Preparing a National Landmark Nomination
Wong first began documenting Baldwin Hills Village's history by preparing its National Register nomination (1990 to 1993). She was assisted by state historian Cynthia Howse and Robert Alexander, the last of the Baldwin Hills Village's four founding architects. Later, Wong prepared the community's National Historic Landmark nomination (1994 to 2001). This work contained the historical context statement for the early American Garden City movement based on Clarence Stein's Toward New Towns for America (1957).

During six years, Wong worked full-time on completing the Baldwin Hills Village Landmark nomination. She first studied the historical roots of the Garden city movement, which covered three hundred years of American and English history. Her research also involved traveling a total of 30,000 miles for visits to the east coast where five other Stein Garden cities were located and also to related archives in Washington D.C., New York City, and Cornell University. Wong also visited Kitimat, British Columbia---Stein's final Garden city.

During this lengthy period, Wong conducted many community outreach activities with the leadership and the 500 homeowners of this condominium complex. As a result, everyone voted unanimously for the National Historic designation when the National Park Service held an election in 2000. According to federal guidelines, a site would not be listed as a National Historic Landmark if 51% of the property owners objected.

During November 2000, the National Park Service gave full approval to this nomination after Wong gave a presentation at a public hearing in Washington D.C. On January 2001, Baldwin Hills Village was declared a National Historic Landmark. At that time,it was the largest National Historic Landmark of nine in Los Angeles City and ten in Los Angeles County.

Later, Wong was honored by the National Park Service--it selected her nomination as one of ten exemplary National Historic Landmark nominations from California, and placed it on this agency's official National Historic Landmark website. Currently, there are 146 National Historic Landmarks in California.

Invaluable support was provided by Cornell University's Clarence S. Stein Institute. Michael Tomlan, leading preservationist and Stein scholar, provided critical assistance during a four-year period (1996 to 1999). Kermit Parsons, noted Stein scholar and first director of the Stein Institute, shared critical research from his new book Architect of the Planned Community (1998). The National Park Service's Robie Lange diligently supervised this nomination during a five-year period.

From 1997 to 2000, many other people contributed to the successful completion of the Baldwin Hills Village Landmark nomination. They are listed in "Acknowledgments".

A few years later, the Baldwin Hills Village nomination's historic context statement helped two other Stein communities to be designated as National Historic Landmarks in 2005---Chatham Village (Pittsburg, Pennsylvania) and Radburn (Fairlawn, New Jersey). A National Park Service historian in 2005 co-authored these Landmarks nominations after she previously assisted with the Baldwin Hills Village nomination. This professional historian later prepared the National Historic Landmark nomination for Greendale (2012) and served as editor for Greenhills's Landmark nomination (2017).

Currently, the Baldwin Hills Village nomination provides future opportunity for these Stein Garden cities in New York City to be listed as National Historic Landmarks--Sunnyside Gardens Historic District (Sunnyside Gardens and Phipps Garden Apartments) and Hillside Homes. At present, Wong has completed preliminary work for the Sunnyside Gardens Historic District's proposed National Historic Landmark nomination. The National Park Service has given approval for the work to begin, but no funding is available to complete it (see scope of work on LandmarkWatch.org's "National Landmark Program")

Locally, the Baldwin Hills Vilage Landmark nomination made a significant impact on Los Angeles City. In 2002, the Los Angeles City Council gave a special award to Wong, and her efforts were recorded for the City Archives. Wong's research helped to save two historic Garden cities from demolition (2001 and 2007). Her research was used for the "LA Conservancy's Historic Context Statement for Garden Apartments of LA " (2012) and the mutiple National Register nomination for a group of Garden cities in Los Angeles (2018).

Currently, Baldwin Hills Village is the second largest of the twelve National Historic Landmarks in Los Angeles City, and Little Tokyo Historic District is the third largest---both are located entirely within the city limits. The largest National Historic Landmark in Los Angeles City is the Arroya Seco Parkway Historic District (2011), which consists of an 8.21 mile freeway shared by Los Angeles City and Pasadena.

The most challenging aspect of Wong's National Landmark work was financial. In order to complete this nomination, she assumed the financial obligation for preparing a National Historic Landmark nomination that the National Park Service evaluated in 1992 as not possible financially. Her cost was $200,000 (and more) during 6 years of almost full-time work. Actually, the time was 9 years because Wong previously prepared the Baldwin Hills Village National Register nomination (1989 to 1992) that was the basis for the Landmark nomination.

The Baldwin Hills Village nomination's costs in time and money were less than that for the preparation of Los Angeles City's Little Tokyo National Historic Landmark nomination (the third largest National Landmark in Los Angeles city and much smaller than Baldwin Hills Village). The cost for this nomination was $214,000 during a 14-year preparation period (60,000 hours). The Little Tokyo nomination was largely funded by city and federal governments.

