DOE/RL-97-56
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DOE/RL-97-56 |
Evaluation Process
The Task Group utilized both the National Register of Historic Places Criteria for Evaluation and Hanford-specific themes in making their assessments.
National Register Criteria
The National Register of Historic Places is a collective listing of those districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects significant in our nation's prehistory and history. These properties represent our shared local, state, and national experience. The Secretary of the Interior has set minimum qualification standards which must be achieved for a property to be listed in or determined eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. These criteria are codified in 36 CFR 60, National Register of Historic Places and are interpreted in National Register Bulletin 15: How to Apply the National Register Criteria for Evaluation (NPS 1991).
As noted in these documents:
The quality of significance in American history, architecture, archeology, engineering, and culture is present in districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects that possess integrity of location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling, and association, and:
That are associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of history; or
That are associated with the lives of persons significant in our past; or
That embody the distinctive characteristics of type, period, or method of construction, or that represent the work of a master, or possess high artistic values, or that represent a significant and distinguishable entity whose components may lack individual distinction; or
That have yielded, or may be likely to yield, information important in prehistory or history (NPS 1991, p. 2).
To qualify for the National Register, a property must represent a significant part of the history, archeology, engineering, or culture of an area, and it must have the characteristics that make it a good representative of properties associated with that aspect of the past. The following discussion is a composite of information from National Register Bulletin 15 (NPS 1991):
Criterion A: Event
To be considered for listing under Criterion A, a property must be associated with one or more event important in the defined historic context. The event must clearly be important within the associated context and the property must have an important association with the event.
Criterion B: Person
Persons "significant in our past" refers to individuals whose activities are demonstrably important within an historic context. The criterion is generally restricted to those properties that illustrate (rather than commemorate) a person's important achievements. Properties eligible under Criterion B are usually those associated with a person's productive life, reflecting the time period when he or she achieved significance. Each property associated with an important individual should be compared to other associated properties to identify those that best represent the person's historic contributions.
To qualify under this criterion one must first determine the importance of the individual. Then ascertain the length and nature of his/her association with the property and identify other properties associated with the individual.
Criterion C: Design/Construction
This criterion applies to properties significant for their physical design or construction, including such elements as architecture, landscape architecture, engineering, and artwork. A building or structure is eligible as a specimen of its type or period of construction if it is an important example (within its context) of building practices of a particular time in history. For properties that represent the variation, evolution, or transition of construction types, it must be demonstrated that the variation was an important phase of the architectural development of the area or community in that it had an impact as evidenced by later buildings.
Criterion D: Information Potential
In order for buildings, structures, and objects to be eligible under Criterion D, these properties themselves must be, or have been, the principal source of the important information. The information likely to be obtained from a particular property must confirm, refute, or supplement in an important way existing information. This will entail consulting the body of information already collected from similar properties or other pertinent sources, including modern and historic written records.
Criterion D has two requirements, which must both be met for a property to qualify: (1) the property must have, or have had, information to contribute to our understanding of human history or prehistory, and (2) the information must be considered important.
Integrity
To be eligible for the National Register, a property must not only be shown to be significant under the National Register criteria, but it also must have integrity. The aspects of integrity are: (1) Location, (2) Design, (3) Setting, (4) Materials, (5) Workmanship, (6) Feeling, and (7) Association. The evaluation of integrity is sometimes a subjective judgement, but it must always be grounded in an understanding of a property's physical features and how they relate to its significance. To retain historic integrity a property will always possess several, and usually most, of the aspects. The retention of specific aspects of integrity is paramount for a property to convey its significance. Determining which of these aspects are most important to a particular property requires knowing why, where, and when the property is significant.
Location is the place where the historic property was constructed or the place where the historic event occurred. The actual location of an historic property, complemented by its setting, is particularly important in recapturing the sense of historic events and persons.
Design is the combination of elements that create the form, plan, space, structure, and style __ a property. Design includes such elements as organization of space, proportion, scale, technology, ornamentation, and materials. A property's design reflects historic functions and technologies as well as aesthetics.
Setting is the physical environment of a historic property. Whereas location refers to the specific place where a property was built or an event occurred, setting refers to the character of the place in which the property played its historic role. It involves how, not just where, the property is situated and its relationship to surrounding features and open spaces.
Materials are the physical elements that were combined or deposited during a particular period of time and in a particular pattern or configuration to form an historic property. A property must retain the key exterior materials dating from the period of significance. If the property has been rehabilitated, the historic materials and significant features must have been preserved.
Workmanship is the physical evidence of the crafts of a particular culture or people during any given period in history or prehistory. It is the evidence of artisans' labor and skill in constructing or altering a building, structure, object, or site. Workmanship is important because it can furnish evidence of the technology of a craft, illustrate the aesthetic principals of an historic or prehistoric period, and reveal individual, local, regional, or national applications of both technological practices and aesthetic principals.
Feeling is the property's expression of the aesthetic or historic sense of a particular period of time. It results from the presence of physical features that, taken together, convey the property's historic character.
Association is the direct link between an important historic event or person and an historic property. A property retains association if it is the place where the event or activity occurred and is sufficiently intact to convey that relationship to an observer.
