Former Richmond Mayor Tom Butt received the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s highest recognition this week for his decades of work in Richmond to preserve historic sites in a way that has benefited the local community.
Butt, 80, who served as mayor from 2015-2022 and on the City Council from 1995-2014, was honored with the 2024 Louise du Pont Crowninshield Award. This award is given when there is “indisputable evidence of superlative achievement over time” in the realm of preservation.
He was nominated for the award by K. Lynn Berry, superintendent for Rosie the
Riveter WWII Home Front National Historical Park and three other California national parks.
Berry credited the former mayor with creating Richmond’s award-winning historic preservation program “from scratch,” and for playing a key role in establishing the Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Park, which brought national recognition to American WWII workers, particularly women and minorities.
Butt is an architect who moved to Richmond in 1973, three years after serving in Vietnam as a decorated Corps of Engineers combat engineer officer. He founded Point Richmond-based Interactive Resources, a firm which has focused on sustainable architecture and historic preservation for over five decades.
He also founded and continues to take a hands-on role in nonprofits including Rosie the Riveter Trust, East Brother Light Station, Inc., and the Winehaven Trust.
“You will still find him regularly on a scaffold or ladder leading a volunteer crew maintaining the historic structures at East Brother Island,” Berry noted in her nomination of the former mayor.
Berry added that the former mayor “transformed Richmond from a town in decline with no preservation agenda, to a recognized national leader in preservation that has revitalized the city.”
In his e-forum newsletter, where he in part advocates for causes involving historic preservation, Butt said he was humbled to receive the award at its annual conference in New Orleans.
