The South Hill Neighborhood Association is putting together a tour of historic homes for July 24 to increase awareness of the historic past of the neighborhood and raise money for Lowell School.
The money will be raised to aid in the Green Grass Campaign, initiated by the Lowell Parent Teacher Association from last year, aiming to build new and improved playgrounds at the school.
South Hill is one of the oldest neighborhoods in Bellingham, with 82 percent of the residential homes built before 1945. According to the nomination report for the neighborhood to become registered as a national historic district submitted by Albany, Ore. firm Historic Preservation Northwest, the first home was built in South Hill in 1886.
“The homes we select have to be at least 50 years old,” Anita Ballweg, neighborhood association secretary and co-chair of the committee overseeing the Home Tour, said. “We want to promote historic preservation [in South Hill].”
Historic preservation is important to the neighborhood and the Home Tour is a way for the history to shine through while supporting the community. Only homes that still retain some of their historic exterior traits meeting the age requirement are being considered.
Repeat of the Past with Different Motives
This year’s tour is not the first tour the neighborhood association has put on—a similar tour was done in 2007. However, this tour is different by its donation to Lowell of 100 percent of the proceeds.
“We are donating to Lowell because it needs our support to keep it here and open,” South Hill Neighborhood Association president Cathy Cameron said. “It’s important to keep neighborhood schools open and there are a lot of teachers in the neighborhood.” Having Lowell and other neighborhood schools allows students to walk to school, easing parent worries, she said. “Neighborhoods are much tighter and neighbors get to know each other [through neighborhood schools].”
Another difference between this year’s tour and the one from 2007 is the way the tour is funded. The previous tour was put on through the federal Preserve America grant from the city of Bellingham, which also helped begin the research into the York, Lettered Streets and South Hill neighborhoods. But this summer’s tour is running on a donation/volunteer basis. Tickets will need to be purchased to view the homes and are predicted to cost $10.
Breathing a Little Easier
Undertaking a project like a Home Tour that focuses on historic homes requires a lot of work, particularly research, Ballweg said. This is the main reason why the South Hill Neighborhood Association only done one other tour since its formation nearly a decade ago.
However, since the last tour the city of Bellingham has been pushing to get part of the South Hill neighborhood on the national historic district registry. The city enlisted the help of Historic Preservation Northwest, who also did the same service for both York and Lettered Streets neighborhoods at the same time.
In their nomination reports they submitted detailed reports on the neighborhoods, including maps and photos, chronicling the history of the neighborhood as a whole and individual structures within the historic sections.
“There was a lot less research this time because the history of some homes were already taken care of for the first tour,” Ballweg said. The reports by Historic Preservation Northwest provided all the research the neighborhood association needed for the rest of the neighborhood.
Working to Make Lowell Greener for Students
The proceeds from the Home Tour will be donated in full to the Lowell PTA for their Green Grass Campaign.
The campaign is a PTA effort to build new and improved playgrounds at the school. Currently the upper playground is a blacktop kickball field with basketball hoops. The Green Grass Campaign calls for the removal of the blacktop and the installation of grass on the upper field to make it into a soccer field.
Other portions of the campaign include purchasing new playground equipment, constructing an outdoor amphitheater and, in the future, constructing a covered play area. The estimated costs for the campaign, minus the covered play area, were projected at $148,000 with the future covered play area adding another $150,000.
The money from the tour will be beneficial to the school and the PTA to accomplish their goals to get these changes to the playground done.
The Home Tour aims to remind Bellingham of its extensive history in the area and brings to light the prevalence of historic homes in many of the old neighborhoods, all while supporting one of the city’s oldest school’s continued fight to remain open.
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