How many houses or structures are actually left in Historic Springfield?

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This is not an easy question to answer.  In 1985 for the RUDAT study, they mention a number of approximately 1800 structures.  This is sometimes considered to be the number of residential houses rather than the number of structures.  We also need to note a couple of other important facts. The first one is that there were only 172 empty lots in 1985 and the borders of the proposed Historic District were not the final borders of the actual Historic District we have today but was what was eventually used to establish the borders for the overlay. The border for the historic district is sort of saw toothed around various areas to insure the industrial and heavier commercial areas were not included as those owners were in opposition to being a Historic District.

The best document I have found so far for this purpose is the Contributing and Non-contributing Properties, Springfield Historic District as prepared by the Jacksonville Planing Department in September 25th, 1991.  While I admit I have yet to go through this list address by address with a fine tooth comb, it does not seem to include any obvious double entries.  They do list various things like an address is a carriage house for another listed address, but that is still a livable structure.  They also listed  known issues with duplicates like this address on 5th street is really included with this other address on Market. That would seem to mean they picked up at least many of the duplex and multiple address issues some speak off.

Adjusted for known duplications, the count for contributing houses in 1991 seems to have been 1770.  Perusing the non-contributing list we see that the first series of entries are the empty lots. The empty lots add to 201 and the non-contributing structures are at 378.

This gives us the total count of structures at 2,148.  If we adjust for the difference in empty lots from 1985 to 1991, we see that an additional 29 structures had been lost.  We can't tell from this document if they were contributing or not.  This is 6 years after the RUDAT study and four years after Springfield officially became an Historic District.

When you compare these addresses to the actual Historic District map, you see that it only included the structures actually within the Historic District.  In other words, buildings like 9th and Main, actually located outside of the final district, were not listed as part of this document. The area encompassed by the Springfield Overlay does include those areas blocked out for the Historic District so that total number of structures within those bounds is higher, but it does not seem like the cut out areas are big enough to have had an additional 650 structures, though I suppose it could be.  This is why there is so much confusion over how many houses were originally included and how many remain.  People often start from the wrong numbers.

There is also a lot of talk about how many structures the Historic District has lost through demolitions.  And what percentage that may actually be.  The best list we have so far of the demolitions is from Autumn Martinage of the Historic Planning Department.  From her list we can see that a total of 530 structures have been identified as demolished since 1985.  We can not at this time be sure it is a total number but it should be reasonably close.

In any case, from her list, the contributing houses lost is set at 360 and the non-contributing is at 170.  As percentages, that means we have lost 20% of the contributing structures and 45% of the non-contributing structures, or about 25% of all structures within the Historic District itself have been lost.  As to the loss of any structures within the overlay zone but not within the district?  We have no way of knowing. We know many have been lost but no official count has ever been made.

So this seems likely to be the most accurate count to date.  1,410 Contributing and 208 non-contributing structures or 1,618 structures left within the historic district.

Some of the incorrect information that has been put out there happened because, as I stated early, it is easy to start from the wrong number.  Those of us fighting for saving the houses seemed to migrate to the 1800 total number, making the percentage of loss to be 29% (about a third) while those that seem to still believe we need to demolish some more houses went to the higher estimate of 2800 and so the percentage lost was only 19%. As we can see above , the most likely real number is 25% lost.

Another person who has done research on this and provided some numbers mentioned on another forum something I find a bit scary.  She stated that: If our findings are correct then about 700 more non contributing buildings could go down, leaving huge spaces, but not affecting one historic house and no one could stop it.  What is particularly scary about that statement is that there are not and never was 700 non-contributing structures. Makes me wonder where she is coming from and what her goal really is. 

But, it is fun to see what that number, if it was real, would mean.  For that to happen, the contributing list would have to be off at least by 492 structures.  That would mean we only had 1278 Contributing structures to start with and had 870 non-contributing structures. Today, with the loses we have had, we would be sitting at 918 contributing and 700 non contributing.  If we continued to lose structures at the same rate we have in the past and at the same ratio of contributing to non, we would end up in ten years with:  (based on about 1 a month for contributing demolitions and one every other month for non-contributing)  only 798 contributing left and 640 non-contributing.  To loose an additional 700 non contributing structures as she seemed to believe we could and if the rate of loss continued as it has in the past, the final count of non-contributing would go to zero.  The contributing would be sitting at a negative 482.  In other words, we would have to begin demolishing some of the newer infills in the new "North-side suburb" that was once the Springfield Historic District.  Of course, this is Jacksonville so....

OK, fun is fun, but what she could be talking about is the loss of the structures outside of the historic district, but within the overlay zone.  We, as I stated earlier, can't easily know what the numbers of those structures are or how many we have lost, but we need to realize that they are just as important to the success of the district as the historic houses.  We need the density and we need the commercial spaces that the majority of the left out structures are.

While some of the structures left out and some of the non-contributing structures truly do not add anything to the district, most do in fact have value to us.  Many, if not most, of the residential non-contributing were indeed contributing and it was simply a mistake.  Some had been badly modified but many of these have since been brought back, unless of course they were part of the 45% already demolished.   It might be worth while mentioning that if you have a non-contributing structure that you think should be contributing so you can qualify for some of the benefits, you should talk to the Historic Preservation department downtown as there is a way that can be corrected.

Just to recap, we have lost in the past 28 to now working on 29 years, at least 360 contributing structures (20%) and at least 170 structures listed as non-contributing (45%) or 25% of the structures within the Historic District of Springfield are gone. The means on the average over one every single month since we have been a historic district. Non-contributing structures, without any protections I might add, are fairing a bit better at only one every other month since we have been a Historic District. If I was a house, I might like my odds a bit better on that non-contributing list.  At least in Springfield, the odds of surviving each year is 50% better than being a protect historic house.

Only in Jacksonville.