One major appeal of Annapolis is its meticulously preserved historic buildings. But for many who try navigating such attractions, even getting to them in the first place can often be a nightmare. Isn’t there a law against that?
The old adage, “Before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes,” is said to be derived from an 1895 poem by prohibitionist and suffragist Mary T. Lathrap. If you ask most people with disabilities, they’ll tell you that too few of the able-bodied heed the saying’s intent. It’s all about empathy and not being oblivious to a fellow human being who might be facing some daunting hurdles and needs a hand—like holding a door or simply yielding the right of way to a person using crutches, a cane, a walker, a wheelchair, or any other mode of mobility assistance.
Even though accessibility for those with disabilities was supposed to have been solved when President George H. W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) into law 30 years ago, people with physical impairments still often face serious hurdles at some historic sites. At its core, the ADA prohibits discrimination of people who are unable to gain access to otherwise public spaces.
Historic Properties and ADA Compliance
Complying with ADA regulations and requirements while at the same time preserving historic sites can be a murky matter of interpretation. And wading through the nebulous bureaucratese set forth by the U.S. Department of Justice doesn’t help. The clearest explanation of how it’s supposed to work, however, appears in an article written by Maryland and District of Columbia licensed attorney Gail S. Kelley in the November 2014 issue of STRUCTURE magazine. In “ADA Requirements for Historic Properties,” Kelley outlines not only the regulations but also the exceptions for historically significant structures not unlike several found in Annapolis. She details those exceptions under the headings Path of Travel, Accessible Route Exceptions, Entrances Exception, Toilet Facilities Exception, and Barrier Removal. The word “exception(s)” is the key term here.
The murkiness begins with proposed alterations to historic properties for ADA compliance and “to what extent.” According to Kelley, said alterations “must comply with ADA, but there are exceptions when compliance would threaten or destroy the historic significance of a feature of the building.” She cites “technical feasibility” as a principal factor in the government’s allowance of noncompliance with ADA regulations and that in itself “is a fairly high bar.” A structural alteration is technically infeasible “if it would require removing or altering a load-bearing member that is an essential part of the structural frame [of a building].” The regulations even include specifications for the steepness of wheelchair ramp slopes and the ratio variations when dealing with historic passageways.
Cost of ADA compliance also (not surprisingly) comes into play. Under “Path of travel,” Kelley states that alterations to provide “an accessible path of travel” are required only if the price-tag doesn’t “exceed 20 percent of the cost of the original alteration.” And perhaps the most unsatisfying “alternative method” in Kelley’s report in providing access is to “create a video of the items in the room and show the video in a nearby room that is accessible.” Several email attempts to contact attorney Kelley for comment were unsuccessful.
Does Annapolis Comply?
For this report, we interviewed Ryan Blomeley, the architectural plans reviewer for the Annapolis Department of Planning and Zoning, whose principal duty is to review city building permits for code compliance, including the ADA. “The Department of Justice and the Civil Rights Division has a website that deals with many of the issues related to the Americans with Disabilities Act. It’s not comprehensive, but it is pretty darn close,” Blomeley contends. He points out that the ADA was modified in 2010 in three areas of applicability:
Title I deals with employee/employer relationships in terms of discrimination, including “interactions between people, where one cannot discriminate against somebody who is in a wheelchair, just because they’re in a wheelchair,” Blomeley says. Title II deals with structural requirements applicable to government entities, on federal, state, or local levels. “As for buildings under Title II, if it’s a public building, and the government owns it, it would fall under that category.” Title III “deals with everything else outside the government domain.”
According to Blomeley, new regulations in 2010 are revisions of the original act passed into law in 1990. He adds: “Changes made also incorporate 2004 ADA Accessibility Guidelines and those from the Architectural Barriers Act in 1968. Another layer of this is the Uniform Federal Accessibility Standards, which, before the ADA regulations, is what Title II became. In addition, the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 set down the standards for government buildings to follow.”
Dealing with the Historic
The city does not have the unilateral right to force anyone to bring their structure into current compliance, Blomeley says. “We have a lot of historic buildings that were built ‘pre-codes’ or built over the last several decades when we had other building codes,” he notes. “As long as they are existing and [were] built to code when they were constructed, they’re legally allowed to exist, even though they may not meet current building codes.” As for private residences, “accessibility laws don’t apply,” he adds.
In a historic city such as Annapolis, Bromeley says that his department is responsible for reviewing the accessible route that serves the “primary function area.” He stresses that “the accessible route is defined as basically the route someone would take from the time they arrive on the site, whether it’s parking a car, or the bus stop on the street, or coming down the sidewalk.” Accessibility to restrooms, telephones, and drinking fountains are also assessed for the primary function area.
