From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for June 19, 1988:

An Old West Lawrence family had finally been granted permission to build a front porch on their home. As the neighborhood had also been declared a national historic district in 1972 (the first such district in Kansas), the city had been required to send the porch plans to the Kansas State Historical Society for comment. The society had objected to the plans at first because the Pilant family at 615 W. Eighth had proposed a porch with a “standing seam” metal roof, a style that predated the house’s early-1900s construction; the society said that architectural styles in the district should not be mixed. A compromise was reached when the family and the society agreed that the roof’s low pitch would keep the roof from being visible from the street. The Pilants were one of the first people whose plans had come up for historical society review, as the state law authorizing the review had been adopted in 1981 but hadn’t been enforced in Lawrence until recently.