Future of the Past, Providence Style - Will Morgan
Wednesday, November 16, 2016
Providence is an historic preservation success story. Tourism, increased real estate values, and an enhanced quality of life due to the conservation of houses and historic districts have given the city a national preservation reputation.
The National Historic Preservation Act is now half a century old, having been enacted into law during the activist Lyndon Johnson administration. That same year, my preservation class at Columbia University made a pilgrimage to Providence to meet and learn from Antoinette Downing, the doyen of American preservation.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTThe inspirational Downing was an example of "the little old lady in tennis shoes," a determined Crusader Rabbit who single-handedly challenged any establishment group that threatened a treasured place. Her brainchild, the Providence Preservation Society, transformed Benefit Street from a slum into one of the handsomest older streets anywhere.
Mrs. Downing explained the hardball nature of neighborhood preservation, mentioning that beloved Brown president Barnaby Keeney served on the board of the PPS so that he might gain insider knowledge as to what buildings might be ripe for acquisition and demolition. (This past summer Brown razed half a dozen Victorian houses on Brook Street for a parking lot, defending the move by claiming the houses had were too run down to save. Plus ça change.)
Providence's legendary preservation was one of the draws when my wife and I sought an attractive city in which to relocate. We joined the PPS, but did not renew our membership, feeling that the society's efforts were going into house tours and social events, while being overly focused on the architecturally endowed East Side.
Had preservation become rather self-satisfied? Had it not really evolved beyond the rescuing of historic homes, mostly because they were handsome examples of the architectural styles of the 18th and 19th centuries? Maybe there were efforts to save filling stations, mills, and experimental housing, but preservation's emphasis appeared to be the pretty. (Did anyone protest the demolition of revolutionary prefab housing designed by Austrians Raimund Abraham and Friedrich St. Florian north of University Heights?)
Had historic preservation become so successful that it was discouraging inspired new design? (You cannot build tomorrow's landmarks by merely copying the past.) Architect Kip McMahan tried to design a modern building for the Music School at the corner of South Angel Street and Butler Avenue. In discussing his proposal, one board member objected that the design would not pass the "David Brussat test," by which she meant that the then critic of the Providence Journal would bemoan the lack of a brick veneer or appliquéd classical details
257 Thayer Street represents the sort of misguided new-old design that attempts to replicate older buildings. They are so cheaply built and poorly designed that they pimp the past, rather than respecting it.
I also wondered about preservation's baleful influence when Rhode Island School of Design interviewed a quartet of the world's leading architects to build a North Main Street addition to the RISD Museum. The school selected the least adventurous architectural supplicant, who gave them one of his lesser efforts. Word was that brick walls were chosen so that the new museum would be more palatable to possible preservationists' objections.
Neither exciting nor contextual.
Recently, PPS sponsored a symposium at the endangered Industrial Trust Building, titled Why Preserve? Blogger Brussat crankily opined that the conference would finally "enable the PPS to answer a question that has proved elusive for decades." (For Brussat, preservation's failure is related to its defense of modernist buildings.)
The Finnish Embassy in Washington, D.C., designed by Heikkinen + Komonen, one of the firms considered by RISD.
"If preservation is to play a central role in building more just communities," Page argues, "it must transform itself to stand against gentrification, work with the environmental sustainability movement and challenge societies to confront their past."
Preservation has concentrated too much "on saving what advocates consider beautiful and preventing the construction of what they consider ugly." This means, Page claims, "embracing public housing as well as new forms of property ownership such as community land trusts and cooperative housing as a way to protect against the dislocations of market-based private ownership."
Why Preservation Matters ranges across the country and the globe, discussing a range of problems, issues, and philosophies. Beyond being a fascinating, illuminative read, the book is a call to arms for changes in how we preserve our patrimony. Preservation can "finally free itself from the stigma of being aesthetically elitist, of being the domain of the rich, of standing in the way of progress." Preservation is not just about architecture anymore. It can, according to Page, solve some of the world's most pressing problems, "crafting a sustainable approach to climate change, honestly confronting our difficult pasts, and reclaiming a more equitable society."
William Morgan has a graduate degree in restoration and preservation of historic architecture from Columbia University's School of Architecture. He was the Chairman of the Kentucky Historic Preservation Review Board for many years, and is the author of The Abrams Guide to American House Styles.
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