The extraordinary length of time and expense in listing a National Historic Landmark is also demonstrated by the recent certification of Arroyo Secco Parkway Historic District (2011). This NHL nomination was part of a project that began with congressional funding in 1990 ($200,000) to study the preservation of Route 66. Then it continued in 1999 as part of an implementation phase (called the National Park Service's Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program) for $10,000,000 in a cost sharing arrangement. The National Landmark nomination for this site was funded by both federal and state monies.

Usually government agencies or non-profits fund National Historic Landmark nominations because of the high preparation costs. In terms of the Stein National Landmark Garden cities, all were funded by government entities except for Baldwin Hills Village. Examples are the National Landmark nominations for the Garden cities of Radburn, Sunnyside Gardens, Greendale, and Greenhills---all funded by the federal government. Greenbelt's Landmark nomination was funded by its city government.

Preserving a National Historic Landmark
While preparing the Landmark nomination, Wong also began laying the long-term preservation foundation for Baldwin Hills Village through the Los Angeles city's Mills Act program. The Mills Act is a state/city program that provides substantial property tax reductions for owners of historic properties. The savings will be used for the site's preservation activities.

At that time, it was thought that the Mills Act's mandatory ten year-preservation plan would be important in preserving Baldwin Hills Village's historic integrity and thus maintaining its National Historic Landmark status on a permanent basis. According to federal regulations, a National Historic Landmarks can lose its designation if the site's historic integrity is compromised.

In 1994, Wong and a board member met with City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, who was sponsoring this program (later completed in 1997). However, Baldwin Hills Village was not eligible for the Mills Act because its property valuation was too high. As a result of this meeting, Councilman Ridley-Thomas later provided a special provision in the Mills Act for Baldwin Hills Village to be eligible when it became a National Historic Landmark (which was achieved in 2001).

In 2010, the Baldwin Hills Village's leadership was able to submit a successful application for the Los Angeles' Mills Act program (a decade after the National Landmark designation was achieved). The community gained $6,000,000 from the Mills Act during a period of ten years (2010 to 2020) for the purpose of funding the community's preservation projects. It is renewable at the end of a decade. Wong's nomination (historic research and successful designation) contributed sustantially to this application.

Baldwin Hills Village's first decade as a National Historic Landmark has been documented as formative although ample federal and local preservation resources were available. Best preservation practices for National Historic Landmarks were not followed, particularly those relating to the Secretary of Interior Standards for Professional Qualifications and the Secretary of Interior Standards for Preservation Planning.

As a result, this community during almost two decades lost several millions of dollars in outside funding, and the homeowners had to handle increased assessments for the aging common areas. In addition, this important historic site is not currently in a strong position to meet the growing challenges of climate change and disasters.

Wong had several opportunities to travel to other east coast Garden cities after she completed the Landmark nomination for her community. She discovered that the lack of best preservation practicies at Baldwin Hills Village was indicative of other Stein Landmark Garden cities in varying degrees. This situation could eventually result in the loss of the National Historic Landmark status, with its potential benefits, for some of the Stein Garden cities.

Based on the above concerns, the Clarence S. Stein Institute awarded Wong a fellowship (2008 to 2010) that would establish preservation standards for the Stein Garden cities in order to maintain their National Historic Landmark status and also attract outside funding.

Later, the Stein Institute awarded a second fellowship to Wong for disaster planning of Baldwin Hills Village and the other major Stein Garden cities to further protect these communities in an environment of increasing natural disasters and terrorism (2010 to 2012). Baldwin Hills Village is particularly vulnerable because it is located in an earthquake prone area.

In 2015, the Stein Institute awarded its third fellowship to Wong. It involved organizing preliminary activities that would implement the National Park Service's HABS, HALS, and CRGIS programs for the Stein Landmark Garden cities. The major intent of this fellowship is to provide a digital solution for the long-term preservation of these exceptional historic communities during climate change and disasters.

The results of the above fellowships can be viewed on LandmarkWatch.org's "Preservation Standards for National Landmarks".

During 2018, the Stein Institute presented Wong with a two-year fellowship to continue the above project. Consequently, She was appointed to Levees.org's Advisory Board (in New Orleans) and its project to preserve a future National Historic Landmark relating to Hurricane Katrina. This involvement will further increase Wong's preservation work with the Stein Garden cities in disaster/climate change planning.

In addition, Wong has expanded her preservation activities to include the federal government's Asian American/Pacific Islander Initiative during an environment of rapid gentification for Los Angeles' ethnic communities. Special projects include historic Little Tokyo and LA Chinatown where she currently lives.

Wong's academic background provided the foundation for the above work. This include an advanced Masters and PhD in Instructional Technology from the University of Southern California; Masters of Library and Information Science from the University of California, Los Angeles; and a Masters from Columbia Teachers. Currently, Wong is participating in FEMA's Independent Study Program for professionals and volunteers. This program presents the fundamentals of disaster planning and recovery in the United States.