Peacock Lane, the Southeast Portland street best known for its elaborate Christmas lights display, has been added to the National Register of Historic Places.

Residents announced the decision by the National Park Service on Monday. The neighborhood pursued the listing after a developer bought a home on the street last year and signaled plans to build a new house on part of the lot.

"There's nothing else like this in the state of Oregon," said Barbara Bushell, a Peacock Lane resident who led the effort to form the historic district. "It was really important to us to preserve that. You don't buy a house on Peacock Lane to tear it down or add a big addition."

Thousands of visitors stroll or drive through Peacock Lane's four blocks of holiday lights and decor each year, a tradition that dates to the 1940s. Participation is voluntary on the part of residents.

Homes on the street were built by a single developer, Richard F. Wassell, an architect who designed the homes mostly in the English Cottage and Tudor Revival styles.

The new home on Peacock Lane is already under construction, but residents raised nearly $4,000 on the fundraising website GoFundMe to support the costly effort, which requires a comprehensive survey of historic and non-historic buildings within the boundaries of the district. The lane includes 27 historic buildings, and six that are not.

With the new designation, demolishing any of the historic buildings would require the approval of the Portland City Council. There's no automatic restriction on razing non-historic buildings, nor building new ones.

The city could enact design guidelines that would require new development to conform to the character of the existing historic structures, but that too would require the approval of the city council.

Brandon Spencer-Hartle, the city's Historic Resources Program manager, said those discussions would likely begin soon.

Neighborhoods have turned to the national registry as one way to stymie development during a construction boom that's seen the demolition of older homes to build new, usually larger, ones.

The neighborhood association in nearby Eastmoreland also proposed forming a historic district in response to new development. That effort exposed deep divisions among its residents before it eventually stalled because of a discrepancy regarding the count of property owners within the proposed district's boundaries.

Portland's Laurelhurst neighborhood is also seeking a historic designation.

Peacock Lane's nomination to the National Register easily won the approval of the Portland Landmarks Commission. Spencer-Hartle said the proposal was straightforward and popular among the residents of the district, and it included a relatively small number of properties.

"It has a compelling historic story known to people through the region -- not just the history of the Christmas lights," he said. "This is a street built by one developer in a new model that was relatively uncharted at that point in time."

-- Elliot Njus

enjus@oregonian.com

503-294-5034

@enjus