On Wed, 28 Jan 1998, ARWNY wrote:

> I think it would be very difficult to deny the element of gentry worship as
> historically preceding our current period of activity as preservationeers.

No question about that.  But at the risk of getting repetitive,
preservationists do NOT have to be captive of old ideology, whether it was
the ideology that created the historic resource, or the ideology that
originally preserved it.

Back in 1976, John Kenneth Galbraith wrote an article for the National
Trust's magazine in which he made the famous comment that preservationists
always turn out to be right, that the future always commends their
foresight, etc.  At that time, he also pointed out that monuments of old
despotisms are always especially popular with the tourist trade.  The
people in charge of those monuments are generally not cronies of the
despots who built them.  The same principle applies to monuments left by
the gentry/aristocracy of 100 years ago.

Your suggested strategies are sound, and should be pursued in their own
right, because we believe in doing those things, not as a strategy to
repudiate something.  Maybe I'm speaking too much as a Midwesterner (here
in Michigan the "gentry" was smaller and much more actively hated,
perhaps), but I don't see that old-time gentry worship is a significant
part of preservation's current reality either in public image or in
practice.

                             Larry Kestenbaum