay re-enactment seen at Historic Fort Gaines.
Cruise ship visits pose dilemma for Charleston
Historic sites endangered as states cut budgets
Jazz legend's historic home on threatened list
Special Section: Eye on Parenting
Special Section: Back to School
The National Trust for Historic Preservation's website describes the site as "a place of spectacular beauty and stirring history."
Dauphin Island is home to Fort Gaines, a fortress pivotal to the Civil War Battle of Mobile Bay. On August 5, 1864, Confederate troops holding the fort rained down cannon fire on Union Admiral David Farragut
In addition to original cannons used in battle, the fort has a restored blacksmith shop and kitchens used for living history demonstrations, as well as a tunnel system leading to corner bastions with vaulted brick ceilings.
Cruise ship visits pose dilemma for Charleston
Historic sites endangered as states cut budgets
Jazz legend's historic home on threatened list
Special Section: Eye on Parenting
Special Section: Back to School
According to the National Trust for Historic Preservation's website, Fort Gaines now faces an even more formidable adversary: the relentless erosion of its Gulf of Mexico shoreline. Four hundred feet of historic battlefield have already been lost, and the eastern end, where Fort Gaines is located, is eroding at a rate of approximately nine feet per year. This is the result of more frequent and intense storms, climate change-related sea-level rise and dredging of the Mobile Ship Channel. All of this has been compounded by the effects of the Gulf of Mexico Deepwater Horizon oil spill response. Eventually, Fort Gaines could wash away, destroying a vital piece of our nation
Cruise ship visits pose dilemma for Charleston
Historic sites endangered as states cut budgets
Jazz legend's historic home on threatened list
Special Section: Eye on Parenting
Special Section: Back to School
Cruise ship visits pose dilemma for Charleston
Historic sites endangered as states cut budgets
Jazz legend's historic home on threatened list
Special Section: Eye on Parenting
Special Section: Back to School
The concrete, cloverleaf-shaped building has stood for nearly four decades. According to the National Trust for Historic Preservation's website, the progressive, cutting-edge building was highly-engineered and sculpted by famed Chicago architect Bertrand Goldberg. The late architect, best-known for the design of Chicago
The facade of the building is seen here, its iron buttressing on the second floor windows is supporting the bowing front limestone wall of the building.
Cruise ship visits pose dilemma for Charleston
Historic sites endangered as states cut budgets
Jazz legend's historic home on threatened list
Special Section: Eye on Parenting
Special Section: Back to School
According to the National Trust for Historic Preservation's website, the company founded by Charles Alfred Pillsbury was known for its state-of-the-art Minneapolis flour mill complex on the banks of the Mississippi River. A masterpiece of industrial architecture and the largest and most advanced facility in the world at the time of its completion in 1881, the Pillsbury "A" Mill Complex set a new standard in both production and design. The Pillsbury "A" Mill complex includes several structures and an extensive system of headraces, tailraces and drop shafts that generated power for the entire complex. The complex, a National Historic Landmark, is located within the locally and nationally designated St. Anthony Falls Historic District and the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area, a unit of the National Park Service.
