Month: March 2013

The readings this week were extremely informative. I immensely enjoyed the readings, but the Tyler book provided almost an overload of information, especially for someone unfamiliar with the topic. What I gathered from the readings is that preserving our history is a complicated process with a lot of different players. Since the book presented so much new information to me, and because of my ignorance regarding all of the agencies and laws, I hesitate to argue a point this week. There is an abundance of information that needs to be understood in order to comprehend what historic preservation entails and how it operates in the U.S., and I am still a baby novice when it comes to this comprehension.

Some questions that arose for me during the readings were about the ideas of progress. Perceptions of progress seem to be at the root of whether a building is preserved, and in what ways that preservation is handled. Is progress mutually exclusive from preservation, and will there always be people who feel that an old building isn’t worth quite as much as a new one? I also questioned whether all the guidelines, procedures, and boards help or hinder historic preservation? Would comprehensive legislation be more effective? In looking at Boise, we still have a lot of work to do in terms of preservation. I can say that a city department is currently working on preserving the Central Addition and a house on River Street. Local activist Jon Bertram has been coordinating effectively with the V.A. to preserve the oldest building on Fort Boise, but this is not enough. The 1970s was a bad time for Boise and little historic gems are still disappearing all the time from our neighborhoods.

Concepts that Tyler touched upon that stood out for me were his assertion that “Preservationists need to recognize that the preservation of historic buildings should include not only the physical structure, but also the history of the place.” I think this is a profound concept, and one I don’t see manifested frequently. The concept of contextualism was also very compelling, and perhaps the agreement can be made that contextualism provides for aesthetically pleasing and more well-functioning neighborhoods. However, no matter how one feels about preservation there is still a need to engage and educate the public regarding history. Although agreement may not be the outcome, public education and engagement will least lead us to a more thoughtful dialogue on the issues.

America is a country that likes new things.  We like new faster cars, new and better technology, and new buildings with all the conveniences that can be added.  The downside of this love of the new is that many beautiful and historic places are lost in this mad rush to “new and improved”.  The Eastman Building in Boise is one example.  It was scheduled to be torn down, ignored, fell into disrepair, and then burned to the ground.  Replacing it for 20+ years was a lovely hole in the ground.  How is that progress?  Downtown Boise did not need another mall, which is what was supposed to replace the Eastman.  Nothing remains of the once vibrant Chinese community that lived in Boise.  The buildings that housed them are long gone along with anything that could be learned from visiting them.  The Basque culture, on the other hand, managed to preserve many of its important sites.  Many people recognized the significance of the Basque history in Boise.  Because they did people can visit the Basque Museum and Cultural Center and see how this unique population lived and played in Boise in the 19th and 20s^th centuries.  Acknowledging and understanding why a building or site is important is the first step toward preservation.

The thought of Mt.Vernon or Independence Hall being torn down is chilling.  It would be like tearing down Notre Dame to build a mall.   While many sites have been preserved due to the interest and diligence of the communities involved, there are many more that need attention.  In this city alone there are many buildings that are subject to destruction in the name of progress and most in Boise don’t know or care.  While the situation has improved from the 1960s era of plastic replacements, it is still not at a level that keeps historic buildings safe.  If the tide had truly changed then all historic sites would be fully funded and repaired.  The public likes the idea of preservation, but not the realities.   History is often learned through research at a site.  Digging at the pueblo sites in New Mexico and Arizona has been invaluable to providing knowledge of the indigenous people of the southwest.  Had those sites been lost through looting or neglect or the need for a new parking lot then the history of a people would also have been lost.  What we build today is so temporary we have a name for the massive homes that are thrown up in a month: McMansions.  Being able to visit, see, and touch a piece of our past is vital to understanding that past.  Writing about an object is great, but being able to put your hands on it brings it to life.

I loved reading about how other cultures deal with their past.  I found in fascinating to read about how different nations view preservation.  Japan’s rebuilding of the Ise Shrine every 20 years is a great way to preserve the history of a building and the reason for its being while at the same time making sure that it can still be used.  I am going to have to research it online and find out when they will be tearing the old building down and putting a new one right next door.

One question that I do have is to what era does a building get restored?  How does that choice get made and how do we preserve the other histories of a site?

