Group Honors Preservation Projects

Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, two movie houses and the battleship Missouri were among honorees singled out Wednesday by the National Trust for Historic Preservation for its 30th annual conservation awards.

The trust credited Daley with leading the effort to preserve nominations for landmark designation of 29 threatened buildings in Chicago and for doubling the number of designated landmark buildings and districts in the city.

“The success of Mayor Daley’s programs demonstrates not only the power of preservation but also his positive and effective brand of leadership,” Richard Moe, the trust’s president, said in a statement.

The Missouri, on which Japanese diplomats surrendered to end World War II, was preserved with the help of 20,000 volunteers and opened to the public in Pearl Harbor last year. More than half a million people have visited it. The ship last saw action in the Persian Gulf War in 1991, when its guns and missiles attacked Iraqi forces.

Theaters honored were landmarks on each coast, New York’s Radio City Music Hall and the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood, Calif.

Radio City was built during the Great Depression and underwent seven months’ refurbishing last year. Murals hidden by wallpaper have been rediscovered and art deco designs restored.

Other honored restorations included Union Station in Seattle and Roger Williams Park in Providence, R.I., designed by the father of American landscape architecture, Frederick Law Olmsted.