Just in time for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, World Monuments Fund (WMF) has unveiled a list of 10 historic sites across the United States whose preservation is “essential to the richness and complexity” of the nation’s story. The sites range from colonial-era architecture and public health landmarks to early mission churches, all of which face deterioration without sustained preservation efforts, according to the organization.
One designated site will be familiar to art history students: Black Mountain College’s Studies Building in North Carolina, where a remarkable roster of American luminaries in visual art, music, design, and performance studied and taught. Its storied alumni include postwar painting titan Robert Rauschenberg, Color Field pioneer Kenneth Noland, and celebrated wire sculptor Ruth Asawa. The college’s interdisciplinary approach drew heavily on Bauhaus ideals championed by figures such as architect Walter Gropius—who served on the school’s advisory board—and Josef and Anni Albers, architects of Black Mountain’s experimentation curriculum. It also attracted influential artists-in-residence, including avant-garde composer John Cage and choreographer Merce Cunningham, who staged one of the earliest “Happenings” there in 1952—only five years before the college officially shuttered amid financial struggles.
Today, the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center in Asheville carries forward the school’s legacy, preserving its archives for researchers and organizing exhibitions, performances, and educational programs inspired by the spirit of its former students and faculty.
The list also includes the African Meeting House in Boston, the oldest surviving Black church building in the United States and a former hub of the abolitionist movement. Also recognized are the colonial-era homes of Newport, Rhode Island, one of the nation’s best-preserved concentrations of early American architecture. From grand marble mansions to quaint wooden dwellings, many are increasingly threatened by rising sea levels, according to the WMF.
Dallas City Hall, one of the finest examples of brutalist civic architecture in the country, was designed by architect I. M. Pei.
Meanwhile, private development and “inflated rehabilitation estimates” threaten Dallas City Hall, a landmark of American modernism designed by I. M. Pei, the architect best known for the Louvre Pyramid, according to World Monuments Fund. The organization also gave special recognition to the 430 sites that make up the National Park System.
“The United States was built by people from every corner of the globe, shaped by Indigenous nations, early settlers, immigrant communities, and generations of cultural exchange,” Bénédicte de Montlaur, president and CEO of WMF, said in a statement.
“That complexity,” he continued, “gave rise to some of America’s most enduring contributions, from colonial heritage to jazz and hip-hop and the Wright brothers’ invention of powered flight. After decades of work at more than 700 sites in 113 countries, WMF has seen what communities gain when they can protect the places that matter and what is lost when they cannot.”