Historic preservation has a diverse, convoluted, and rich history.  I appreciated the author’s introduction to this varied field.  Tyler explains the increasingly important role historic preservation has played in American society while maintaining that “it is our duty as a society and as members of our own local communities to protect and preserve our heritage.”  Without this firm founding, his arguments would seem rather subjective; however, it is clear that Tyler only wishes to raise awareness about the field of historic preservation in order to better society as a whole.  As with most movements in society, historic preservation began as a grassroots movement.  Ever since this founding, infighting, bureaucracy, and individual interests have plagued the field.

In “Preservationists Are Un-American,” Clem Labine attacks the American spirit of opportunism.  In boiling all of American history down to capitalism and consumerism, Labine fails to grasp the diverse, rich history of the United States.    Labine must have a rather narrow view of American history if he truly believes preservation is un-American.  Preservationists in America, the West included, must strive to preserve all aspects of our nation’s history and culture.  Manifest Destiny is as much a part of American history as Republicanism and Individualism.  Buildings, paintings, pamphlets, the list goes on and on, from all aspects of America’s history should be preserved.  America is so much more than a “use it up and move on” society, the mere existence of preservationists counters this argument.  Recognizing the need to preserve “our built heritage because it represents who we are as people” includes preserving frontier homes, homesteads, and other edifices that were built as direct results of American opportunism, consumerism, and Manifest Destiny.  To preserve a homestead log cabin and fail to explain the history behind the building, the prevailing social norms that allowed the building to come into existent, and the frontier spirit led the settler to build where they did would be an injustice to the people.  Preservationists must protect and preserve the building along with its history, or preservation fails to be a service to the public, an “applied history.”

Coming from an educational background, I was particularly interested in the benefits of preservation from an education standpoint.  Tyler beat around the bush for a while when trying to explain that the more an individual is engaged with subject matter, the more they will learn, and the more they will retain.  I wish he would have delved deeper into the idea of “edutainment.”  On the other hand, Tyler gave a great explanation of “living history,” including its many forms, functions, and benefits.  People of all ages can learn simply through cultural (historical) immersion and experience.

After reading the differing views on urban revitalization and facadism, I had many questions.  How are city leaders supposed to deal with historical preservation while also dealing with intense poverty, degrading buildings, poor health and a plethora of other issues plaguing inner cities.  Don’t cities have a duty to maintain public health? What about the decades of asbestos insulated buildings?  What duty, if any, does a city have to ensure that gentrification does not occur when urban revitalization is successful?  Why are businesses attacked for preserving facades while building thriving backdrops?  If a business is forced to stay within the confines of a century old building, who is to say that business that can afford to maintain the facades in the first place will want to inhabit those buildings?  Preservationists need to realize that businesses will do things to benefit the community, including preserving culture and history, if they are able to thrive and continue to operate efficiently.  In the end, isn’t preserving a historic building’s facade better than destroying the building entirely?

Tyler’s discussion about bureaucracy, government oversight, and legislation.  The federal government enacted specific acts in the 20th century in hopes of encouraging  historic preservation.  Some of theses acts were very successful, take the National Park Service for example.  The National Park Service was protected and preserved numerous sites that were seen as important to our nation’s history after its founding in 1916.  Most of these acts, however, had great ideas, but lacked teeth with which to follow through with the ideas comprised within them.  Take the National Register of Historic Places for example.  The National Register’s rights are restricted to identifying places for evaluation, encouraging friendly activities, and providing lists for review.  The National Register cannot restrict rights, guarantee funds, stop development, or provide tax benefits.  A final example lies in the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation which was given legislative teeth with which to act, but individuals must jump through numerous bureaucratic loopholes in order to pass Section 106 Review.  Thankfully, preservation is more clear-cut (not perfectly of course) at the state and local level.  As with most things, the state and local community better understand the community, culture, and history and are therefore better able to engage in historic preservation.  As Tyler states, “only at the local level can historic properties be regulated and protected through legal ordinances.”

