> -----Original Message-----
> From: Met History [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
> Sent: Tuesday, November 30, 2004 8:36 AM
> 
> 
> can we really send a man to the moon but not develop a good, 
> exterior recladding material that breathes, "never needs 
> painting", doesn't look like a crappy imitation of something 
> good, is reasonably replaceable, and is much less expensive 
> than the repainting involved with woodwork?  

I don't know. Maybe we could. All I know is that it isn't aluminum
siding. I don't think it's Alvis Spray-on Siding either. Ask that other
preservationiac, Mike Edison. 

> it is the fact that the preservation community has never even 
> attempted to grapple with such a question that makes me 
> wonder about all the anti-siding rhetoric.

Oh. Forget my previous paragraph. The commission once approved aluminum
siding in the historic district to be applied over wood. This was done
after the guidelines prohibiting aluminum siding were put in place. It
was an after-the-fact case where the little old lady on a fixed income
got sold a bill of goods and they put it up on her house, and then the
neighbors called about it, and we had to drag her in front of the firing
squad. I helped her research the fact that on her late '50s infill brick
ranchero with the wooden gable ends that she covered in aluminum siding,
that aluminum siding could in fact be shown to be a "not incongruous"
(double negative language of our state statutes, sorry, gotta use it)
because aluminum siding was in production then and was in fact being
used as the original siding for that style of dwelling.

In the face of such evidence during the quasi-judicial hearing, the
commission approved the application.

Authenticity. Integrity. Hmmmm. What to do now?

Mr. Reasonable 

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