HBCUs Get National Park Service Grants for Historic Building Preservation
Credit: showqdf- The National Park Service announced $9.7 million in grants to preserve historic structures at HBCUs.
- The National Park Service has been awarding preservation grants to HBCUs since the 1990s, totaling more than $87 million.
- The latest round of grants includes 21 projects across nine states.
Grants totaling $9.7 million will go toward preserving historic structures at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) across nine states, according to a National Park Service release.
The projects include restoration work at the oldest minor league ballpark in North Carolina, a century-old administration and classroom building, and other structures at HBCUs.
“For more than 180 years, Historically Black Colleges and Universities have provided high-level academics, opportunities, and community for generations of students,” National Park Service Director Chuck Sams said in a release. “These grants enable HBCUs to preserve the noteworthy structures that honor the past and tell the ongoing story of these historic institutions.”
In total, the latest round of grants to HBCUs from the congressional Historic Preservation Fund will include 21 wide-ranging preservation projects.
Stillman College in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, will use its share of the funding to turn its Sheppard Library into a civil rights museum. Morehouse College will use $500,000 from the grant to repair windows in Samuel T. Graves Hall (pictured above). And more than a dozen other institutions will use their shares of the funds to preserve historic structures, according to data from the National Park Service.
Another portion of the funding will be used to repair a seating deck and install accessible seating at the World War Memorial Stadium at North Carolina A&T State University. The stadium was built in 1926 and is the oldest minor league baseball park in the state.
The university purchased the stadium from the city of Greensboro in 2015, according to a release. School officials plan to make between $5 million and $6 million in improvements to the stadium.
The National Park Service has so far awarded more than $87 million in grants to more than 85 HBCUs as part of the long-standing program.
The grants provide funding for the “physical preservation of sites listed in or eligible for the National Register of Historic Places,” according to a release, and also includes planning, reports, preservation plans and National Register nominations.