testimony at this time. Welcome and thank you for your patience. You can understand the dilemma I have today trying to provide continuity between the director's statements and the myriad of topics that are being brought before the committee, but I am certain you can identify the commonality as well.

Mr. Carlino, thank you for the framed remembrance of my pleasant visit to the Mon Valley.

STATEMENT OF AUGUST R. CARLINO

Mr. CARLINO. That was done by one of the local steelworkers who met you last year on your trip. I was happy to be able to provide that to you.

Mr. Chairman, on behalf of the Steel Industry Heritage Corp., its partners and community organizations, I want to express my appreciation to you and the other members of the subcommittee for today's hearing on H.R. 3144 and especially for creating a framework for establishing American Heritage Areas through H.R. 3707. Before I begin to explain the steel industry heritage project to the subcommittee, I would like to take an opportunity to talk briefly about a philosophy of what we think heritage areas are.

Recently I read in a newsletter published by another heritage area dealing with agriculture a definition that I think has a lot of important aspects to it. It said that "Heritage areas are regions with distinctive senses of place unified by resources or themes." It is places "where change is inevitable," and they are areas that educate, not only residents, but the visitors to that area.

They are areas that have multiple jurisdictions, multiple partners and they are areas that combine public and private sector leadership with grassroots enthusiasm for celebrating heritage and history.

I would like to add that there are other characteristics, one that we deal with specifically in the steel heritage region.

Heritage areas always include living communities, places whose members, through collective memory and continuation of life, ways, and values, maintain a sense of shared cultural identity.

I think it is important to point out that as Congress works to establish an American Heritage Areas Partnership Program, it must not lose sight of the fact that these areas and their communities continue to exist, that people still live in their homes, and that changes in the landscape are inevitable.

For industrial communities in particular, continuous changing nature is, we believe, part of the area's overall continued integrity. At this point, I would like to submit for the record a paper that was prepared by Dr. Doris Dyen, a member of the Steel Industry Heritage Corp. staff and Dr. Edward K. Muller, chairman of the history department at the University of Pittsburgh and acting Chair of the Steel Industry Heritage Corp. entitled "Conserving the Heritage of Industrial Communities: "The Compromising Issue of Integrity.'

This paper is going to be published in the upcoming issue of National Trusts: Preservation for Magazine, and I think points out the role of cultural resources in living communities.

Mr. VENTO. I thank Drs. Muller and Dyen for their work. We met them both and we appreciate their effort. We will be certain to send a copy to Heather Hite, who now is working out in Denver. I will read it, and I appreciate their efforts. Without objection, it will be made part of the record.

Mr. CARLINO. Thank you. I appreciate that. [The paper follows:]

National Register guidelines for conserving cultural resources assign primary weight to the concept of "integrity," along with that of "significance." The guidelines define integrity as "the ability of a property to convey its significance." In historic preservation, the term addresses the continued tangible presence and condition of the built environment and natural features of

that the

properties connected to historical events or persons. National Register Bulletin 15,' in setting out these guidelines, states: "The evaluation of integrity is sometimes a subjective judgment, but it must always be grounded in an understanding of a property's physical features and how they relate to its significance" (p. 44). In recent years, preservationists have increasingly understood diverse and dynamic character of American society throughout its history has made the guidelines on integrity inadequate as laid out in Bulletin 15. While integrity rests on the property's ability "to convey its significance," historical significance depends on historical interpretation, which is by nature changeable over time.2 Significance in landmarking programs once focused narrowly on specific periods, places, political and military events, and traditionally powerful social groups. However, as historians have in recent decades expanded

their interpretations of American history to encompass the economic and social complexity of the society, preservation professionals have reconsidered and expanded the concepts of significance and broadened interpretations of the National Register guidelines. Integrity has proven to be a more elusive concept to adapt to the enhanced understanding of our past, because the properties of a more inclusive history seem to be especially vulnerable to the processes of land use change in a capitalistic society. Properties of less-advantaged social groups and those with declining activity due to economic disinvestment, for example, frequently experience land use turnover and serious alteration or even obliteration. Are properties no longer worth despite their

such

historical significance?

recognition

Considerable effort has been expended to address areas of

concern with the notion of integrity.

The conservation of

Capital intensive

industrial heritage exemplifies an area where the determination of integrity presents difficult problems. industries were among some of the most important features of emerging twentieth-century America, affecting dramatically both economic capacity and the very essence of American life. However, the enormity of the sites associated with these industries, the large investment in their production works, and the demand to extract value from the unused plants and to recycle the sites rarely afford opportunities to preserve integrity as traditionally defined.

museum

-

and not continue to evolve. As policies and programs are developed to deal with industrial heritage areas on the national level, we must broaden the criteria for determining integrity enough to allow us to interpret meaningfully the circumstances and realities of this country's two centuries of industrial experience.

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