Interview with Jeff Emidy

At the start of 2023 Commission Chair Ruth S. Taylor announced that the Rhode Island Historical Preservation & Heritage Commission (RIHPHC) has appointed Acting Executive Director Jeffrey D. Emidy to serve as Executive Director. The selection followed a nearly year-long search that evaluated 28 candidates from Rhode Island and nationwide.

Emidy has worked in historic preservation for more than 22 years. At the Commission, he advanced from National Register Assistant to Project Review Coordinator, to Deputy Director and Deputy State Historic Preservation Officer before being named Executive Director. He has served as interim executive director on two occasions.

1. What are you most excited about in your role as Executive Director of the HPHC?

I am excited about new directions. Since our establishment in 1968, we, like much of the preservation field nationwide, have focused our attention on the oldest and most prominent; the early houses, biggest ethnic groups, most obvious historical themes, and most famous architects. We are at a time in Rhode Island where the appreciation for newer, smaller, and less-known has really grown, and at the HPHC, we want to explore these areas. It will require new initiatives and procedures that we are just beginning to really think about, and it will, hopefully, inspire us all and bring out a lot of new information and respect for things that have been ignored or unknown to us.

2. What achievement from your work at the HPHC are you most proud of?

I am proud of the collective body of small accomplishments that I have been responsible for over the years. These have mostly been efforts to suggest modifications to project plans to better preserve historic resources, like camouflaging cell phone antennas, design changes for alterations to historic houses, and repairing historic bridges, rather than replacing them. I’m also proud of some work that I have played a part in, but which is not complete, including a state preservation Geographic Information System (GIS) and building and expanding our relationship with the R.I. Emergency Management Agency. Our team efforts have resulted in the biggest accomplishments that we’ve had in my years at the HPHC, though, and the ones that I value the most.

3. What do you think are the biggest challenges facing historic preservation in Rhode Island in the next 5 years?

Climate change will affect historic properties, and adapting to address climate change is a significant challenge for preservation. People’s reactions to and planning for sea level rise, severe weather events, and hotter temperatures all have effects on historic properties and we’re at the early stages of figuring out how preservation can be a part of the initiatives, but the initiatives are well funded and moving faster right now.

Maintaining public support for preservation is always an issue, particularly when other, seemingly conflicting issues draw more attention. The challenge for us in these situations is promoting the ability of preservation to coexist with these other concerns.

There have been efforts at the national level over the past few years to intentionally reduce preservation’s reach through changes to the National Register of Historic Places and the National Historic Preservation Act’s Section 106 (to streamline preservation out of reviews of large, nationwide initiatives). These would have significant impacts on preservation in Rhode Island. We need to ensure that these efforts are squashed early on.

4. If you had a magic wand to fix one thing, what would you wish for?

I would wish for more staff in the office to allow us to take on more initiatives.

Preservation is about telling everyone’s history. Nationwide, preservation is working to acknowledge underrepresented communities, and we need to, as well. That means better understanding the histories and cultures of groups that have not been the subject of our focus over the years; reaching out to people in those communities, learning about them, and getting that information into the record, through additions to our town surveys, National Register nominations, and National Historic Landmark documents. In Rhode Island, this dovetails with growing our heritage program. There is a natural overlap there that we need to exploit to bring heritage into the preservation program in new ways that enhance both programs.

We have a very good survey of historic properties that were constructed up to the 1930s, but since that work was conducted in the 1980s, we have not done a systematic survey or studied statewide contexts. Buildings from the early 1970s are now 50 years old. We need to develop a better understanding about which 20th century buildings should be considered historic and why.

We need to expand our outreach to the cities and towns, through more historic district commission training, more interaction to find out where their preservation concerns lie, and building our network of allies.

My predecessor initiated an effort to develop a relationship with URI to expand our terrestrial and underwater archaeology programs. Some interesting ideas have been discussed, but we need to put more effort into that relationship.

There are more… we could come up with a lot if we had that magic wand.

5. How can the preservation community help you to be successful?

I will only be successful if our office is successful. At its simplest, I am the director of a state regulatory agency. We administer programs and enforce regulations that have been set down in state and federal law. While we are also here to help, our mandates are not lobbying for preservation or organizing local efforts. We need the preservation community to coalesce and advocate for preservation from Burrillville to Little Compton and everywhere in between. We need local historical societies, heritage groups, and historic district commissions to be the on-the-ground groups promoting preservation in their towns, talking to their local officials and their neighbors, and helping those who are not familiar with the benefits of preservation to understand how important preservation is to the sense of place that we feel in Rhode Island that makes us love living here. Local efforts bubble upward, through the town officials to the General Assembly, to the Governor’s office, and to Congress, and they can all provide support for us if we reach them.