The Winona Heritage Preservation Commission is seeking grant support to complete its Historic District Guidelines project for the Windom Park Historic District.
With Windom Park as the visual focal point of the district, the boundaries of the historic district have been outlined so the majority of residences encircle the park. Running roughly from Wilson Street to Huff Street and West Fifth Street to West Broadway Street, the historic district is Winona’s third and most recent district; it was put on the National Register of Historic Places in 2021.
“The Windom Park Historic District is a collection of 29 properties, of which 23 ... are contributing properties — meaning they are found to have historic significance, architectural significance and cultural significance for our community,” said Winona City Planner Luke Sims.
The district is a few blocks west of the central business district of Winona and five blocks from the Mississippi River. As one of the oldest residential areas in the city, the district hosts many of the city’s high-style architecture including Italianate, second empire, Queen Anne, colonial revival and Tudor revival buildings built between 1857 and 1930.
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During the March 6 Winona City Council meeting, the council approved the Heritage Preservation Commission’s request to apply for grant funding to create context-sensitive guidelines for property owners who seek to make exterior alterations to their properties. Ideally, the preservation commission sees this as a collaborative project with Windom Park residents to create standards that are approachable, understandable and applicable.
Grant funds would go toward contracting a preservation professional to hold meetings with the Windom Park community and work with historic district property owners, city staff and the preservation commission. The goal is to create guidelines unique to Windom Park and improve the process for property owners.
“The end goal for this process, specifically, will be to have those guidelines. And to have a clear, approachable, and understandable design process for them,” Sims said. “Into the future, I think that the end goal is to have a premier residential historic district in southeastern Minnesota. This is a historic district that is already very well documented. It’s a historic district that has a very involved community. They want to continue to have great investment in their historic district.”
Every year the Heritage Preservation Commission prepares a budget memo with proposed future processes. Sims said education and interpretive signs continue to be on the list of potential projects. Another potential for the future is the integrity of setting for the historic district or being able to know you’re in a historic place inherently as you enter it.
During the National Register nomination process in 2021, only one Windom Park property owner objected to the process.
“The Winona Heritage Preservation Commission likes to work with property owners as much as possible. We, as city staff, also try to work with property owners before they even get to the point where they’re ready to apply for a certificate of appropriateness so they understand what the guidelines are, what the standards are, and how that process will be applicable to them,” said Sims. “The preservation commission, every year, prepares an annual report to the city council listing every certificate of appropriateness that they heard. We approve about 99% of them; usually, one or fewer are denied in a year. It’s fairly rare that we end up with objectionable proposals or proposals that can’t be found workable within the context of the historic district.”
This process of creating guidelines that are unique and context-sensitive has already been completed for Winona’s two other historic districts: the East Second Street Commercial Historic District and the Third Street Commercial Historic District.
Sims said he’s hopeful the process to create the guidelines will take about a year. The grant application through the Minnesota Historical and Cultural Heritage Grant program administered by the Minnesota Historical Society is due in April. With funding released in July, the latter half of the year would be spent on creating the guidelines for city council approval around this time next year.
“The historic districts are great for tourism. A lot of people come to communities that have historic districts to visit them and to experience the relationship between those buildings and the history that they convey. In Winona, in particular, we have fantastic architectural history,” said Sims.
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