Talk:United States National Register of Historic Places listings

Dynamic tag
Is the dynamic list tag appropiate for this list? Although the number is very large, there is a finite number of NRHP sites, which is easily accessed. The list grows every week, but not at an unmaintainable rate. I've always thought that the dynamic list tag were for lists that, because of their open ended nature, could not be expected to be completed. Dsmdgold 01:06, 2 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I agree SO MUCH that I just took the NRIS dump and converted it to Wiki and replaced this whole list. There are a LOT of entries on the list, but they're all (by definition) significant and could perhaps one day have entries here.  So now they all at least have redlinks.  One thing I did not (yet) do was reconcile the old list with these new "official" names.  So if you have a moment, please peruse this old list and make sure the links are correct for the new ones.  I think it would be prudent to maintain the new names in the lists, and just pipe-trick the relevant articles.  Also, the counties and such need proofreading...  --SFoskett 19:39, 27 December 2005 (UTC)


 * In adddition to relinking articles that may have been lost, all of the blue links should be followed up to make sure that the lead to an appropiate article. Of special concern are links for churches, banks and post offices. (for example, all First Baptist Church should be converted to a format of First Baptist Church, Town Name, State Name.) Dsmdgold 00:53, 28 December 2005 (UTC)


 * I've finished the list for Alabama, BTW. Dsmdgold 00:55, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Alaska done. Dsmdgold 16:39, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
 * American Samoa done. Dsmdgold 16:46, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Wyoming done Dsmdgold 14:15, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

I've also begun adding categories by state/territory. See Vermont for an example. --SFoskett 20:51, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

The NRIS and the NRHP Weekly Updates have misspellings - just be aware (For example, the NRHP misspelled "Altadena" as Altedena). Also, I have caught quite a few Red Links here (and in other states) that do have articles, however they don't use the "official" NRHP names. Some of the Blue Links here actually go to other articles. Be aware, too, that many properties use the same name, thus there are many "Hermitages" or "Standard Oil Buildings." Homograph 02:26, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

I have created a new county-by-county list with addresses, since I think this is more useful. Please see the prototype at List of Registered Historic Places in Massachusetts and let me know what you think. I have a perl script that spewed this out for all 50 states and the territories based on the latest NRHP database... --SFoskett 20:23, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
 * If anyone wants to help out with the county-by-county updates, please drop me a line - I have all states prepared. --SFoskett 16:42, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Invalid dates?
There are several links on this list to dates that are clearly wrong. For example:

List of Registered Historic Places in Berkshire County, Massachusetts:
 * Morewood School &mdash; S. Mountain Rd. (added June 31, 1984)
 * South Egremont Village Historic District &mdash; MA 23-41, Buttonball Lane, Sheffield, and Pinecrest Hill Rds. (added June 31, 1984)
 * Thomas Shepard House &mdash; East Hill Rd. (added June 31, 1984)

To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a June 31, and certainly not in 1984. There are a bunch more like this; see the following links:
 * February 30
 * February 31
 * April 31
 * June 31
 * September 31
 * November 31