Specifically relating to historic structures, the International Existing Building Code (IBC) “defines certain levels or certain types of work, repair, or various alterations,” Bromeley notes. This code has three levels: “Level one involves only finishes. Level two involves alterations that move walls—changing volumes of space. Level three alterations involve more than 50 percent of the entire building,” Bromeley says, adding: “That’s a big threshold, because virtually everything in the building has to be brought into code.”
To be deemed a legitimate historic building, the design professional who’s working on the project must file a report that this is indeed a historic building, and “we want it to be governed under the IBC as such. Sometimes it’s just a formality,” Blomeley says, “because the building is obviously historic—the [Maryland] State House, for example. Some of the historic buildings around town actually have state easements on them, and you can’t do anything to them without approval of the state.”
Bricks and Stones May Break...
Disabled individuals requiring the use of a wheelchair to gain access to the city’s historic buildings downtown face some real tests just getting to the buildings themselves. Unless their mobility equipment is outfitted with pneumatic tires instead of the standard hard rubber or plastic models with front revolving wheels, they’re in for a bone-jarring ride, both on sidewalks and at street crossings—ramps or no ramps.
In our interview, Mr. Blomeley addressed one prominent impediment to entering several historic buildings in Annapolis: “You’ll notice around town a lot of buildings that, from the sidewalk, you may have to step up on an old granite slab doorsill or porch [to gain entry]. The granite slab very well may be part of that historic building, and if we took it away, it would fundamentally alter its appearance.” In such cases, Planning and Zoning attempts to “provide an accessible entrance on the rear or the side of the building, instead,” Blomeley assures.
The city’s Historic Preservation Commission (HPC) is also involved in some of these reviews, and they’re heavily concentrated on downtown, where those types of changes are made. Blomeley cites a recent case-in-point:
“An office building downtown was being renovated, and the upstairs tenant was going to take up the mercantile space below and make alterations to expand their office. But the entrance was a narrow, double-door arrangement. That is not an accessible entry. The HPC would not allow us to change those two slabs. And it wouldn’t allow us to create a single slab that would work like the double slab. But HPC did allow us to put an automatic door-opener on the outside of the building to operate those slabs. So, the patron wouldn’t have to physically open the door.”
The Paving Issue
In response to our request for comment concerning the brick street pavement and sidewalks in downtown Annapolis, the city’s Chief of Historic Preservation, Roberta Laynor, replied: “The rebricking of Main Street was approved, but involves the street only. The sidewalks were completed before my tenure as chief. The street project has been postponed until the completion of the rebuilding of the Hillman Garage.”
It turns out that the “bricking” of the city apparently has been an issue for some time. An article in the September 28, 2017 Annapolis Capital Gazette, with the headline “Paving the Way: Annapolis Undertakes Main Street Rebricking,” provides a short history.
Reporter Danielle Ohl wrote that “in hopes of creating a street that lasts,” the Historic Preservation Commission had just approved the rebricking of Main Street, an ongoing effort “to uproot the bricks and asphalt, which have failed 22 years after the original bricking.”
It was in 1995 that the city’s Public Works department “transformed the asphalt street into a historic-style brick thoroughfare.” But according to then-Public Works Director David Jarrell, the underlying asphalt layer was meant for “lighter traffic flow.” After business owners expressed their opposition over weight restrictions, the city allowed heavy trucks to again use Main Street, resulting in “a separating street not built to withstand the rumbling weight of trucks and tractors hauling deliveries.” Another consequence of this move, Jarrell said, was that the street lasted less than half the time it should have. “Fifty years is not unusual for a brick street,” Jarrell was quoted as saying.
Does Historic Outweigh Accessible?
We posed a question to the city’s Ryan Blomeley: Does Annapolis still have several areas with limited access? His answer: “Yes, there are places out there that, for one reason or another, are constrained.”
We also asked Chief of Historic Preservation Roberta Laynor what challenges are of greatest concern to her: “The biggest challenge faced by our National Historic Landmark district is to preserve the integrity of our historic properties—buildings and streets—while complying with ADA regulations. A recent serious accident requiring wheelchair use by one of our employees brought the issues even closer to the forefront of our attention. The Historic Preservation Division works cooperatively with our Code Enforcement Division to create solutions ensuring that the significance of the Annapolis Historic District is maintained while also meeting ADA regulations.”
A good illustration of how this all ties in to the old “walk a mile in his shoes” saying at the beginning of this report is the tale of Hugo Deffner. In 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower was to present Mr. Deffner with the “Handicapped American of the Year” award, “in recognition of his work to promote accessibility in his community.” The problem with the presentation was that Deffner was unable to enter the building where the ceremony was to take place. There was no ramped entrance. The embarrassing incident is said to have “helped spawn the birth of the architectural barriers program.” Today, 63 years later, many of those barriers still pose problems to Americans with disabilities, especially in historic districts.
