City of Edmonds-Historical Commission

Thursday afternoon I met with the City of Edomonds Historical Commission to show them a video I found while researching the history of our neighborhood. The footage showed vintage cars, sparsely populated city streets and even a little footage of Main Street with the 1940's era merchants. The city councilman who invited me said the video was "nothing less than extraordinary".

One shot showed billowing smoke rising from smoke stakes from lumber mills along the waterfront. Those mills are long gone and replaced by multi-million dollar view homes.

The Commission asked the question, how do we motivate our community to engage in Historical preservation? After receiving a grant from the National Park Service to identify historically significant properties, the need to preserve the property still remains.

I suggested sharing the story behind the buildings as a way to bring people together. Obviously those stories are easily lost, but when connected to a building or monument or art that people see everyday it becomes part of the fabric of life in a city.

How do historical sites, buildings and monuments add to the sense of community people experience in a City?