Where did these dates come from originally? Does this cast doubt on the quality of the list in general? — sjorford++ 18:54, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Merge
I think the two articles in question are duplicative and could be better if the information was merged. --evrik (talk) 21:41, 22 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Do not merge. The status of National Historic Landmark and the status of being on the National Registry of Historic Places are very different, and to merge the two lists would unecessarily confuse everyone.  Bigturtle 00:52, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Do not merge. National Historic Landmarks are a partial subset of the National Register, true. But they are more distinctive, and deserving of separate recognition, imho. --Ebyabe 20:21, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Do not merge. The list of National Historic Landmarks is much smaller than the National Register list, often making it easier to find a particular landmark than it would be if they were only available scattered through the larger state registration lists. In fact, the national landmarks list is smaller than the List of Registered Historic Places in California alone, which excludes several of the state's largest counties. Whyaduck 22:47, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Do not merge. There are legitimate encyclopedic reasons to distinguish between National Historic Landmarks and the National Register of Historic Places.  But because the total number of NHLs is vastly smaller than the NRHP, they would get completely lost mixed in among NRHP entries - even with distinguishing formatting (like asterisks or italics).  It would be nearly impossible to get a good view of the NHLs by viewing the many NRHP lists. -Ipoellet 04:08, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Neutral: National Historic Landmarks are really little more than the honor roll of the National Register of Historic Places. Most of the federal legislation doesn't really distinguish between the two when talking about incentives and preservation. The noted exception are certain grants. But I don't think the assertion that they are extremely different holds up very well, especially in view of government regulation toward the two entities. Any merger here would have to reflect the minor difference by including the list of landmarks in its own section, because they are a subset of the National Register and it would be impossible to get a view of them if included with the Registered Historic Places, sheer volume dictates this, 87,000 Registered Historic Places vs. around 2500 National Historic Landmarks. Just my opinion based upon the volumes I have read researching for the major expansion that I undertook at National Register of Historic Places. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by IvoShandor (talk • contribs) 16:12, 23 April 2007 (UTC).
 * Possibly not much regulatory distinction, but I'd say the major distinction is in relative notability. In particular, the criterion for inclusion on the NRHP is national, state, or local significance.  By contrast the NHL criterion is national significance only.  -Ipoellet 13:34, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Have we reached consensus here? If so, I'd like to remove the merge banners. -Ipoellet 13:34, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
 * This all sounds reasonable. --evrik (talk) 12:58, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

The map list
So on the map, there's links for lists that are either counties, or cities. But there's one for "Seattle County", which doesn't exist, and should point to the King County list. But I can find where it is in the code. Is it hidden? Is it somewhere else? What gives? Murderbike (talk) 06:25, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Never mind, I found it. shouldn't have been so hasty. Murderbike (talk) 06:27, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Why?
Why are we bothering using all this time and energy to copy something the US National Parks Service does anyway? In my opinion all of WP's many sites about heritage registers should simply link to them rather than duplicate them. --Kevlar (talk • contribs) 20:19, 15 April 2008 (UTC)


 * We are providing a far superior database with respect to these aspects:


 * 1) Organization
 * 2) Detail
 * 3) timeliness (current common name, current use, endangerment, and condition)
 * 4) photography
 * 5) location (including current address and GPS)
 * 6) references
 * 7) categories outside of the project

etc, etc. --Appraiser (talk) 20:46, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
 * You misunderstand. I support the creation of great articles about each of the places in question.  I reject the idea that we need to duplicate register itself by creating and maintaining dozens of list articles, which mearly duplicate the work the US government pays beaurcrats to do. --Kevlar (talk • contribs) 01:46, 19 April 2008 (UTC)


 * This conversation may continue over at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places. doncram (talk) 18:15, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Renaming proposals
FYI to potentially interested folks: There is an ongoing discussion at WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/NRHP renaming proposals of proposals to rename this and several other NRHP-related articles and categories. --Orlady (talk) 14:27, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Rename proposal
I suggest this be renamed from "List of National Register of Historic Places entries" to "United States National Register of Historic Places listings".

This would be compatible with the near-consensus decision to rename state and county lists to "National Register of Historic Places listings in Countyname, Statename" format, that several are implementing. I add the United States to the front, to avoid USA-centrism. This is consistent with other top-level lists, like List of areas in the United States National Park System, above the lower-level List of National Park System areas in Maryland.

If there are no comments, i'll make the move in a couple days time. But if there are other ideas, i'd rather sort it out here. doncram (talk) 20:24, 3 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Holy crow! There are a lot of "red states!" &mdash; Motorrad-67 (talk) 16:40, 7 October 2008 (UTC)


 * After all the discussion of names that occurred over on the Wikiproject talk page, I overlooked this proposal. Seeing that no one else commented here to say "yay" or "nay", I suspect I'm not the only one who failed to notice this proposal. Frankly, I think the name change was unnecessary. Unlike "National Park System", the name National Register of Historic Places" is unique to the United States and does not require disambiguation. (This was discussed in July-August 2008 at WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/NRHP renaming proposals.) I'm not convinced that "List of National Register of Historic Places entries" was the single best name for this article, but the new name is not an improvement. --Orlady (talk) 16:40, 7 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Some change was necessary, and i think the current name is better, although it might be improved. The previous name "List of National Register of Historic Places entries" parses to "List of list entries".  It begged the question, what's the difference between the Register, a list itself, and a list of its entries?  Yes, the USA-centric issue came up in that prior discussion, but it was not resolved.  Appraiser and I had apparently differing opinions than Orlady and some others.