Reading the first few chapters of Historic Preservation really shocked me, specifically the second one. I had no idea Independence Hall was saved from demolition, a scary thought. Then again incidents such as that happen today. Norman Tyler stated in the introduction that Americans in the last few decades have become aware of the importance of our historic structures (11). However, when we live in a city where a large portion of downtown’s history was destroyed to make room for modern buildings, it’s hard to see his point. Boise’s example is not unique either. In Northern California, the small town of Coloma ,where gold was discovered in 1849, relies solely on dedicated volunteers. Many of the buildings are neglected within the area, and for a time it seemed Coloma was going to decay and be forgotten. Thanks to volunteers the town is still a tourist attraction and historic park. A building near Coloma called the Bailey Mansion along CA Highway 49 is neglected and has a sign on the fence that says “Save the Bailey Mansion.” The windows are boarded up, and the building looks like it could fall apart. Maybe a reason for this is, as Tyler pointed out, a lack of understanding as to the importance of the building. Yes, knowing what occurred within a building is an important part of history, however many buildings whose histories are unknown should not simply be torn down. So I have a hard time seeing how Americans have moved towards respecting their historic buildings when cities across the country have undergone demolishing historic buildings to create space for a  shopping mall, or something similar. Maybe there is more respect now than there was before, since in the 19th century the wilderness was the focus, but it still seems there is not enough respect shown to our historic buildings.

As the blog on Preservation Nation showed, many sites in Boise are in danger of being demolished, and almost all of those listed have been neglected to some degree. That only strengthened my opinion that Tyler’s statement seemed a bit false. How many people in Boise even know about those buildings, or even care? More specifically, how many young people know or care? However, there are times when demolition is necessary, but many of the buildings on the list, specifically the old courthouse, should be cared for. It is hard to expect people to save a building, no matter how old, if the significance of the buildings seems unimportant. In that regards, Tyler is correct because without a significant purpose, it’s just another building to many people. Tyler brought up another point about architecture. The architecture of the building is historic in itself because certain styles represented certain times. Even though a building may have been unimportant inside, outside it reveals  historical significance. For that reason alone many buildings should not be torn down.

I did appreciate that Tyler mentioned the Presidio, a site I have visited many times, and its important to the city of San Francisco. It’s a beautiful location where the citizens of the city can enjoy themselves in a historic environment. It should serve as an example, and hopefully it already has.

“And how could we endure to live…if we were always crying for one day or one year to come back—if we did not know that every day in a life fills the whole life with expectation and memory and that these are that day?”
~ C. S. Lewis, from Out of the Silent Planet

When it comes to historic preservation, or history as a study in general, I find myself caught in the betwixt—mired in that place where the future is visible, but the past seems perpetually grabbing my ankle and drawing me back. The quote from C. S. Lewis was one I read not too long ago that I really connected with in trying to understand myself and my study. I suppose I consider myself somewhat of a neophyte, I love new, I love innovation—yet at the same time, I love the past with its passion for itself. This is my short preface that will hopefully give greater context to what may appear to be the words of someone who does not understand history, or preservation. For the sake of argument, as I develop my own perspectives and opinions, I like to assume the mentality of the antagonist, sometimes to the point that I appear to be that person that does not care. The fact is, I care a whole lot, but it is in an attempt to reconcile my own hypocrisy that I step apart from those opinions to understand others.

In reading the first few chapters of Historic Preservation within the first few pages the most notable element to me was a lack of philosophy. Historic preservation is a practice, not a consideration, per se. It has some philosophy behind it, but even the author of the book noted that historic preservation is defined more by doing that philosophy. This raised a very important question in my mind about whether it is good to do historic preservation. I would make an allusion to religion at this juncture, suggesting that most people understand religion as a practice of rites and rituals rather than a system of beliefs. In fact, most of those that would refer to the belief system of religion, would in practice pare the same into a rite, rather than a philosophy. It seems to me that it is just easier to judge a practice than it is a belief. One is expressive, the other impressive. Those who observe me, while they may infer my beliefs, can only do so on the basis of my activity. The same is true of history, particularly public history and preservation, it seems as though preservationists are lacking a strong, cohesive philosophy. This is likely greater the result of a strong, overt practice that seems to overshadow the philosophy. Yet, let us consider for a moment the implications of a lack of philosophy in preservation.

There must be a starting point for any study or practice, and often that starting point is equivalent to purpose. Let us assume, then that the starting point for historic preservation is, as noted in the book Historic Preservation, the protection and preservation of heritage. I want to deconstruct this idea and consider its constituent parts. In the book the author noted that historic preservation really began to make its way into the vocabulary and practices of American cities in the early twentieth century. At that time, much of what we know today as the contiguous United States had been gelled. Industrial growth began to make major headway and hard science started to become a mainstay in education. Wealth was far more abundant than it had been historically in most places elsewhere in the world, the frontiers had largely been defined as finite and men had begun to build dynasties that they hoped would live in perpetuum. In Historic Preservation the most important of these factors was noted as the closing of the frontier, however I think that the most important is the wealth. It seems that times of wealth frequently precede times of reflection, and a drive to reclaim some extraordinary past. It seems to me that with wealth comes the frustrating task of self-interpretation. A person with wealth does not have the luxury of simply surviving, as perhaps had his grandfather, his life becomes a defense of his accumulated wealth through self-identification through things and objects, attempting to connect with that past he feels he has lost. The practice of historic preservation then is born of wealth, not the closing of frontier or lack of prospects. And its purpose arises from the social need to defend and identify itself.