Cruise ship visits pose dilemma for Charleston
Historic sites endangered as states cut budgets
Jazz legend's historic home on threatened list
Special Section: Eye on Parenting
Special Section: Back to School
The mill closed in 2003, and a local developer acquired all of the buildings and the surrounding site for a mixed-use complex that would couple historic rehabilitation with new construction. According to the National Trust for Historic Preservation's website, the developers worked closely with city officials on a creative plan that, though controversial, was eventually approved by the City of Minneapolis. Before construction could begin, however, the project financing failed, and in the fall of 2010, the property was foreclosed upon. It is now owned by a bank that has signed purchase agreements with two separate development firms. While applauding the fact that developers are interested in the property, local residents fear that the site will be broken up for piecemeal development, an outcome that could have negative consequences for the site
Cruise ship visits pose dilemma for Charleston
Historic sites endangered as states cut budgets
Jazz legend's historic home on threatened list
Special Section: Eye on Parenting
Special Section: Back to School
Cruise ship visits pose dilemma for Charleston
Historic sites endangered as states cut budgets
Jazz legend's historic home on threatened list
Special Section: Eye on Parenting
Special Section: Back to School
Cruise ship visits pose dilemma for Charleston
Historic sites endangered as states cut budgets
Jazz legend's historic home on threatened list
Special Section: Eye on Parenting
Special Section: Back to School
Cruise ship visits pose dilemma for Charleston
Historic sites endangered as states cut budgets
Jazz legend's historic home on threatened list
Special Section: Eye on Parenting
Special Section: Back to School
Across a swath of northwestern New Mexico, the National Trust for Historic Preservation contends, are hundreds of sites that help unlock the mysteries of the Chacoan people, prehistoric farmers who inhabited the area for six centuries starting in 700 A.D. Today, these great innovators are represented by descendant Pueblo and other Native American groups. The architecture and engineering prowess of the Chacoan people suggest a highly-developed culture, known for magnificent multi-storied buildings. Using masonry techniques unique for their time, the Chacoan people constructed massive stone buildings -- or Great Houses -- often containing hundreds of rooms. Although some of the Chacoan sites are now in ruins, many others are remarkably intact. The legacy of the Chacoan people includes thousands of ancient pueblos and shrines, along with an extensive road network that provided a physical and cultural link for people across the region.
Cruise ship visits pose dilemma for Charleston
Historic sites endangered as states cut budgets
Jazz legend's historic home on threatened list
Special Section: Eye on Parenting
Special Section: Back to School
Cruise ship visits pose dilemma for Charleston
Historic sites endangered as states cut budgets
Jazz legend's historic home on threatened list
Special Section: Eye on Parenting
Special Section: Back to School
Despite his success as a jazz musician, Coltrane lived in a modest 1952 ranch-style house in the Dix Hills section of Huntington, N.Y. Coltrane and his wife, Alice, purchased the one-and-a-half story brick house at 247 Candlewood Path in 1964, and shortly after they moved in, their first son was born.
Cruise ship visits pose dilemma for Charleston
Historic sites endangered as states cut budgets
Jazz legend's historic home on threatened list
Special Section: Eye on Parenting
Special Section: Back to School
The National Trust for Historic Preservation notes that Coltrane, determined to spend time with his young family, curtailed his tour schedule and worked at home, turning the basement into a recording and rehearsal studio and converting a guest room into a composition space where he would write his iconic masterpiece, "A Love Supreme." In 1967, just three years after moving into the home, Coltrane died at 40. Alice Coltrane, a much-admired jazz musician in her own right, continued to live in the home with her four children before moving to California in 1973.
Cruise ship visits pose dilemma for Charleston
Historic sites endangered as states cut budgets
Jazz legend's historic home on threatened list
Special Section: Eye on Parenting
Special Section: Back to School
In 2003, when the house was threatened with demolition and redevelopment, Dix Hills resident and jazz fan Steve Fulgoni rallied the community to save the Coltrane Home. In December of 2005, after nearly two years of negotiation, the town purchased the property, establishing the land around the house as parkland. The house was then transferred to the Friends of the John Coltrane Home, an organization formed by Steve Fulgoni and the Coltrane family. The group, which hopes to restore and interpret the site as an education center, has partially stabilized the vacant house, but does not have the resources necessary to perform much-needed mold remediation, repair and conservation.
Cruise ship visits pose dilemma for Charleston
Historic sites endangered as states cut budgets
Jazz legend's historic home on threatened list
Special Section: Eye on Parenting
Special Section: Back to School
Cruise ship visits pose dilemma for Charleston
Historic sites endangered as states cut budgets
Jazz legend's historic home on threatened list
Special Section: Eye on Parenting
Special Section: Back to School
An overview of the farm showing the 1815 brick farmhouse on the left, the distillery in front of the barn on the right, and the spring/carriage house in the center.