 * How about "National Register of Historic Places listings in the United States"? That is in parallel with the state and county list names.  That avoids the USA-centric issue.  And it is clear.  Hmm, but would it tend to exclude the American Legation and other listings outside the U.S. proper?  doncram (talk) 21:45, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

implement all the renames in one step here please
Can we please just implement all the state renames in one step here, please? I tried that but was reverted. Yes, implementing all the changes here first does create a bunch of temporary red-links. Which is great, it highlights that each of those need to be fixed. That would be how i would do it, anyhow. This is not really worth discussing. There are a certain amount of state page renames to be done, and there's this one page which needs to be updated for all of them. It can't matter that much in which order that is done. And it doesn't matter to me, i don't mind about being reverted. But I just am getting irritated with all these one-state-at-a-time edits showing up on my watchlist. :( Someone please finish them all!  Just do it. doncram (talk) 21:37, 7 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Don't forget the territories. I have done Puerto Rico and American Samoa.  Motorrad-67 (talk) 23:50, 7 October 2008 (UTC)


 * If the state or territory is still red HERE, it needs to be renamed. Motorrad-67 (talk) 13:53, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Even easier than using that list is using the lists in the subcategories of Category:National Register of Historic Places. In the category you can see what the current name is and you can click on the links. --Orlady (talk) 14:52, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Note: On that page link that Motorrad-67 provide, the California and District of Columbia links are red because the wrong names were used for the articles. Both articles have been renamed. --Orlady (talk) 16:18, 9 October 2008 (UTC) Additionally, the links for Wake and Midway are red because there are (apparently) no NRHP list articles for these locations. --Orlady (talk) 16:27, 9 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Doncram, what you did needs to be done, but your action was premature. What you did was rename all the links in the US-level article. Unfortunately, since many of the state articles had not yet been renamed, that had the effect of converting a lot of blue links to redlinks. The articles need to be renamed before we rename the links that point to them.
 * I believe that all of the state articles have now been renamed. (I did a bunch the other day, but I did not do any territories.) There's a problem, though, in that some of what appear to be state articles are actually redirects to an article about one part of the state. (I was bewildered when I clicked on the Rhode Island link and found myself looking at the list for one county in Rhode Island.) Simply changing the names of these redirects would create a double redirection situation that would be automatically resolved by changing many links to point to "Texas A" (or something similar). IMHO, rather than revising the US list page to point to "Texas A" instead of "Texas", these redirects need to be edited to become proper index articles for the whole state. I have done this for three states (including Rhode Island), but several others remain to be done. --Orlady (talk) 14:43, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Progress report: All state and territory renames are now done except for Georgia, Missouri, and Texas, which still have redirects pointing to articles about part of the state. --Orlady (talk) 16:27, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

All state-level list article names are updated; all states now have an index article (no more redirects to county articles); and this article now points to the new names. --Orlady (talk) 01:25, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

NRHPs overseas
It's a misstatement to characterize all of the overseas NRHP sites as being in territories of the U.S., except for the American Legation. Specifically, NRHPs in the Marshall Islands and in the Federated States of Micronesia are not in territories of the US. The corresponding wikipedia presentation for NHLs is to list separately those in U.S. commonwealths and territories, those in associated states, and those in foreign states. In the last category of NHLs there's just one member, the American Legation in Tangiers, which is the only NHL and may be the only NRHP in a foreign state.

