Barbara Haney Irvine | |
---|---|
Born | 1944 |
Occupation | Historic preservationist |
Known for | Women's historic sites preservationist |
Barbara Haney Irvine (born 1944) is an American advocate for the preservation of women's historic sites. Irvine is the founding president of the Alice Paul Institute, named after American suffragist leader Alice Paul, and was the executive director of the New Jersey Historic Trust. In 2007 she was an honoree for Women's History Month by the National Women's History Project. [1]
"While Barbara Haney Irvine was initially influenced by Alice Paul, she has created her own powerful legacy through her tireless efforts to ensure that the stories of women’s lives and the places where women lived, worked and died will continue to inspire us and all future generations. - The National Women's History Project [1]
Finding inspiration in the life of Alice Paul, the suffragist and women's rights activist who initiated and ran the main actions and events of the 1910s Women's Voting Rights Movement which successfully lobbied for the 19th amendment winning women the right to vote, Irvine co-founded the Alice Paul Centennial Foundation in 1984 to celebrate the centennial of Paul's birth. Later, APCF became the Alice Paul Institute. In 2024, on the occasion of its 40th anniversary, API became the Alice Paul Center for Gender Justice.
For over 16 years Irvine served as volunteer president and board chair for API, leading successful campaigns to preserve historic objects related to Paul's life. The group successfully raised over $58,000 to purchase a collection of Paul's books, papers and personal items, including a desk owned by Susan B. Anthony which Paul also used during her movement. The collection was then donated to the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., and the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Harvard University. [1]
Less than a year after the collection acquisition, API was offered the chance to purchase Paulsdale , the birthplace and childhood home of Alice Paul, in Mount Laurel, New Jersey. The home was surrounded by a housing development, which threatened to swallow the six-acre site. Irvine led the national campaign to preserve the site, raising over $1.8 million in private and public funds to purchase and rehabilitate the site, turning it into a leadership center for girls and young women. In 1991, under the leadership of Irvine, the property was declared a National Historic Landmark. [1] Paulsdale continues to serve as a leadership development center for women and girls attesting to the ongoing inspiration of Paul's vision for women's equality. The Barbara Haney Irvine Library at Paulsdale honors its founding director.
During the Paulsdale campaign, Irvine started and chaired the first national conference on women's historic sites. This conference was held in 1994 at Bryn Mawr College, and in 1999 the National Collaborative for Women's History Sites was founded. The Collaborative serves to preserve and interpret the sites and venues where women were key in American history. During this time, Irvine also assisted in the creation of the New Jersey Women's Heritage Trail. [1] Irvine has also served as a program content adviser for the New Jersey history program, Our Vanishing Past, produced by the New Jersey Network. [2]
In 2004 Irvine became the executive director of the New Jersey Historic Trust, seeking to shift the Trusts' focus towards the preservation of urban historic buildings. She retired in 2007. She is married to Geoffrey Irvine [1] and now, returning to her home state, lives in Pittsboro, NC. [3]
In 2000 Irvine was appointed to the Women's Progress Commemorative Commission, and in 2005 she was named "Woman of the Year" by Gamma Sigma Sigma. In 2007 she was an honoree for Women's History Month, sponsored by the National Women's History Project. [1]
The National Trust for Historic Preservation is a privately funded, nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., that works in the field of historic preservation in the United States. The member-supported organization was founded in 1949 by congressional charter to support the preservation of America’s diverse historic buildings, neighborhoods, and heritage through its programs, resources, and advocacy.
Alice Stokes Paul was an American Quaker, suffragette, suffragist, feminist, and women's rights activist, and one of the foremost leaders and strategists of the campaign for the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which prohibits sex discrimination in the right to vote. Paul initiated, and along with Lucy Burns and others, strategized events such as the Woman Suffrage Procession and the Silent Sentinels, which were part of the successful campaign that resulted in the amendment's passage in August 1920.
The National Woman's Party (NWP) was an American women's political organization formed in 1916 to fight for women's suffrage. After achieving this goal with the 1920 adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, the NWP advocated for other issues including the Equal Rights Amendment. The most prominent leader of the National Woman's Party was Alice Paul, and its most notable event was the 1917–1919 Silent Sentinels vigil outside the gates of the White House.
Lucy Burns was an American suffragist and women's rights advocate. She was a passionate activist in the United States and the United Kingdom, who joined the militant suffragettes. Burns was a close friend of Alice Paul, and together they ultimately formed the National Woman's Party.