Hanford Historic Themes
The National Register Criteria, by design and definition, are applicable to any resource anywhere in the nation:
The Criteria are written broadly to recognize the wide variety of historic properties associated with our prehistory and history (NPS 1991, p. 2).
To focus these criteria on the historic resources at the Hanford Site, the Task Group developed six historic themes. The themes encompassed the Hanford Defense Mission, Nuclear Technology (Non-Defense), Environmental Management, Social History, Architectural History, and the Historic Landscape. (In the report, the Social History theme will be captured in the section entitled History of Workers at the Hanford Site. The Architectural History and Historic Landscape themes will be in the section entitled Construction History.) Presented in outline format, these evaluative themes identified those elements and topics necessary to present the story of the Hanford Site and its place in history. They provided a more concise and inclusive statement of what characteristics or data a property must possess to be considered significant. Taken together they defined an historic context for the property types identified through the classification exercise and placed them in time and space (Appendix B). These historic themes were the means whereby the broad-based National Register Criteria were interpreted and applied to the Manhattan Project and Cold War Era properties of the Hanford Site.
Hanford Defense Mission
The Hanford Site existed to produce plutonium for use as a military deterrent. The Site was tied to the world's political climate. Changes in that climate were reflected at the Hanford Site. When the Cold War heated up, Hanford expanded. The Berlin Air Lift of 1948, the detonation of the Soviet Union's first atomic bomb in 1949, the Korean War, the launch of Sputnik in 1957, and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 are among the events that affected production at the Hanford Site.
The political and economic impacts of the four-decade Cold War to the nation and the world cannot be overstated. Hanford clearly played a major role in the nation's nuclear material production and served as the primary plutonium facility for over 40 years (Stapp and Marceau 1996, p. 26).
As the Cold War dissipated, so too did the Hanford Site. The Test Bans, Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty, and Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties all contributed to a global shift in attitude towards the production and use of nuclear weapons.
Nuclear Technology (Non-Defense)
Non-defense applications were clearly envisioned by the "Atoms for Peace" initiatives proposed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The construction of the Export Powerhouse Turbine (185-N) within the N-Reactor complex was one of the most visible outcomes of those initiatives at the Hanford Site. Other applications included oxide production and experimentation, alloy production, and the creation of isotopes. The proposal currently under review to utilize FFTF to produce medical isotopes, as well as tritium for the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile, is indicative of the Hanford Site's continued potential for non-defense related research and development. Throughout its history, the Hanford Site pioneered studies in biophysics, chemistry, engineering, metallurgy, physics, and radiobiology.
Environmental Management
From its inception, the level of commitment to worker protection never wavered. Gerber has noted that accomplishments were made all the more difficult "because strict MED [Manhattan Engineering District] security regulations precluded revealing to most employees even the existence of radioactivity." The Hanford Site pioneered the use of personnel monitoring equipment and strictly enforced rules designed to "guard against a danger that employees could not see, taste, feel or smell" (Gerber 1992, p. 12).
Environmental protection also applied to air, water, and soil. While it is true that "nuclear waste is part of the Site's history and legacy" (Gerber 1992, p. v), the technology and engineering applied to locating, measuring, isolating, and treating waste streams is well represented within the Hanford Site's built environment.
Social History (History of Workers)
Secrecy and security were hallmarks of the Hanford Site prior to its inception. Workers, by design, were given only as much information as they needed to know to perform their jobs. The Hanford culture evolved from these principles. Elements of this social history are found in messages printed on posters and handouts that hung on the bulletin boards throughout the workplace. The classification of documents was a far more potent reminder. But the real source of information on this topic resides in the memories of the long-term employees. Only interviews with a broad range of former employees can fully answer the question: What was it like to work at the Hanford Site?
Architectural History (Construction History)
The Hanford Site underwent periodic expansion. Existing buildings were altered or new buildings were constructed to accommodate the architectural and engineering designs necessary to meet the technological needs of the time. Building materials included, but were not limited to, wood, concrete block, reinforced concrete, and prefabricated sheet steel. Function, design, and materials were codependent. The Hanford Site's architectural history resides in the buildings remaining on site.
Historic Landscape (Construction History)
The Hanford Site was selected because its landscape met the criteria established by General Leslie R. Groves better than any other location examined in 1942. The subsequent placement of structures across that landscape was likewise constrained by spacing and separation criteria established long before any ground had been broken. The buildings and infrastructure that define and connect the Hanford Site after 40 years of operations are testimony to the continuity of that initial landscape design.
Although not fully developed historic contexts as defined by the National Park Service, these themes, when combined with the National Register Criteria, served a comparable purpose - the framework within which the Criteria for Evaluation were applied. The objective of this application was to explain the importance of an individual property in each applicable area of significance by showing how the property was unique, outstanding, or strongly representative of an important Hanford theme when compared with other properties of the same or similar period, characteristics, or associations.
Each building/structure within the classification matrix was evaluated for eligibility for listing in the National Register as a contributing property within the Hanford Site Manhattan Project and Cold War Era Historic District. The Task Group utilized all information developed and presented above in evaluating all properties contained within each analytic unit. Given that these units were not mutually exclusive, this meant that some properties were evaluated for their contribution to the Historic District more than once. Following this process, 527 discrete buildings/structures were determined to be contributing properties (see Tables A.3 and A.4 in Appendix A). All functional types and property types, as defined within the classification matrix, were represented.