Missouri Preservation released its 2013 list of Most Endangered Historic Places at the Henry Miller House in Bloomfield on Tuesday. The press conference was held at the historic location, which is on this year’s list. The list is a selection of different buildings, structures, and other locations that Missouri Preservation has judged to be in danger of being destroyed.
The places that are on the Endangered List come from all over the state, and Missouri Preservation has an evaluation process that they use to select those that are most threatened. Bill Hart, Missouri Preservation’s Field Representative, said the submissions come from Missouri citizens.
“Every spring we call for nominations and the nominations are submitted by citizens throughout the state, so they actually come from Missouri citizens,” Hart said. “That’s very important to us because we don’t want to tell people what buildings are important--we want people to tell us what buildings are important to them and what historic places are important to them.”
Hart discussed the history of the Most Endangered Historic Places program.
“Missouri Preservation’s been around since 1976, so we’ve been around about 37 years now. Our Most Endangered program was started in the year 2000, so this is our 13th year of Most Endangered.”
Two of the Most Endangered Historic Places are in Southeast Missouri: the Henry Miller House in Bloomfield, Stoddard County and the Frizel-Welling House in Jackson, Cape Girardeau County.
They also produce a secondary list, the Watched Properties List, which contains places that are not dangerously threatened, but are still at risk. This year, there were nine places on the Endangered List and ten on the Watched List.
The complete lists and descriptions of the places are available on Missouri Preservation’s website at www.preservemo.org.