The Trustees of Reservations is a non-profit land conservation and historic preservation organization dedicated to preserving natural and historical places in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It is the oldest land conservation nonprofit organization of its kind in the world and has 100,000 member households as of 2021. In addition to land stewardship, the organization is also active in conservation partnerships, community supported agriculture (CSA), environmental and conservation education, community preservation and development, and green building. The Trustees owns title to 120 properties on 27,000 acres (11,000 ha) in Massachusetts, all of which are open to the public. In addition, it holds 393 conservation restrictions to protect an additional 20,000 acres (8,100 ha). Properties include historic mansions, estates, and gardens; woodland preserves; waterfalls; mountain peaks; wetlands and riverways; coastal bluffs, beaches, and barrier islands; farmland and CSA projects; and archaeological sites.
The Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage was an American organization formed in 1913 led by Alice Paul and Lucy Burns to campaign for a constitutional amendment guaranteeing women's suffrage. It was inspired by the United Kingdom's suffragette movement, which Paul and Burns had taken part in. Their continuous campaigning drew attention from congressmen, and in 1914 they were successful in forcing the amendment onto the floor for the first time in decades.
The Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University was established in 1956 with an endowment from Florence Peshine Eagleton (1870–1953), and it focuses on state and national politics through education and public service. Ruth Mandel served as director for over 20 years, before being succeeded in that role by John Farmer Jr. in September, 2019, and Elizabeth C. Matto in September, 2022.
The Princeton Battlefield in Princeton, Mercer County, New Jersey, United States, is where American and British troops fought each other on January 3, 1777, in the Battle of Princeton during the American Revolutionary War. The battle ended when the British soldiers in Nassau Hall surrendered. This success, following those at the Battle of Trenton on December 26, 1776, and the Battle of the Assunpink Creek the day before, helped improve American morale.
Paulsdale is a historic estate and house museum in Mount Laurel Township, New Jersey. Built about 1840, it was the birthplace and childhood home of Alice Paul (1885-1977), a major leader in the Women's suffrage movement in the United States, whose activism led to passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, granting women the right to vote. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on July 5, 1989, for its significance in social history and politics/government. Paulsdale was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1991.
The New Jersey Historic Trust was created by the State of New Jersey in 1967 to preserve New Jersey's historic resources. The Historic Trust's executive director is Dorothy P. Guzzo.
Marian A. Van Landingham is an American community leader, politician and artist. She served in the Virginia House of Delegates for 24 years and spearheaded the transformation of a decrepit former military storage building into the Torpedo Factory Art Center, in Alexandria, Virginia. In 2006 she was designated a Women's History Month Honoree by the National Women's History Project.
This timeline highlights milestones in women's suffrage in the United States, particularly the right of women to vote in elections at federal and state levels.
Antoinette Forrester Downing was an American architectural historian and preservationist who wrote the standard reference work on historical houses in Rhode Island. She is credited with spearheading a movement that saved many of Providence's historic buildings from demolition in the mid 20th century and for her leadership was inducted into the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame in 1978.
The New Jersey Women's Heritage Trail is a collaborative effort between the New Jersey's Historic Preservation Office, part of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, and 94 historic sites statewide to raise awareness about the roles played by women in shaping the history of state of New Jersey.
Molly Murphy MacGregor is one of the co-founders of the National Women's History Project, now known as the National Women's History Alliance. Her work contributed to the creation of Women's History Month, which is recognized every year in March.
Demond "Brent" Leggs is an African American architectural historian and preservationist from Paducah, Kentucky. Among his roles at the National Trust for Historic Preservation he has been the founding director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, with the goal of raising $25,000,000 to protect and preserve African American history via material culture and beyond.
Mary Gregory Jewett was an American preservationist, journalist, public official, and historian who ran the Georgia Historical Commission from 1960 through its dissolution in 1973, and served as the first president of the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation. In 2013, she was posthumously named a Georgia Woman of Achievement.
The Women’s Project of New Jersey was initiated in October 1984 to publish the first comprehensive reference volume on women who were both representative and notable in New Jersey’s history. Its mission expanded to promote the understanding of “the role of women in the history and culture of our state." The original goal was achieved in April 1990 with the publication of the award-winning volume Past and Promise: Lives of New Jersey Women. The organization’s broader goal was and continues to be achieved by the creation of a traveling photographic exhibit, a speakers’ panel and lecture series, two school workbooks and K-12 curricula found on the NJ women’s history website, a speakers’ bureau, a poster series, a paperback revised and updated edition of Past and Promise, and the development of the nation’s first state-based women’s history website.
The African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund is a program formed in 2017 to aid stewards of Black cultural sites throughout the nation in preserving both physical landmarks, their material collections and associated narratives. It was organized under the auspices of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The initiative which awards grants to select applicants and advocates of Black history has been led by architectural historian Brent Leggs since 2019. It is the largest program in America to preserve places associated with Black history.