The question that I ask at this point is: is wealth and selfish identification with some idealized past good? As a society we are not moving backward, nor do we have the desire to do so, to a time that lacked wealth and forced us to work so hard, so long and so much that we had no time to reflect, and yet we want to preserve identifiers of that time and claim that we have some connection with it. In a really twisted way historic preservationists, in all their forms, are merely sports fans, for they never did the work, but they desire to wear the colors. They may do work, and they may work hard at painting themselves into those historical contexts, but the fact remains that they are not the ones who built that building, or did the work to build it, or spent years taking rocks out of a field to plant wheat. The fact remains—and it is perhaps this internal, subliminal knowledge, in a sort of apologetic way—that preservationists are of no consequence, in that they don’t do by themselves, they are merely passing off their work of saving as an act of creation and identification.

While this is admittedly a harsh criticism of preservationists, and perhaps they might tell me that there is so much more to it, and I am confident that there is, I wonder at what cost are we preserving? Who should be allowed to determine who is represented? Why them? What era do we preserve? And, in all our efforts to preserve our heritage, what will our great-great-grandchildren look back and see of us? Will they see a bunch of people who were so devoted to trying to identify themselves that they failed to leave a significant element that defined them? Will they see selfishness? Will they see hard work? Will they see beauty? Will they see foolishness?

While I feel that historic preservation is important, I feel also that it is a practice that lacks critical self-analysis and philosophy. At some level there must be Zen to life, an acknowledgement that one must simply live, and that life itself is the identification of one’s self, not careful practice.

In reading Historic Preservation, when Tyler stated that the year 1976 was pivotal in the arena of historic preservation, it hit me that these words were so true.  It was the year of the bi-centennial, and I was 18 years old at the time.  It was a period that as a nation, we could stand proud of the accomplishment that we had survived for two hundred years, through wars, pestilence, droughts, depression, disease and poverty, the United States had help up well as a whole. Historical buildings and monuments had taken on a new focus and that they had historical significance and had come into their own as important spaces and places in the United States.  Independence Hall and the Old North Church took on a greater meaning for the typical American at the time.  Historic buildings took on a renewed feeling that the buildings themselves were hallowed ground and were sacred.  It was thought that due to this event historical buildings and places were preserved.  But, as we read, Tyler points out that the pivotal year for historic preservation was ten years earlier, in 1966. Urban renewal was in the forefront of Lyndon Johnson’s new policies of the “Great Society”, so the creation of National Historic Preservation Act in 1966 is a milestone that partners federal, state, and communities to preserve our rich historic past.  Looking back at how negative the Government’s role was seen in our society during the mid-20^th Century, positive laws were enacted to preserve cultural places for future generations to enjoy.  The realization that older buildings, monuments and sites need to be preserved today is still very important for future generations to appreciate.

Looking at the information of the Idaho State Historical Preservation Office website (http://history.idaho.gov/state-historic-preservation-office), it seems to be short, sweet and concise.  When speaking of Section 106, it is very down to the point in its language as to why it was created.  The part where it says, “Communities were witnessing the loss of their historic downtowns and neighborhoods…” one wonders of the tearing down of the older buildings in Boise, during the 1970’s should have been protected, or did the city and state completely ignore this section of NHPA.

It is sad that we do not look to the past as a way to preserve the future.  Most of the buildings described in the blog about teaching preservation ion Boise, gives us as citizens of our fair city, that doom and gloom is indeed prevalent.  The blog is over three years old, and it is nice to see that these buildings and areas met the criteria for meeting the National Trust for Historic Preservation.  These buildings are a testament how Idaho has grown and is now part of the 21^st century.  The areas and buildings are important to the past and integral to the 150^th anniversary of Idaho and of Boise itself.  With the conservatism that this state has, how progressive would the city and the state be in trying to preserve these areas and buildings?