> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ken Follett
> Sent: Wednesday, December 18, 2002 9:57 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Blaming historic resources (was: Historic
> factory now being demolished)
>
This is a terrible day for me to be trying to keep a thread alive, but
I'll try....
> a feeling that what gets saved is
> what should be saved and what gets abandoned or torn down,
> well, there must be a reason
> One of the problems that I see is that there is often a very
> local outcry to save a structure, possibly as local as one
> person, and as well often a dire lack of resources or
> political consensus to even go so far as to preserve the
> structure from imploding in on itself. An individual able to
> attract the allocation of resources, specific to be able to
> attract capital, to preserve a structure is using the
> available political means of sorting out what gets saved from
> what gets demolished.
Well, all of life is nothing more than the allocation of scarce
resources; none of us gets everything that we want. I think your first
thought is properly reductionist...wherever the energy is, is where
things happen. Energy is a most elusive force...difficult to pin down,
measure, anticipate, direct, channel.
That leads to the second thought: sometimes other energy trumps our
energy in a disagreement, even if "right" is on our side. They just have
the edge...they may have their energy better focused, not as broadly
distributed, or just plain more. They manage to corral the resources and
get them allocated. It is sometimes unexplainable how that occurs, and I
think speaks to Sharpshooter's vision regarding the Rizzoli building
fight's outcomes.
The search is always to make the best allocation of resources, and that
comes back to doing the documentation and research necessary to guide
our choices. Chris wants to put the history back in preservation; I come
at it from the urban design side of things...I believe these places and
resources just create better, more humane environments for people to
carry out their lives in a seamless tableau of cultural layering. I
don't think any age should be mindlessly sacrificed for another, and
that's why the Lincoln Center should be very carefully evaluated. It is
what it is, regardless of what you personally may think of it, but it is
undeniably important to our cultural evolution. How should it speak to
the echo of how we became who we are today, and what value does it have
for cultural understanding in the future? Is that understanding
important? Is the physical manifestation of that understanding
important? So if I think Lincoln Center is an inhumane failure as an
urban environment, regardless of Beverly Sills' magnificent voice,
should we just eliminate it and all memories of souls touched through
its performance art? Does it work for what it was designed to do?
Likewise, should a row of urban townhouses with a magnificent human
scale and the patina of life documenting generations of immigrants'
adaptive use to their cultural values be abandoned for the infusion of a
Home Depot, just because no president ever slept there? What was there
before Lincoln Center?
I think most fundamentally it is the energy source that makes the final
determination, and "right or wrong" it becomes part of the cultural
milieu that tell our offspring something about who we were and what we
valued way back when.
_______________________________________________________
Dan Becker, Exec. Dir. "The workman ought often to
Raleigh Historic be thinking, and the thinker
Districts Commission often to be working."
[log in to unmask] -- John Ruskin
919/890-3678
--
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