The National Park Service is proposing to raze the Henkle farmhouse and four other structures at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park in West Virginia/LOC
Five post-Civil War structures within Harpers Ferry National Historical Park in West Virginia that are in dilapidated condition would be razed under a proposal the National Park Service has opened to public comment.
The structures, located in a wooded area on Schoolhouse Ridge South about a mile south of Route 340 along Millville Road, are in a severe state of disrepair and pose a serious safety hazard to visitors and staff, according to the Park Service. Through this project, the park staff would remove the structures while leaving the foundations and any contributing cultural landscape features in place, including ornamental trees, shrubs and flowers. By removing these buildings, the existing landscape will more closely resemble the battlefield cultural landscape of the Battle of Harpers Ferry in 1862.
Jacob “Furl” Henkle built his house and established Henkle Farm sometime after 1906, Park Service records show. The family then sold the property to the Standard Lime & Stone Company. The company likely built the dairy barn, milk house, silo, and shed/corn crib after 1920. The Standard Lime & Stone Company abandoned the farm in the 1950s, and it has since sat vacant and unused.
Comments on the proposal are being taken through September 22. You can learn more about the project and leave your comments at this website.
Comments
The NPS should preserve the Civil War Era buildings in Harper's Ferry and not buildings built in the 1920s. Harper's Ferry changed hands 6 times during the Civil War in the 1860s and was the scene of John Brown's Raid in the late 1850s. The 5 buildings built in the 1920s should be torn down. They are an eyesore and potentially dangerous when they collapse. Spend the money on preserving buildings from the 1860s. No small task since the lower end of town floods on a fairly regular basis.
The title of this article seems to be deliberately misleading ("clickbait"). Replace the modifier "old" with "out of era" to be more transparent.
The point has been rightly made:. Building that are not from the historical era of interest, and which are unsafe, need to be removed. This will enhance the historical site. Get on with this good work.
They're not of the historical era though. They're also unsafe.
It's unfortunate to see old structures come down, but it makes sense here. Because Harpers Ferry's significance is the period of the Civil War, that's the story it's telling. If the goal is to tell a story through experiencing the place where it happened, then anything that's outside the scope of that story is harder to justify putting finite resources into. That doesn't mean demolition is the default - otherwise we wouldn't have as much of the Storer College campus left - but it does mean that the money and time necessary to preserve a dilapidated structure simply isn't as feasible to justify. For the other people here in the comments who are upset about losing history, I feel your pain, but I would like you to consider that sometimes we have to pick our battles, and perhaps we should appreciate that Harpers Ferry's funding will be better allocated to maintaining the structures that were present at the time of the Raid and the Civil War.
These buildings all were built after the Civil War. They are not historically significants.
Exactly
I have been to Harpers Ferry 3 times and have hiked that area. Any buildings post Civil War without any other cultural or historical significance should be removed. This park is rich in American history and is wonderfully told through the buildings and park employees.
"The Parks Role"? The fact that the buildings, or any structure, were put in after the civil war or 1906 is not relevent. The historic nature of any structure should be considered and preseved. They should be preserved in some way because they are part of history. But the Harpers Ferry Park has made nothing but terribler mistakes over the years. Tearing down the castle in Bolivar, dissabling the old paper mill/ electric plant in the lower town, etc....