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California Cultural and Historical Endowment
The California Cultural and Historical Endowment (the Endowment) was established in 2003 when then-Governor Gray Davis signed AB 716 (Firebaugh) (PDF) (HTML). The Endowment was created to raise the profile and scope of California’s historic and cultural preservation program in an era of dwindling historic structures and cultural homogeneity.
Since its inception, the Endowment has funded over 150 capital projects and planning grants. The structures which have been preserved with the Endowment funding help tell the stories and document the contributions of the many groups of people that together comprise historic and modern California. The Endowment is devoted to telling California’s history as experienced by the many diverse peoples of California and is intended to help strengthen and deepen Californians’ understanding of the state’s history, its present society, and themselves.
The Legislature intended the Endowment to raise the profile and scope of California’s historic and cultural preservation program, and perhaps eventually to become a stand-alone entity in state government without ties to any existing agency or department, yet subject to the authority of the Governor. The California State Library currently houses the Endowment,
Funding for the projects comes from voter-approved bonds from the California Clean Water, Clean Air, Safe Neighborhood Parks, and Coastal Protection Act of 2002, more commonly known as Proposition 40 (PDF) l(HTML). Proposition 40 authorized the sale of $2.6 billion in General Obligation bonds. Of that dollar amount, $267.5 million – 10% -- was dedicated to Historical and Cultural Resources Preservation (Proposition 40, Article 5, Section 5096.652 (a)). Of the $267.5 million, approximately $122 million was appropriated to the Endowment to distribute competitively to government entities, non-profit organizations, and Indian tribes for the acquisition, restoration, preservation, and interpretation of historical and cultural resources.
Project and Grant Application Information
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The California Cultural and Historical Endowment Board
Board Meeting Calendar, Agendas, and Minutes
Why Our Cultural Heritage is Worth Preserving
(Excerpted in part from AB716)
Every civilization defines itself in part by its past, and an understanding of its past helps determine its basic values and future aspirations. Understanding of the past is strengthened and deepened by contact with the buildings, physical places, and artifacts of earlier times. Through learning this past, our young and future generations come to better understand the society in which they live and to better understand themselves.
As California’s built environment becomes remarkably similar throughout the state, it is left to the natural environment and the structures of the past to give a unique sense of place to our communities. Preserving these structures is becoming increasingly important as a way of preserving community identity.
The buildings, other structures, and artifacts that embody California’s past are in escalating danger of being redeveloped, remodeled, renovated, paved, excavated, bulldozed, modernized, and lost forever.
For history to be part of our lives, and to preserve community identities, we must include history in our daily lives. This can be accomplished through creative, adaptive reuse of historic structures in our older commercial districts and inner cities.
California has one of the most diverse populations on earth, and its cultural and historic preservation efforts should reflect that fact. The California Cultural and Historical Endowment’s mission is to document the cultural traditions and historic roles of California’s Latino, African-American, Asian and Pacific Islanders, Native Americans, and Jewish populations. The Endowment is also seeking out and telling the stories of the many other groups of peoples with uniquely identifiable cultures and histories. It is increasingly important to preserve the physical and cultural history and folklife of these many groups, who have made important contributions to California’s history, development, and identity.
Historic preservation should include the contributions of all Californians. The study of history once focused largely on the actions and works of the wealthy, powerful, noble, brilliant, or famous persons. More recently, historians have tried to increase understanding of how more ordinary people lived and thought. California’s historic preservation efforts should allow its citizens and visitors to experience something of the physical world of both the extraordinary and the mundane.
California has preserved sites important to its prehistoric and later Native American people. It has preserved great and beautiful structures of the 19th century. But California’s history does not end there. The state must now consciously preserve selected remnants of the 1930s, of California’s role in World War II, as well as representative sites and structures that were culturally or economically important during the 1950s, 1960s, and, in some cases, even more recently.
Traditionally, public funds to preserve and interpret California’s historic and cultural heritage have been scarce. Recently, the voters have approved bond funds with significant funding for historic and cultural resources. Proposition 12, passed in 1999, included $10 million for the Office of Historic Preservation to issue grants for historic preservation projects. In 2002, the voters approved the California Clean Water, Clean Air, Safe Neighborhood Parks, and Coastal Protection Act of 2002 (Proposition 40), which included $267 million for historic and cultural resource preservation.
Proposition 40 specified that the $267 million was to fund a broad range of cultural and historic resource preservation programs. It called for a program for the “acquisition, development, preservation, and interpretation of buildings, structures, sites, places, and artifacts that preserve and demonstrate culturally significant aspects of California’s history and for grants for these purposes. Proposition 40 funds are to be used to support projects that help to preserve and demonstrate:
- Culturally significant aspects of life during various periods of California history including architecture, economic activities, art, recreation, and transportation;
- Unique identifiable ethnic and other communities that have added significant elements to California’s culture;
- California industrial, commercial, and military history including the industries, technologies, and commercial activities that have characterized California’s economic expansion and California’s contribution to national defense; and
- Important paleontologic, oceanographic, and geologic sites and specimens.
The Endowment: the Smithsonian Institution of California?
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