What to do when there are new National Historic Landmark designations

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First, don't panic. There are more steps for dealing with new NHLs than there are for regular National Register listings.

There are two methods by which NHLs are made known to the public. Typically, the first indication of them is via a press release from the office of the US Interior Secretary. This is a dated documented typically saying "Secretary Whoever is pleased to announce" a bunch of new listings, with some background on them. The date of this document is NOT the actual date that the landmarks were designated. Those are found in the National Park Service Weekly Action Lists. These documents, also dated, show what "office actions" were taken by the Park Service with respect to NRHP and NHL listings. The NHL listing designations actions are often not listed until well after the DOI press release, and even longer than the date of the actual office action, which usually took place a month or so before the press release. The Weekly Action Lists include things that the DOI press release does not, including the formal names of the listings, the date of the office action, and the NRIS refnum associated with that action. For previously listed properties, the refnum may be an old refnum, or it may be an entirely new one.

  1. If the subject is not already NRHP-listed, go through the regular process of adding NRHP listings to county and state NRHP lists. Make sure nrhp_type is set to NHL or NHLD as appropriate in the {{NRHP row}}s you add.
  2. If the subject is already NRHP-listed, determine if the NHL designation uses the same refnum (these days, it often does not). Make sure the county list on which it appears has had nrhp_type set to NHL or NHLD as appropriate.
  3. Identify if an article already exists for the subject. It often does, but may have a different name. Follow the Existing Article process below, and create redirects for the NHL name if needed.
  4. Identify if a Commons category exists for the subject. Follow the Commons Category process below.
  5. Following Add to NHL List process below.

Existing Article process

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If an article on the subject exists, beware that someone else may already have made a subset of the needed changes to the article. Here are all of the changes you should make:

  1. Change infobox NRHP type to NHL or NHLD, as appropriate.
  2. Add |designated_nrhp_type = date to infobox NRHP. If it was already added, verify that the correct date is used. A number of editors use the date of the press release announcing the designations; this is NOT the correct date, which is found in the NPS weekly action lists.
  3. Add relevant categories (National Historic Landmarks in city/state).
  4. Modify NRHP banner on talk page to have importance=high.
  5. Add text indicating that the subject has been designated.
  6. Optional: make sure there is some sort of statement of significance indicating why it was designated. (This may be obvious from existing context, but not necessarily.)

Commons Category process

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If the subject has its own category on Commons, you should add it to the appropriate "National Historic Landmarks in X" category. Also add {{NRHP|refnum}} near the top of the category page, for all of the subject's refnums.

If the subject does not have a Commons category, but has more than 2-3 pictures, consider adding such a category.

Add to NHL List

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Someone may already have added a subject to the relevant NHL state or city list. The easiest way to do this is to copy the {{NRHP row}} from the county list, and then make some modifications. This is sometimes done incorrectly, so there are a number of things to check:

  1. Make sure that it has been placed in the correct sort order for the NHL name. Some editors will add the listing to the end of the list.
  2. Make sure that the {{NRHP row}} uses the syntax {{NRHP row|NHL
  3. Make sure the "address" field of {{NRHP row}} contains the city
  4. Make sure the "county" field contains only the county name (only "X", not "X County, State" or "X County")
  5. Make sure the listing date is the correct date. A number of editors use the date of the press release announcing the designations; this is NOT the correct listing date, which is found in the NPS weekly action lists, usually many weeks later.
  6. Make sure commonscat is set appropriately.
  7. Make sure the refnum is the one used in the weekly action list, which may differ from that of a previous NRHP listing
  8. Make sure that the listing numbers in each NRHP row field have been updated (we have a script for doing that easily)
  9. Make sure that the number of listings mentioned in the list introduction is correct. It sometimes appears in more than one place.