The former home of Emmett and Mamie Till is pictured in the West Woodlawn neighborhood of Chicago on Aug. 26, 2020. It is one of more than two dozen historically significant sites that will share in $3 million grant money from a preservation organization. Anthony Vazquez/Chicago Sun-Times via AP, File hide caption
Fire damage at the National Susan B. Anthony Museum & House. National Susan B. Anthony Museum & House hide caption
Dwayne Tomah, the youngest fluent Passamaquoddy speaker, sings a Passamaquoddy song outside of his home in Perry, Maine. Tomah is translating and interpreting songs and stories from wax cylinders recorded nearly 130 years ago. Robbie Feinberg/Maine Public hide caption
The Richard Neutra-designed home at 49 Hopkins Ave. in San Francisco, as seen in an old Google Street View photograph. Google Maps hide caption
The upstairs porch of Anne Blessing's home in Charleston, S.C., has been a stop on a popular historic home tour. For the first time, visitors will tour the kitchen where enslaved people once spent most of their lives toiling over hot fires. Sarah McCammon/NPR hide caption
XFR Collective member Carmel Curtis works on a VHS cartridge during an event at the Baltimore Museum of Art in March. Lorena Ramirez-Lopez/XFR Collective hide caption
Pat McCawley (left) and Eric Emerson look at a drawing of an asylum built in Columbia, S.C., in the 1820s. Cooper McKim/South Carolina Public Radio hide caption
The Shanghai Rowing Club (middle) was rescued after preservationists fought a proposed demolition. In the background to the left is the futuristic skyline of Shanghai's financial district, Lujiazui. Frank Langfitt/NPR hide caption
Qiao Guohua patrols a 5-mile stretch of the Great Wall of China. Roughly a third of the wall's 12,000 miles have crumbled to dust, and saving what's left may be the world's greatest challenge in cultural preservation. Anthony Kuhn/NPR hide caption
Neonta Williams (left) shares family letters dating back to 1901 with preservationist Kimberly Peach during the Smithsonian's Save our African American Treasures program at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. Peach advises her to use archive-quality polyester sleeves to protect the fragile papers, rather than store them in a zip-lock bag. Debbie Elliott/NPR hide caption
Many institutions have their archives stored on CDs — but the discs aren't as stable as once thought. There is no average life span for a CD, says preservationist Michele Youket, "because there is no average disc." Sarah Tilotta/NPR hide caption
Geneva Post Office in Geneva, Ill., with no clear disposition review process in place, hundreds of these historic civic buildings may be endangered by U.S. Postal Service cost cutting, including this one. Matthew Gilson/National Trust for Historic Preservation hide caption