Cruise ship visits pose dilemma for Charleston
Historic sites endangered as states cut budgets
Jazz legend's historic home on threatened list
Special Section: Eye on Parenting
Special Section: Back to School
For more than two centuries, the sprawling, 400-acre farm in Washington County, Pa. has been home to eight generations of the Manchester family. With its stately brick Georgian manor house and eight historic outbuildings, the farm is a remarkable, two-century time capsule, with objects and archival material preserved. In 1797, Isaac Manchester, his wife, Phebe, and the first five of their 12 children moved from Newport, R.I. to western Pennsylvania to establish a homestead. Built of bricks fired on the farm and timber harvested from its wooded acres, the home
Cruise ship visits pose dilemma for Charleston
Historic sites endangered as states cut budgets
Jazz legend's historic home on threatened list
Special Section: Eye on Parenting
Special Section: Back to School
Cruise ship visits pose dilemma for Charleston
Historic sites endangered as states cut budgets
Jazz legend's historic home on threatened list
Special Section: Eye on Parenting
Special Section: Back to School
This series of crocks and jugs is just one example of the many household and agricultural items that exist on the Isaac Manchester Farm, reflecting the evolution of life and culture on the southwest Pennsylvania regioni.
Cruise ship visits pose dilemma for Charleston
Historic sites endangered as states cut budgets
Jazz legend's historic home on threatened list
Special Section: Eye on Parenting
Special Section: Back to School
Cruise ship visits pose dilemma for Charleston
Historic sites endangered as states cut budgets
Jazz legend's historic home on threatened list
Special Section: Eye on Parenting
Special Section: Back to School
Cruise ship visits pose dilemma for Charleston
Historic sites endangered as states cut budgets
Jazz legend's historic home on threatened list
Special Section: Eye on Parenting
Special Section: Back to School
Cruise ship visits pose dilemma for Charleston
Historic sites endangered as states cut budgets
Jazz legend's historic home on threatened list
Special Section: Eye on Parenting
Special Section: Back to School
The National Trust for Historic Preservation notes the establishment of a National Soldiers Homes system was one of the last pieces of legislation signed by President Lincoln prior to his assassination.
Cruise ship visits pose dilemma for Charleston
Historic sites endangered as states cut budgets
Jazz legend's historic home on threatened list
Special Section: Eye on Parenting
Special Section: Back to School
The Ward Theater Auditorium at the National Soldiers Home, seen in this photo, now has severely water-damaged walls.
Cruise ship visits pose dilemma for Charleston
Historic sites endangered as states cut budgets
Jazz legend's historic home on threatened list
Special Section: Eye on Parenting
Special Section: Back to School
"Old Main," seen here, was the first residence constructed at the site.
Cruise ship visits pose dilemma for Charleston
Historic sites endangered as states cut budgets
Jazz legend's historic home on threatened list
Special Section: Eye on Parenting
Special Section: Back to School
The collapsed roof in "Old Main."
Cruise ship visits pose dilemma for Charleston
Historic sites endangered as states cut budgets
Jazz legend's historic home on threatened list
Special Section: Eye on Parenting
Special Section: Back to School
Cruise ship visits pose dilemma for Charleston
Historic sites endangered as states cut budgets
Jazz legend's historic home on threatened list
Special Section: Eye on Parenting
Special Section: Back to School
Cruise ship visits pose dilemma for Charleston
Historic sites endangered as states cut budgets
Jazz legend's historic home on threatened list
Special Section: Eye on Parenting
Special Section: Back to School
Cruise ship visits pose dilemma for Charleston
Historic sites endangered as states cut budgets
Jazz legend's historic home on threatened list
Special Section: Eye on Parenting
Special Section: Back to School
Girls and boys socialize in front of their schools in 1950.
Cruise ship visits pose dilemma for Charleston
Historic sites endangered as states cut budgets
Jazz legend's historic home on threatened list
Special Section: Eye on Parenting
Special Section: Back to School
Cruise ship visits pose dilemma for Charleston
Historic sites endangered as states cut budgets
Jazz legend's historic home on threatened list
Special Section: Eye on Parenting
Special Section: Back to School
Cruise ship visits pose dilemma for Charleston
Historic sites endangered as states cut budgets
Jazz legend's historic home on threatened list
Special Section: Eye on Parenting
Special Section: Back to School