Grand Forks: Small Town Heritage

One of the things that I think about a good bit while serving on the Grand Forks Historic Preservation Commission is what gets considered heritage here in a small(ish) town. Most of what becomes heritage (although not all!) is nice stuff. Fancy homes, ornate (or at least deliberate) public buildings, and districts that capture a vision of the past associated with middle class life. These manifest our hopes and dreams of continuity with the past and continued prosperity.

Far more rare are buildings that are temporary, meant to house people who often aspire to middle class standards of living, or are too closely associated with infrastructure or the work that goes into building, maintaining, and preserving our community over time.  

Yesterday while driving across town, I was taken aback to see that the little row of trailer homes at the corner of 13th Avenue S and S 14th Street (across the street from Golden Rule Auto repair) were gone! 

These trailer homes were run down and the last time I walked by them only one or two seemed obviously occupied. That said, these trailer homes were probably the second oldest trailer “court” in town (effectively contemporary with the trailer court to the north of the fairgrounds which is now Valley Trailer Homes).

The simple row of trailer homes was part of a larger district of trailer homes at the corners of Washington and 13th Avenue S which existed there as early as the mid-1950s judging by this 1956 air photo:

For Grand Forkers looking to orient themselves the Elks pool is at the lower right and Washington Street is at the center of image. You can probably see at least four or five areas of trailer homes in this photo alone presumably accommodating not only the influx of people to the city in the 1940s and 1950s but perhaps also people displaced by the devastating 1950 flood (admittedly I’m guessing here).

Here’s a good street view photo of the trailers from a couple years ago. There were in tough shape:

As of yesterday the lot looked like this and the trailers were gone.

We can debate whether a 1950s trailer court deserves status of heritage, but as our communities are coming to terms with the massive number of post-war buildings that are now at least eligible for formal “heritage” status (or the inscription on to the National Register of Historical Spaces), the loss of buildings or even “neighborhoods” for the 1950s deserves at least a little attention. This is even more the case when these places (broadly construed) aren’t part of the prestige fabric of our cities. What can we do to recognize the loss of working class housing, infrastructure, and industrial sites that we’re often only too eager to consign to oblivion buildings designated as blighted, whose appearance is aesthetically unpleasant, or that don’t align clearly with how our view of the past supports our dreams for the future.

Keen eyed observers will notice that at some point 13th Avenue S was “recontoured” on the east side of Washington Street to align it with 13th Avenue S on the west side of Washington Street. There are lots of good reasons why this might have happened and I’m guessing it occurred in the 1970s perhaps in conjunction with urban renewal.