Kathryn Schneider Smith (Kathy) is a writer/editor and community-based public historian whose career has included work in historical societies, historic preservation, and cultural heritage tourism. Working first in her home state of Wisconsin, then for four decades in Washington, DC, and now continuing in semi-retirement in coastal Maine, her special interest has always been in the relationship between physical places and the human communities and activities that have shaped and defined them.
A journalism graduate of the University of Wisconsin, Kathy began her career as head of the Office of Public Information and then Director of the Office of Publications for the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. She moved to Washington, DC in 1965 to become assistant press secretary to Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin.
In Washington, DC, with an American Studies degree from George Washington University, she spent decades researching and sharing the history of Washington as hometown as well as national capital—often using the phrase Beyond the Monuments to describe her focus. She became chair of the board of the Historical Society of Washington, DC and the founding editor of its journal, Washington History. In the late 1970s she wrote a successful National Endowment for the Humanities grant for and co-led a three-year project that created a new curriculum and trained social studies teachers in the history of Washington, DC for the DC Public Schools. Throughout her career, Kathy led tours and organized programs on Washington DC history for local organizations and visitors at local conferences.
Working with local cultural and neighborhood organizations in the Shaw neighborhood including the Shaw Heritage Trust at the restored 12th Street YMCA, she did projects focused on the history of that historic African American neighborhood, including an oral history project, a 12th Street YMCA reunion, a Outside Wooly project that produced an intergenerational video called The Y Guys, walking and bus tours, and a 160-foot-long outdoor exhibit with photographs and oral history reminiscences that attracted attention for 2 ½ years in the 1300 block of U Street, NW. She inspired and consulted on the Henrick Smith film, Duke Ellington’s Washington.
In 1999, she became founding director of the DC Heritage Tourism Coalition, later Cultural Tourism DC, with an eventual membership of more than 200 historical and cultural organizations on and off the National Mall that promoted the entire city of Washington as a cultural destination. The organization marked the city with a network of neighborhood heritage trails, turned old police and fire call boxes into artistic neighborhood cultural icons, created an African American Heritage Trail with the DC Office of Historic Preservation, initiated neighborhood tours, and created city-wide, themed cultural festivals that for the first time engaged the collaboration of the Convention Center, hotels, restaurants, and cultural sites on and off the National Mall.
Kathy is author or editor of a number of books, including Port Town to Urban Neighborhood: the Georgetown Waterfront of Washington, DC, 1880-1920; Fifty Years of Building Community: A History of the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation; City of Magnificent Intentions: A History of the District of Columbia, You in History, and The Washington , D.C. Story Continues for the DC Public Schools; and Washington at Home: An Illustrated History of Neighborhoods in the Nation’s Capital.
Kathy served for 11 years as a DC advisor to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the final three as chair of the Trust’s National Board of Advisors and a member of its Board of Trustees.
Honors include the Second Annual Public Humanities Award from the DC Community Humanities Council in 1989, The DC Mayors Award for Excellence in Historic Preservation for the African American Trail in 2004, the DC Momentum Award from the Downtown DC Business Improvement District in 2005, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the DC Commission on Historic Preservation in 2010, and in 2014 the first Visionary Historian Award given by the Historical Society of Washington, DC.
In 2009 Kathy moved full time to Freeport Maine with her husband of more than 50 years, Sam. Their older son Nathaniel lives with his family, wife Stephanie Smith-Marrone, and their children Emma and Julia in Sleepy Hollow, NY. Their younger son Benjamin lives in Nashville, TN with his wife Cynthia Schumm and son Dylan. In Maine Kathy has served on the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees of the Maine Historical Society, and the Cumberland County Committee of the Maine Community Foundation. She is continuing her passion for the history of small places on the farm of the Wolfe’s Neck Center for Agriculture and the Environment.
Kathryn Schneider Smith 