ABSTRACT
Metropolitan areas of the United States participated in an expanded vision for federally supported urban renewal during the Baby Boom generation any beyond. One aspect of this transformation was the idea of providing sufficient open space within urban communities, a goal that was manifest in the operation of the Urban Renewal Administration’s open space grant program. In a limited way, open space grants were used to assist local communities acquire historic properties. Urban renewal’s many impacts forced the National Park Service to adopt historic districts as a newly recognized type of historic property and to acknowledge the limitations of its administrative focus on only nationally significant properties. The preservation community and urban planners recognized that most urban areas lacked sufficient information regarding the presence, nature, and integrity of individual historic properties and ensembles of such sites within historic districts. The URA open space program established important precedents for the operation of 1965’s Land and Water Conservation Fund and the Historic Preservation Fund established in 1976.