About Wake Island, by the way, there is an NHL "Wake Island" that is covered in the wikipedia article on Wake Island as a whole. However, the NRHP nomination document describes that the recommended NHL area, 2600 acres, was meant to include all of Beale Island and some areas of Wake Island but exclude other areas of Wake Island and to exclude certain new causeways. There needs to be a new separate article describing the Wake Island NHL, i think. doncram (talk) 21:29, 9 October 2008 (UTC)


 * The preferred term at Wikipedia seems to be Insular area. I'll make that change on this page. If others disagree, feel free to revert... --Orlady (talk) 03:24, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

New table, and layout ideas
I just started a new table to provide more information, by state and territory, about the NRHPs in each state. Totals of NRHPs is known for only 4 states so far. The table is to be expanded to cover all states, obviously. This table then provides some new information that is not covered in a mere category of all the state NRHP list-articles.

Also, I'd like to reduce the size of, and move to the right, the map of the U.S. Any formatting help to do that would be appreciated. doncram (talk) 23:13, 2 January 2009 (UTC)


 * For the table of states with count of each state's entries, how are we going to handle duplicate entries between two states? (E.G. Eads Bridge between Illinois and Missouri, etc.)--Marcbela (talk) 22:14, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Good to start worrying about this. I just added a starter list in a footnote to the duplicates subtraction row in the tally table, listing out Eads Bridge and 17 other across-state duplicates identified already in List of NHLs by state.  For NHLs, the National Register provides an asserted total of sites in each state, so having a separate reconciling column seems helpful.  Here, I suggest just building one big footnote list, expanding on the starter footnote.  It might always be a small number, within the approximate error range we will always have on the accuracy of the nation-wide total, which will never be exact.  But it is worth trying to quantify the duplicates, however few they are, at least to establish there is not too much duplication. doncram (talk) 23:39, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
 * That will be helpful. There are also several Locks and Canals across the Mississippi River that I have come across so far. (Been working on Ill. lately). - Will need a similar footnote in my state lists for cross county entries.--Marcbela (talk) 01:27, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
 * P.S. Do you think we should start alphabetizing those footnotes? I have a feeling that list may grow.--Marcbela (talk) 01:30, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Hmm, since the number will grow, it may be best to include a footnote in each state's separate list-article, about the sites that overlap from that state into other states, in addition to footnoting the duplicates between counties within the state. That would be more reviewable in each state article, than a site-name-alphabetized list merging all that info, without any separate source, in the nation-wide list-article.  I dunno.  There are several Washington DC nrhps for parkways and waterworks that overlap into MD and VA, perhaps you noted that discussion at Talk page of List of RHPs in DC. doncram (talk) 02:33, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

There are also several bridges over the Missouri River between Nebraska and either Iowa or Missouri that I have found. --Marcbela (talk) 16:01, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

How many NRHP listings are there? >80,000 or not?
The intro needs a citation for how many NRHP listings there are. Someone helpfully added a reference to NRIS general search screen, but i just removed that as I do not see how to get it to report how many NRHP listings there are.

I know it is possible to use the NRIS interface to run reports on the NRHP listings in any one state, which comes out in sets of 10 listings per page. You can page through and count up how many pages there are. I actually used that method to support an assertion in an article up for DYK once or twice. But besides it being impractical to count through all 8,000 or so pages to cover all the U.S., that method also probably under or overcounts. One issue is that it would include all separate listings for boundary increases and decreases which get a separate NRIS identification number, although only one per property should count in a list of how many properties are listed. Also, I don't know if it accounts properly for delistings of properties, of which Elkman reports there are about 1,500.

How can one get a count of listings out of NRIS, and/or is it reported by the NPS anywhere else? doncram (talk) 23:49, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
 * One can download the complete database in Microsoft Access format; as of its publication date (which I don't remember), there were 84,348 listings, including boundary increases. This database, apparently unlike what Elkman has, doesn't include any delistings or other sites not currently listed.  Nyttend (talk) 13:01, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Coincidentally, I just this evening tallied 83,966 from the list tables (almost) done for all! That makes sense, as it doen't count boundary increases. Lvklock (talk) 05:49, 30 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Neat. Note that the NRIS database in either the version downloaded by Elkman and by NRHP.COM, or in any other version, is different than the list we now have out in wikipedia.  In numerous isolated cases, and in a bunch in Oregon and in Puerto Rico where state-specific sources are available and have been cross-checked, NRIS errors of omission and of erroneous inclusions have been identified.  These errors are in terms of representing what is actually listed in the National Register (so not addressing other situations where a property should be delisted because it was demolished, but where it is a fact that the property is still NRHP-listed).  I now trust the wikipedia 83,966 number more than any other number, although there will be revisions up and down in the wikipedia number too. doncram (talk) 16:26, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Duplicate listings across state lines
The following sites were listed as duplicates before I did a systematic and comprehensive check for duplicate listings using the latest raw database available from the NPS website. All are only included in one of our tables, so they are not currently duplicated in the tallies.


