Port Towns
Looking Back, Looking Forward

During the fall of 2008, the historic preservation studio of the University of Maryland's Graduate Program in Historic Preservation developed a heritage resource study for the Maryland Port Towns, a group of four individual municipalities located on the Anacostia River in Prince George's County, Maryland. The client, the Port Towns Community Development Corporation, made it clear from the beginning that the study was to dovetail with their already extensive efforts for social and economic development in the Port Towns.

The study that follows is the culmination of the efforts of the nine-member studio team. Titled Looking Back, Looking Forward: A New Look at the Heritage Resources of  the Maryland Port Towns, the study initially developed from two principal questions:

• What existing historic resources are located in the Port Towns?
• What can be done to preserve, enhance, and highlight the existing historic resources located in the Port Towns to meet the socioeconomic goals set by the Port Towns Community Development Corporation?

The team was confident that by keeping these two questions at the forefront of their efforts the heritage resource study would ultimately both preserve and protect the heritage resources of the Port Towns, and lay the basic management framework necessary to transform those heritage resources into an economic engine. The wealth of heritage resources in the four communities was immediately clear, and it is the sincere hope of the studio team that this study for managing these resources will lead to a more prosperous future for the Port Towns.

Images/Documents

2008 Port Towns Studio.pdf