Georgetown: Preservat .
300 new jobs were created, Submitted by the Georgetown Heritage Society
making Georgetown one of the
most successful Main Street
stories nationwide.
Jl/1 / hen the crew of an upcoming motion picture
arrived in town the same week that a production
company began filming a pilot for ABC-TV, Georgetown
residents once again were reminded of the tourism and economic
benefits that historic preservation has brought to
this Central Texas town.
With its combination of quaintness and vitality, Georgetown
offered producers of both the movie and the TV program
the special environment they had been seeking. The
Georgetown community profited in turn. During the weeks
that the cast and crew of the TV pilot "Doodles" spent in
town this spring, they added substantial revenues to local
businesses and squarely focused attention on one of the
town's most valuable assets: its historic flavor.
Preservation is, however, a fairly recent phenomenon in
Georgetown. Residents have always been proud of their
handsome downtown square with its fine collection of Victorian
commercial buildings of brick and stone, embellished
with pressed metal and cast iron. They have always
admired the tree-lined streets of the city's inner neighborhoods,
dotted with vernacular, popular, and high-style residences
dating from the 1870s to the 1930s.
Yet it is only within the past decade that the community
*.h,! ,-has formally organized itself and taken positive steps to safeguard
its architectural and cultural legacy. Fortunately, preservation
efforts in Georgetown have evolved in an orderly,
logical manner in anticipation of- rather than in direct
response tothreats to its hist oric fabric. Since 1976,
Georgetown has taken advantage of numerous federal,
--..~ A\~ state, and private programs and grants in order to meet its
5~ , ,; , A~~~''''~ ~ ~evolving preservation needs.
The fervor of the nation's bicentennial encouraged formation
of the city's first historical organization, the Georgetown
_'-~ r~~-. ' Heritage Society, in 1977. During that same period, the city
,, i l l _ ~ ~ V council implemented a local historic zoning ordinance to
r~ f11111 i lwlilm protect the downtown square and then appointed a specific
board, the Historic Preservation Committee, to oversee
signage and facade alterations to buildings within that local
district. Shortly thereafter, the central business district
was designated by the Department of the Interior as the
Williamson County Courthouse National Register Historic
District.
By 1978 a coalition of downtown professionals and merchants
had organized the Downtown Georgetown Association
to promote awareness of the services and the shopping,
dining, and recreational facilities available on the square.
That same year, the city's earliest neighborhood group, the
'-ME \ to keep abreast of issues affecting older residential areas.
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