 * Lock and Dam No. 11 in IA and WI, Lock and Dam No. 12, Lock and Dam No. 13, Lock and Dam No. 14, Lock and Dam No. 15, Lock and Dam No. 16, Lock and Dam No. 17, Lock and Dam No. 18, Lock and Dam No. 19 in IL and IA, Lock and Dam No. 20, Lock and Dam No. 21, Lock and Dam No. 22, Lock and Dam No. 23, Lock and Dam No. 24, Lock and Dam No. 25 in IL and MO, Siege and Battle of Corinth Sites in MS and TN.

I can't find either Lock and Dam No. 23 in the NRIS database, so I'm not sure that it is even listed. Siege and Battle of Corinth Sites are listed as an NHL in both MS and TN, but the NRIS does not have this listing in Tennessee. If someone feels strongly that they should be added to other lists, feel free to do so and then put them back in the list of duplicates on this page. --sanfranman59 (talk) 00:43, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Discrepancy
I have just finished updating the NRHP and NHL listings for the move of United States lightship Nantucket (LV-112) from Oyster Bay, NY to Boston. The numbers should be simple, reduce the counts in
 * National Register of Historic Places listings in Oyster Bay (town), New York
 * National Register of Historic Places listings in Nassau County, New York
 * National Register of Historic Places listings in New York
 * and New York on this list

and increase the counts in
 * National Register of Historic Places listings in Boston, Massachusetts
 * National Register of Historic Places listings in Suffolk County, Massachusetts
 * National Register of Historic Places listings in Massachusetts
 * and Massachusetts on this list. with no change in the grand total.

Unfortunately, the New York total on this list was already one less than the old total on National Register of Historic Places listings in New York -- that is, the old total there was 5,194 and the total shown here, before my change, was 5,193. I ran the total in New York, county by county and the new total shown there, 5,193, is correct, so I did not change it here.

So, I have increased the Massachusetts total here by one, but have not changed the New York total shown here. That means that the grand total shown here is too high by one (the detail, which I checked, shows 84,781 less 94 duplicates = 84,687). I did not change that because I am reluctant to fiddle at that scale.

I hope I have made this clear enough for others to follow.. For questions -- you all know where to find me. . . Jim - Jameslwoodward (talk • contribs) 12:33, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Move proposal
I think this page should be moved to National Register of Historic Places listings in the United States to reflect uniformity with the state-level lists (e.g. National Register of Historic Places listings in New York, National Register of Historic Places listings in Los Angeles, California, etc.) The suggested page is currently a redirect, but there's no reason this list should be named differently than every single other NRHP list on Wikipedia.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:53, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Wikidata & Coord
I have noticed that a great many listed places have no article and even more have no photo. Seems to me, we ought to have a map for every list, which means coordinates in the list entries. Also, especially when there is no article, a Wikidata link, since a WD item can supply much information including a finder for relevant external databases, references, and other material that can one day help an article writer and meanwhile help a photographer and various kinds of researcher. Ought this page suggest including those two bits of information in the lists? Jim.henderson (talk) 16:32, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

Stand-alone duplicates list?
The giant note currently in United States National Register of Historic Places listings (permanent link) has more text than the whole body of the article. That looks odd and the note may be interesting enough for a stand-alone list article. I have made Talk:United States National Register of Historic Places listings/Duplicates based on the current content of the note. I don't edit in this area and don't plan to work more on this but will just leave the idea for others. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:26, 28 March 2023 (UTC)


 * A whole list article on NRHP that cross state lines? No, but it should be a section of this one. Jim.henderson (talk) 15:36, 29 March 2023 (UTC)