[CPProt.net] 2006 World Monuments Fund: Complete Watch List

[Ellie Bruggeman]

2006 World Monuments Fund: Complete Watch List

Organization Name    Country
Haji Piyada Mosque     AFGHANISTAN
Sir Ernest Shackletons Expedition Hut     ANTARCTICA
Dampier Rock Art Complex     AUSTRALIA
Sonargaon-Panam City     BANGLADESH
Mehmed-Pasha Sokolovic Bridge     BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA
Convent of San Francisco and Historic Olinda     BRAZIL
Bafut Palace     CAMEROON
Tarrafal Concentration Camp     CAPE VERDE
Cerros Pintados     CHILE
Tulor Village     CHILE
Cockcrow Post Town     CHINA
Lu Mansion     CHINA
Qikou Town     CHINA
Stone Towers of Southwest China     CHINA
Tianshui Traditional Houses     CHINA
Tuanshan Historical Village     CHINA
Novi Dvori Castle     CROATIA
Saint Blaise Church     CROATIA
Finca Vigia (Hemingway's House)     CUBA
Sabil Ruqayya Dudu     EGYPT
Tarabay al-Sharify     EGYPT
West Bank     EGYPT
San Miguel Arcangel and Santa Cruz de Roma     EL SALVADOR
Asmara Historic City Center     ERITREA
Kidane-Mehret Church     ERITREA
Massawa Historic Town     ERITREA
Helsinki-Malmi Airport     FINLAND
Jvari Monastery     GEORGIA
Helike Archaeological Site     GREECE
Naranjo     GUATEMALA
Dalhousie Square     INDIA
Dhangkar Gompa     INDIA
Guru Lhakhang and Sumda Chung Temples     INDIA
Watson's Hotel     INDIA
Omo Hada     INDONESIA
Bam     IRAN
Iraq Cultural Heritage Sites     IRAQ
Wonderful Barn     IRELAND
Academy of Hadrian's Villa     ITALY
Cimitero Acattolico     ITALY
Civita di Bagnoregio     ITALY
Murgia dei Trulli     ITALY
Portici Royal Palace     ITALY
Santa Maria in Stelle Hypogeum     ITALY
Temple of Portunus     ITALY
Mtwapa Heritage Site     KENYA
Chom Phet Cultural Landscape     LAOS
Riga Cathedral     LATVIA
Chehabi Citadel     LEBANON
International Fairground at Tripoli     LEBANON
Treskavec Monastery and Church     MACEDONIA
Chinguetti Mosque     MAURITANIA
Chalcatzingo     MEXICO
Mexico City Historic Center     MEXICO
Pimeria Alta Missions     MEXICO
San Juan Bautista Cuauhtinchan     MEXICO
San Nicolas Obispo     MEXICO
Patan Royal Palace Complex     NEPAL
Benin City Earthworks     NIGERIA
Sandviken Bay     NORWAY
Mian Nasir Mohammed Graveyard     PAKISTAN
Thatta Monuments     PAKISTAN
Tell Balatah (Shechem or Ancient Nablus)     PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES
Panama Canal Area     PANAMA
Cajamarquilla     PERU
Presbitero Maestro Cemetery     PERU
Quinta Heeren     PERU
Revash Funerary Complex     PERU
Tucume Archaeological Site     PERU
Jerusalem Hospital of the Teutonic Order     POLAND
Mausoleum of Karol Scheibler     POLAND
Teatro Capitolio     PORTUGAL
Oradea Fortress     ROMANIA
Melnikov's House Studio     RUSSIA
Narkomfin Building     RUSSIA
Semenovskoe-Otrada     RUSSIA
Pulemelei Mound     SAMOA
Prizren Historic Center     SERBIA MONTENEGRO
Subotica Synagogue     SERBIA MONTENEGRO
Old Fourah Bay College Building    SIERRA LEONE
Lednicke-Rovne Historical Park     SLOVAKIA
Richtersveld Cultural Landscape     SOUTH AFRICA
Segovia Aqueduct     SPAIN
Suakin     SUDAN
Amrit Archaeological Site     SYRIA
Shayzar Castle     SYRIA
Tell Mozan (Ancient Urkesh)     SYRIA
Aphrodisias     TURKEY
Little Hagia Sophia     TURKEY
Saint Mary's Stow Church     UNITED KINGDOM
Saint Vincent's Street Church    UNITED KINGDOM
2 Columbus Circle    UNITED STATES
Bluegrass Cultural Landscape of Kentucky     UNITED STATES
Cyclorama Center    UNITED STATES
Dutch Reformed Church     UNITED STATES
Ellis Island Baggage and Dormitory Building    UNITED STATES
Ennis Brown House     UNITED STATES
Hanging Flume     UNITED STATES
Mount Lebanon Shaker Village     UNITED STATES
La Guaira Historic City     VENEZUELA

  Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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2 Columbus Circle Makes Group's List of Threatened Sites

By ROBIN POGREBIN
New York Times Published: June 21, 2005

Edward Durell Stone's porthole-studded building at 2 Columbus Circle, Mexico
City's historic center and every "cultural heritage" site in Iraq have been
added to the World Monuments Fund watch list of most endangered sites, to be
released today. Preservationists have been protesting plans to reclad and
recreate 2 Columbus Circle as the new home of the Museum of Arts and Design,
arguing that the 1964 building represents a turning point in Modernist
design.

