Redlining, Revitalization, and Preservation Practice: Uncovering Connections in Cleveland and St. Louis

Research demonstrates how redlining had a profound influence on urban neighborhood development by reducing credit access for households, the majority of which were disproportionately Black, poor, and/or immigrant households. By the middle decades of the 20th century, distressed conditions were found across many U.S. urban areas but were particularly acute in cities of the industrial Midwest, like Cleveland and St. Louis, where broader shifts away from manufacturing were beginning to drain these places of the economic and social capital that had propelled their growth and expansion decades earlier. Amid this context of decline, Cleveland and St. Louis were among the first Midwestern, deindustrializing cities to turn to historic preservation as a tool for urban revitalization. In this paper, we use a mixed-methods approach to analyze the relationships between historic districts and HOLC-graded areas through case studies of two Rust Belt cities, Cleveland and St. Louis. The following research questions guide this analysis:  What are the spatial and temporal relationships between modern-day historic districts and HOLC ratings from the 1930s and 1940s? And, how do the historic district designations reinforce and/or counter the narratives of decline and renewal shaped by redlining practices? We deploy publicly available geospatial data of HOLC appraisal areas and decennial Census and American Community Survey data, paired with geospatial data of local/landmark and National Register districts in each case study city. We also use archival analysis to examine nomination documents for historic districts within select redlined areas in each city. The findings of this spatialized, comparative case study deepen our understanding of the role of historic preservation in marginalized and disenfranchised communities and help uncover how preservation practices are connected to and embedded within broader structures of exclusion, complementing existing scholarship that argues for an equity agenda in preservation scholarship and practice.