How important is Historical Preservation?

[Renderking Fisk]

How important is Historical Preservation?

I’m working on the items you folks request on the thread on how I can improve The Fedora Chronicles and making it your paper of record. This is sort of a related question.

How important is Historical Preservation to you people? Is it important to keep Land Barons from ruining our historical buildings and landmarks and work to restore what we still have?

Is it important to track these attempts to save our heritage? And do you know of any organizations that need help being promoted?

Do you know of any historical societies or organizations near you? And do you work with them at all?

 

[MDFrench]

Funny you should mention this, Fisk. I just read a news story today about an 88 year old Frank Wright house that was demolished by the property owners so they could build a new one on the site.

Mike

 

[Renderking Fisk]

Dam'n, that hurts. I'm going to have to google that and post it tommorow.

 

[Lauren]

Extremely important. It breaks my heart to hear of all the freeways they want to put in that would tear down historic buildings. It seems a shame to loose what little cultural heritage we have, especially in a state as young as California. I am not active in any societies myself, but I know in LA they have a society that is great that shows classic movies in old movie palaces to help raise money to save them. here's the link:



http://laconservancy.org/index.php4

 

[Retro Grouch]

How important is it to me? Very!

I volunteer at the local mining museum. One of our main objectives is to save buildings, machinery, equipment and other bits of history.

Nederland Mining Museum

We had the opportunity to save part of a mill site, that was going to be torn down, several years ago. The site was in pristine condition and not in danger of development. The BLM thought it was an eye sore and liability. the locals thought it was an important part of their history. Guess who won?

Interesting that a house built by such an important architect would be allowed to be torn down for some short sited "new" dwelling. People bother me, sometimes.

Tom

 

[LuckyLighter]

One of the bigger stories over the last few years in the town that I cover was the demolition of John Barrymore's house in the Coytesville section of Fort Lee. In the mid to late teens--20th Century--the Barrymore acting family lived in New Jersey and worked across the river on Broadway. When the movies came to Fort Lee, they lived within the borough.

The Film Commission worked hard to get the house declared an Historic Building, but greed and politics won out, and the house was torn down and turned into an apartment complex. But they lost the battle only to win the war, as the film commission and the historical society were granted more power over preservation, and given more legitimacy in the borough. They were able to preserve the Judge Moore House, which is now used as a The Fort Lee Museum and home to the historical society.

Obviously, given its role in the Revolution, Fort Lee is a town that prides itself on its preservation of history, and in this their centennial year, the borough's past is even more in the forefront, especially with film festivals highlighting the silent movies shot in Fort Lee, not to mention reenactments of Washington's Retreat to Victory coming up this weekend on the anniversary of the retreat from Fort Lee.

 

[Mycroft]

I think it is very important as you all said. I also appreciate programs like "Save Our History," from the History Channel. I am also president of my town's historical society, so this also adds to my feeling to preserve history. We have artifcats from Native Americans over 11,000 years old etc.

 

[Cabinetman]

Here you are, Eric:

www.beardstownopera.com

A long way to go. A very long way. But it is the only building in my community on the National Register.

Needing promoting? Yes, yes, yes.

Before it collapsed due to disrepair, we also had the Park House hotel. Al Capone used to visit and stay there, too. I understand he was a duck hunter. Four and a half hours (longer then) downstate from Chicago was, no doubt, a welcome retreat for him.

 

[Tyto]

I believe historic preservation is essential. (Disclaimer: I work in a related field.) Aside from preserving great architectural or engineering works for their particular designs or associations with events or people, they provide the true sense of place of a city or town, and provide a real connection with the past.

I also find historic public buildings inspiring: looking at old schools and civic buildings makes me realize how far we've come from the sense of grandeur with which people viewed public life/service and society, and the value and ambition they ascribed to it. I mourn the general loss of concern for style and high design. Most folks (and most cities' design review boards) seem either happy enough with generic stucco boxes for homes, and concrete tip-ups for office parks, or else simply don't believe that more can or should be done with respect to style or detailing. There are exceptions, of course: Pasadena does a fine job of preservation and seems to demand well-designed new structures, and some developers, such as Tom Gilmore in LA, do wonderful work with adaptive reuse (Tom turns old bank and office buildings in LA into apartments and condos).

I recently attended an environmental law conference at which Jerry Brown (yes, *that* Jerry Brown) scolded legislators for what he considered the folly of assigning within California environmental law the moral equivalence of an endangered bird or a wetland habitat to historic structures. I disagreed vociferously: I understand the concerns regarding the constraints that historic preservation law places upon urban infill development in particular, and some criticism of the application of these laws is fair, but our past is absolutely worth keeping, and historic structures constitute a rapidly vanishing resource that require the protection implied by the "moral value" they now enjoy, in a limited sense, by law. And I'm suspicious of those who would so quickly discard or discount it.

The LA Conservancy is probably the best known of the historical societies and their ilk in California, and they enjoy a large megaphone as a result of their stature. Lauren mentioned the screenings in historic theaters--these are a part of a larger program known as the Broadway Initiative, which has, as its aim, the restoration of the historic theater district in downtown LA. It's quite ambitious, and it will take decades to realize, but some developers (such as Tom Gilmore) have really taken an active role in showing that individual projects can be economically sustainable.

 

[Renderking Fisk]

The holiday season's been busy folks... sorry.

My goal for 2005 is to be more active and pro-active in getting involved with Historical Preservation.

Each day I find news about buildings that are either being saved or being torn down. There's no middle ground, with the exception of Golden Era buildings being converted for the new Digital Age... which is very bitter sweet.

In the weeks ahead I'm going to start promoting some of the sites people have sent me, beyond what I'm doing on The Daily Update. Any help I can get would be awesome.