In an era of growing calls for the preservation of Modernist architecture,
the 2006 watch list includes nine 20th-century sites. "There are enough
people out there calling attention to the fact that we're losing these
buildings that there is a kind of groundswell," said Bonnie Burnham, the
fund's president.

Beyond 2 Columbus Circle, the Modern group includes the Cyclorama Center in
Gettysburg, Pa., built from 1958 to 1961 to house a panoramic painting that
depicts the final battle there; Konstantin Melnikov's House Studio in Moscow
(1927-1929), a cylindrical building that the avant-garde architect designed
for his family; and the historic city center of Asmara, a series of
strikingly Modernist buildings in Eritrea built by Italian occupiers from
1936 to 1941.

Since Eritrea gained independence from Ethiopia in 1993 after several years
of fighting, efforts to restore and preserve neglected or war-ravaged
cultural sites have gained momentum. Two other sites in that country made
the list: the late-14th-century Kidane-Mehret Church, representative of
indigenous craftsmanship (it was built in the monkey-head style, where the
rounded ends of timber beams stick out of striated stone walls, resembling
monkey heads); and the historic town of Massawa, a port city successively
ruled by the Ottoman Turks, Egypt and Italy that retains architectural
features of each culture.

The Iraqi monuments are listed as a single entry on the roster of 100 sites,
which is drawn up every two years with input from preservation groups,
archaeologists and government agencies.

Ms. Burnham said it was the first time that essentially an entire country
had been listed.

"Everything that is cultural in Iraq is threatened at the moment," she said.
"We really couldn't see any other way to address it."

Mexico City's historic center, which includes the main public square and
colonial-era buildings, was included on the list to draw attention to
environmental problems there, particularly the threat of sinking caused by
rising water tables, Ms. Burnham said.

The selections are made by a rotating panel of experts who evaluate the
sites' significance, the urgency of their condition and the viability of the
nominator's proposal to protect them. Several sites are relisted. Among
those that were on the 2004 watch list are Little Hagia Sophia, the oldest
preserved Byzantine church in Istanbul, which was converted to a mosque in
1504 but is closed because of structural damage; Frank Lloyd Wright's 1924
Ennis-Brown House in Los Angeles, one of four textile-block houses that the
architect built from local materials; and the Panama Canal area, which the
fund says is threatened by development pressures and a lack of regulation.

"Some of these sites are so much on the tourist circuit that people don't
really think about the conservation issues," Ms. Burnham said, citing, for
example, the formerly listed Taj Mahal and Pompeii.

Sites can also be unglamorous, like a fish processing site in British
Columbia that once made the list, or hazy in origin, like the Pulemelei
Mound in Samoa, a mysterious earth and stone monument built between 1100 and
1500 that made this year's list.

On watch in the United States are the bluegrass cultural landscape of
Kentucky, whose horse farms and training stables are threatened by urban
sprawl; Hanging Flume in Montrose Country, Colo., a 13-mile-long track that
was used for hydraulic gold mining in the late 19th century; and the Ellis
Island baggage and dormitory building in New York, where immigrants waited
to be processed for arrival or deported.

This year's list has sites from 55 countries on all 7 continents, including
Antarctica, the fund said. There is Tell Balatah from the Palestinian
territories, thought by some scholars to be the biblical city of Shechem;
the Roman aqueduct in Segovia, Spain, whose rough-hewn granite blocks are
being eroded by pollutants; the International Fairground, built between 1963
and 1975 in Tripoli, Lebanon, which faces possible conversion into an
amusement park; and the Teatro Capitolio in Lisbon, a 1930's theater that
has been closed since the 1980's and is slated for demolition.

There are six sites in China, two of which - the Cockcrow Post Town in
Huailai and the Tianshui Traditional Houses in Gansu Province - have been
relisted. As development gains speed there, Ms. Burnham said, "towns are
rapidly disappearing."

Among the other sites included for the first time this year are
Afghanistan's oldest mosque, the Haji Piyada in the northern province of
Balkh, whose mud-brick and stucco decorations date from the ninth century;
the Tarrafal concentration camp (1933) on Santiago Island in Cape Verde,
which housed political opponents of Salazar's fascists and, later, African
nationalists rebelling against colonial rule; and Hemingway's house in Cuba
(1886), where the author wrote works including "For Whom the Bell Tolls,"
"The Old Man and the Sea" and "A Moveable Feast."

The fund is one of several organizations that have watch lists. (Unesco
maintains the World Heritage List, for example.) It is privately financed
and funnels aid to preservationist efforts. Since 1996, it has distributed
about $35 million.

http://www.nytimes.com/