On Mon, 19 Oct 1998, John Callan wrote:

> Period of significance is an idea who's time has come and gone.

I have certainly experienced the tension between "the building is a
product of its time and changes may be significant too, etc." and "period
of significance"; but I had never seen the latter so definitively rejected
before.

> Few museum types advocate this as a blanket approach to preservation of
> significant buildings.  We lost too much good stuff when we did that.

Here in Ann Arbor we recently faced a serious issue in this vein: a
historic building whose restoration requires removal of later but possibly
significant features.

The building is a 1920s movie palace known as the Michigan Theatre.
Bought by the city some years ago, it now hosts concerts, weddings, art
films and such, and is run by a private foundation under contract with the
city.

The theater was extensively remodeled at several different points, most
recently in the 1950s.  The original doors were flush with the street
front; they were moved back to create an outdoor antelobby.  The marquee
was replaced with a larger one, then replaced again with one still larger,
one which obscures a lot of the original 1920s facade.

The theater foundation earlier did a restoration of the actual auditorium,
and did such a good job that until recently I wasn't aware that it was a
restoration.  In fact, it was a 1950s style room for some 30 years.

Now they're getting ready to do the outer lobby, and so they came to us,
the Historic District Commission, for permission to remove the 1950s
marquee and ticket booth.

On the one hand, we had the theater foundation, which has been working on
this restoration for years, and has in mind the vision of the 1920s movie
palace that once was.  Much of the fabric, e.g. decorative plaster work,
still exists behind the 1950s partitions and dropped ceilings.

On the other hand, we had the people who advocate for preservation of the
landmarks of the 1950s, pointing to the quality of the materials used in
the 1950s renovation, the interesting design of the triangular ticket
booth, the fact that the marquee with the raised letters spelling out
MICHIGAN above it has been a recognized Ann Arbor landmark for 40 years,
seen on postcards and artwork and the like; and that the proposed
restoration, for practical reasons, will not move the front doors back to
the street front, where they were in the 1920s, but retain the later
outdoor antelobby.

In rebuttal, the theater foundation folks pointed to the impossibility of
restoring the old fabric with the steel beams that support the new marquee
still rudely in place.  They also disputed the assessment of the quality
of the 1950s work.

It was noted that the growth in the size of the marquee reflected the
historical development of the movie theater business.  In 1927, one just
"went to the movies" without much care about what specifically was being
shown.  Over time, with more theaters and other competing recreational
opporunities, it became more necessary to advertise the current features.
The huge marquee on Liberty Street was obviously a great vehicle for that.

So what would replace it?  A smaller marquee, but not *quite* so small as
the original 1920s version.  And a plan to request that the city council
amend the sign ordinance to allow a "flashing" electronic sign on that new
marquee, to change every few seconds and thus convey more information in
that smaller space.

I did not feel good about this.  I had a feeling that the community was
not going to like losing the existing marquee.  It was hard for me to
argue that features which had existed for most of the life of the building
(1956 to now, versus 1927 to 1956) had not acquired any significance and
could be thoughtlessly discarded.

On the other hand there was the logic of the restoration to consider.  The
1950s changes could be seen more as destruction and coverup than addition
of features.

As Chair, I tried to induce the commission to discuss these issues, but
only silence ensued (except from Ilene, who was almost as ambivalent as
me). I asked the foundation reps about possible salvage and preservation
of 1950s features, and they rejected that out of hand.

So, we took the vote, and approved it unanimously.  Probably I should have
voted "no" at least symbolically, or to hold out for preserving some of
the features in another part of the complex, but on the whole I did and
still do agree with the concept of uncovering and preserving the 1920s
fabric, even at the cost of losing 1950s material.

Who was the famous early preservationist who said that nothing of value
was built after 1840, or maybe 1850?  Add a hundred years to the dates,
and you have many of us in the preservation field today.  We will look
just as ridiculous in the long run.

Maybe I just worry about this more than most people.

                                 Larry Kestenbaum