Columbus Circle Preservation District

Columbus Circle may be the smallest preservation district in the city but it includes some of the most architecturally and historically distinctive civic structures in Syracuse. The district includes the Onondaga County Courthouse, designed by Archimedes Russell and Melvin King (1904-06); the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception designed by Michael Connor (1886) with the tower addition by Archimedes Russel (1906), the former First Baptist Church (known as Mizpah Tower) designed by Gordon Wright (1914), and the former Central Library, designed by James Randall (1902-05). The district also includes the site of the former Powelson Building, which was demolished in 2004. At the center of the district is the community plaza that features a monument to Christopher Columbus by artist Renzo Baldi (1934). Common Council approved the designation of the Columbus Circle Preservation District in 1981.

The Secretary of the Interior's Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties, specifically the Standards for Rehabilitation, are intended to assist property owners planning improvements to their historic properties and to guide the Landmark Preservation Board when reviewing Certificate of Appropriateness applications.

The Standards for Rehabilitation are listed below. You can also find additional information in the National Park Service's Illustrated Guidelines for the Treatment of Historic Properties.

1. A property will be used as it was historically or be given a new use that requires minimal change to its distinctive materials, features, spaces and spatial relationships.
2. The historic character of a property will be retained and preserved. The removal of distinctive materials or alteration of features, spaces and spatial relationships that characterize a property will be avoided.
3. Each property will be recognized as a physical record of its time, place and use. Changes that create a false sense of historical development, such as adding conjectural features or elements from other historic properties, will not be undertaken.
4. Changes to a property that have acquired historic significance in their own right will be retained and preserved.
5. Distinctive materials, features, finishes, and construction techniques or examples of craftsmanship that characterize a property will be preserved.
6. Deteriorated historic features will be repaired rather than replaced. Where the severity of deterioration requires replacement of a distinctive feature, the new feature will match the old in design, color, texture and, where possible, materials. Replacement of missing features will be substantiated by documentary and physical evidence.
7. Chemical or physical treatments, if appropriate, will be undertaken using the gentlest means possible. Treatments that cause damage to historic materials will not be used.
8. Archeological resources will be protected and preserved in place. If such resources must be disturbed, mitigation measures will be undertaken.
9. New additions, exterior alterations, or related new construction will not destroy historic materials, features, and spatial relationships that characterize the property. The new work will be differentiated from the old and will be compatible with the historic materials, features, size, scale and proportion, and massing to protect the integrity of the property and its environment New additions and adjacent or related new construction will be undertaken in such a manner that, if removed in the future, the essential form and integrity of the historic property and its environment would be unimpaired.