Intent to Preserve Historic District at Board of Architectural Review

“It can’t be both,” said Ellen Aders, a member of the Board of Architectural Review, referring to the tug of war between preservation of the Historic District and the tendency to transform that Front Royal gem into a highly modernized urban core. At their meeting on Tuesday, September 9, the BAR discussed a zoning text amendment to the Town code that would restrict redevelopment of historic residential sites to single-family dwelling units in the residential area of the town’s Historic District and add language preventing the conversion of single-family residential structures into multi-family or two-family dwellings. The BAR is the impetus behind this amendment, which has been and continues to be considered by the Town Council at various work sessions and will shortly come to a vote at an upcoming regular meeting.

The Board of Architectural Review sits down for a meeting on Tuesday, September 9. Royal Examiner Photo Credits: Brenden McHugh.

Is the BAR potentially overstepping its concern with aesthetic values and treading on the realm of land use, which more properly belongs to the Town Planning Commission? At the meeting on Tuesday, Planning Director Lauren Kopishke suggested that the BAR may need to be ready to articulate a response to such an accusation. Perhaps the answer is already articulated in the language present in Chapter 175 of the code. “The intent of this Article,” it reads, “is to promote and protect the health, safety, comfort, recreation, prosperity and general welfare of the community through the identification, preservation and enhancement of buildings, structures, neighborhoods, landscapes, places and areas which have special historical, cultural, artistic, architectural or archaeological significance.”

It goes on: “It is hereby recognized that the deterioration, destruction or alteration of said buildings, structures, places and areas may cause the permanent loss of unique resources which are of great value to the people of Front Royal, Warren County, the State of Virginia and the nation and that the special controls and incentives are warranted to ensure that such losses are avoided when possible.” If the BAR is purely an aesthetic concern, the question then becomes: how can the BAR require someone to use a certain type of material for, say, roofing, when something as drastically out of character as a multi-family home is allowed to develop going forward in the district? The intent of the BAR with this amendment is to protect the single-family character of dwellings that have historically been a staple of the Historic District.

Concerns about whether this amendment would interfere with property rights, whether it is truly realistic to uphold a standard of historical perfection, and whether the gentrification inherent to the type of urban development this area has been seeing might improve neighborhood safety have all been raised at a Town Council work session. For Aders, at least, it is a question of having a Historic District or not having one. It would seem there is an existential threat to one of Front Royal’s key attractions: its history. However, one might allow Amber Veitenthal her point, because history is only useful until it becomes idolized. Has a specific historical moment been frozen at the expense of the unique historical moment in which we find ourselves? Here, there is a tug of war between utility and someone’s desire to see things a certain way. The Town Council will shortly determine which is more important.