On Mon, 26 Jan 1998, Ken Follett wrote:

> Bruce Marcus wrote:
>
> > at the risk of committing a bit of heresy.
> >
> > I think that a good deal of the preservationist ethic of the last several
> > decades has to considered as having been divorced from aesthetic criteria.

Of course, I also see vehement criticism in e.g., the New York Times about
"what happened to the HISTORY in historic preservation?" complaining that
preservationists were showing too much concern with vernacular buildings
and neighborhoods unconnected with any textbook narrative of American
history or Great Architecture.  The notion is that preservation should
refocus on (or be confined to) landmarks and monuments verifiably
associated with major historic personages and events, i.e., the "George
Washington Slept Here" syndrome.

It becomes clearer that this whole argument is a lie intended to put
preservationists in their place, when the New York Times in an editorial
expressed mild regret but not a whisper of protest over the demolition of
that little 1850s brownstone kittycorner from the New York Public Library,
which had been the home of a Vice President of the U.S., and the place
where Dvorak composed his American Symphony.  After all, they said, the
house had been junked up with a billboard on the roof, and was not worth
saving.

I noticed this also when I was on the East Lansing Historic District Study
Committee.  Invariably I was about the only one who was concerned with the
historic significance of a building in the history of the community or the
country; whether or not a designation was agreed to by the other committee
members depended almost exclusively on how good it looked.  A little
peeling paint or a later porch addition was fatal.

So, down at the grass roots, I'd say the aesthetic considerations still
hold a lot of sway in preservation.

> > Many successful projects (I'm thinking especially of the  recycling of
> > textile mill structures in the North East, but could cite other examples)
> > could certainly be justified on historical, industrial archeological,
> > environmental or other grounds, but I think it would be damn difficult to
> > justify the investment in time and cash in city after city on these
> > buildings if one were to make one's case on aesthetic grounds. Which is not
> > to say that one doesn't find the recycled structures charming, even
> > attractive, often as the result of flashy details added by contemporary
> > architects, but the vast majority of them really have no more compelling
> > aesthetic presence than  malls or housing projects.

But our view of what is aesthetically appealing does change over time.
What Charles Dickens might have seen as a huge ugly building might look
tiny and quaint and charming to us today.  I like 19th century factory
buildings from what seems to me to be an aesthetic point of view, even as
I recognize that many of them were miserable places for those who worked
in them 100 years ago.

> In another thread I mentioned my disdain for Robert Moses era
> constructions around NYC. Michael Lynch, on PL, aptly expressed the
> aesthetic of the Jones Beach architecture. Otherwise I would have to say
> that I find very little in the mix of enough aesthetic value to forego
> the needs of the local communites or commerce and infrastructure
> development. Robert Moses agenda was not to preserve the historic, but
> one of prorgressive development. It seems ideologically contradictory to
> preserve a memorial to progressive development by inhibiting progressive
> development.

I'm not an admirer of Robert Moses either, but I see no contradiction
whatsoever in preserving something in contradiction to the ideology that
inspired its creators.  We discussed this earlier in reference to the
Modern notion that buildings should be temporay -- a notion we defy today
when we decline to demolish their most significant buildings.  Temples
where human sacrifice took place in ancient times are preserved even
though we reject such practices.

> The Italian community was upset that
> the new pool would attract the undesirable Hispanics from several blocks
> south into their neighborhood. In short, what should have been a good
> thing was squashed.  Eventually yonger white artists began moving into
> the area, mifgrating from Manhattan and the Lower East Side.
[...]
> Well, the artists heard
> that there was a plan to demolish the Moses pool and decided it was a
> local treasure of historic importance, yeah right, few of them having
> any idea of the community they were landing themselves in, and made a
> rush to PRESERVE the Moses pool, to the delight of the Italians
[...]
> I think the
> motivations to preserve the Moses pool are basically immoral. If this is
> what it means to encourage historic preservation then it is something I
> want nothing to do with.

I think you're probably right on the substance of this particular dispute
here, but I'd be cautious about generalizing from it.

(1) I'm uneasy about the idea that the ideas of newcomers to a community
should be ridiculed and devalued just because they're newcomers.  After
all the newcomers and the young people are the future of the area.

(2) In any preservation issue, hell, in any political fight whatsoever,
your allies are not necessarily pure of heart; some of them are going to
be motivated by fear, or greed, or racism, or revenge, or sexual fetishes,
or some dark recess you can't even imagine.  But doing the right thing for
the wrong reasons is still doing the right thing.

I have observed that, in any political battle, if you LIKE everybody on
your side, if they are kindred spirits united in principle, you have lost.

It is also true, contrariwise, that preservation can be hijacked for
ignoble or otherwise non-preservation purposes.  Distinguishing between a
worthy preservation project backed by some with ignoble purposes, or an
ignoble scheme backed by preservationist rhetoric, can be pretty tricky
and subjective.

> I am fortunate in the belief that there are
> other, nobler motivations... such as with Poland.  The most interesting
> question, for me, in Poland was a curiosity that we had anything in
> America worth preserving at all. That was when I fumbled and started
> talking about our efforts in preserving piles of pre-Columbian dirt.

Preservationists from England, in my experience, don't raise this
question.  Some of them are involved in trying to save 20th century
buildings.

                              Larry Kestenbaum