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Preservation Hero: The Detective of Union Park Gardens When Adele Meehan moved from Philadelphia to Union Park Gardens, a World War I–era suburb of Wilmington, Delaware, eleven years ago, she was immediately smitten with the neighborhood. Its houses––small by today’s standards but well built and evocative of their period––lined curving streets shaded by mature trees. Meehan soon found herself immersed in the life of her new community, taking an active role in the neighborhood association, editing its newsletter, and later becoming the president. About five years ago these volunteer projects led her to investigate the community’s origins. She learned that John Nolen, the same early-twentieth-century planner who designed Venice, Florida, laid out Union Park Gardens to house shipyard workers during World War I. Housing was scarce at the time, because construction labor had been diverted into wartime industries. Nolen appealed to the federal government to fund most of the project, linking it directly to the war effort: “You can’t man the works unless you house the man,” he wrote in his 1918 report to the Wilmington Chamber of Commerce. Meehan’s attraction to Nolen’s ideas drew her into the stacks of libraries and archives, chasing clues. “It’s so exciting when you find something new––like going into old city directories and discovering what the first residents of Union Park Gardens did for a living,” she says. She eventually stumbled upon a rare original copy of the 1927 edition of Nolen’s New Towns for Old, which contained a chapter on Union Park Gardens. As Betty Intagliata had done in Venice, Florida, Meehan ordered a copy of the 2005 LALH reprint edition. Meehan has found little published locally about her community. For that reason, and because Union Park Gardens has no official recognition of its historical significance, she wants to make its history public, so residents will preserve its character. To that end she helped organize a 2005 symposium and tour of Union Park Gardens and another neighboring Nolen-designed community from the same period, featuring a lecture by Charles Warren. In preparation, she spent months creating displays chronicling Union Park Gardens’ development. The symposium, which brought together state and city officials, residents, scholars, and students, garnered media coverage. She has since helped organize other events, using the community to spotlight Nolen’s national importance and current relevance. “What I did for the first event has exposed Union Park Gardens to the rest of the city, the state, and people who live in other historical neighborhoods,” Meehan says. A year after the 2005 symposium, the Delaware-Maryland Chapter of the American Planning Association (APA) arranged a tour of Union Park Gardens during its annual meeting. The 2007 national APA conference in neighboring Philadelphia also featured a tour of the community. Meehan’s current goal is to attain official historic preservation status. Recently she attended an educational meeting organized by state preservation officials, which instilled a renewed sense of purpose. “It’s key to teach residents, contractors, developers––even people who sell home supplies––to be aware of preserving the period of a house,” she says. “And to get funding and recognition, you have to get politicians involved. So I’ve been pestering the city officials, asking them, ‘Why doesn’t Wilmington pop up when you Google “Nolen”? It would be good for tourism.’” (See related article.) Photographs: |
