Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Tied Together Through Frame: Architectural History and Historic Preservation in Time

Besides the real thing, what is more dynamic than a stunning photographic document in architecture history or historic preservation? Maybe it’s the undercurrent of history that is unseen by the lens, and the implication for objective memory… never to take a photo, or word, as the prophetic certainty. It can be said that the majority of our experience with the built environment is learned through the lens of a camera. Literally, seen through another’s eye—mechanical eye. Dutifully noted, building each other, the disciplines themselves contribute to the experience of the other, while they both feed from photographic stock. Historic preservation enacts a process that documents and preserves structures, while architectural history provides the need for enacting such a process.

Unarguably, there are intrinsic connections between the two, because preservation would be lacking the significance of architectural mastery, technique, and craft without the movement of architectural history. Balancing the need for documentation and preservation, photography acts as a method by which architectural history and preservation rely for information about the built environment. No matter if the building can be experience in real life, or not, a photographed image, a palm-size reference, enables the viewer to master a scale, typically, larger than humankind. Details can be witnessed, and time becomes a captured entity. Yet, the power of the photographic method on the disciplines of architectural history and preservation needs to be continually referenced, because, more than often, the impact of the photograph is overlooked by the average researcher. The photographed image can sometimes create or sustain interest in a building.

Not only does photography interject meaning onto images, but it, in turn, creates iconic references within the fields of architectural history and preservation (including the collective memory). Even though historians may not necessarily understand the methods and processes of photographers, they implement these two-dimensional views into their disciplinary canon. Mary Woods explores photography’s actual degree of influence in Beyond the Architect’s Eye. In her essay, she discusses the nature of the picture plane in relation to the architect’s view. For example, she suggests the Modernist designs were heavily injected by photography’s tendency to work with volumes of light and shadow. While the positive influence of photography is the great ease of built environment documentation, the effect created by the camera’s lens, happens to be the dismissal of certain types of structures and buildings that do not photograph well, as well as, the auteur.

An object difficult to capture would be architectural ruins. Their soft organic lines of decomposition do not react to the imposition of a two-dimensional format in the same way sharp, crisp, lines act. Also lost in translation, are the historical events that created the ruin. As photography relies on light and volume to represent the captured images, it is more difficult to create a dynamic composition with soft angles. For example, a steep cliff is vertically powerful, and light plays are strong and dynamic. Whereas, a rolling hill, becomes a soft massive volume, and therefore presents a different type of verticality that translates as part of the horizon rather than a volume in itself. When it comes to ruins, their state of decomposition becomes more a reflection of the “return to nature” of man-made things, than their strength as an architectural object. We also cannot possibly know from one picture the full story of the ruins, but at least we are provided with some visual information that can lead a researcher to find the reasons.

Indeed, there are photographers who have dedicated their lives to documenting built environmental ruins. Frances Benjamin Johnston (figure 1), a pioneer in architectural photography and preservation itself, provides us with an example of an “architect’s photographer”, who was able to captivate audiences despite the common problems of photographing buildings in a state of decline. Frances B. Johnston entered the photography world in its beginning stages, and she was able to capitalize in a burgeoning market. Seeing necessity in capturing the changing South, Johnston, a Yankee herself, spent the last several decades of her life documenting the “Yankee infiltration” of the Old South. Her success in commercial architectural photography enabled her to influence history towards the preservation of the built environment. As the antebellum South was altered by the new northern landlords of plantation estates, Johnston preserved buildings in situ, by use of photographic methods; before they were dramatically altered by the aesthetic influences of New England (she also captured some buildings before and after restoration).

In essence, she formatted architectural documentation via photography. Also, she instigated the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) project, by purposing to the Carnegie foundation the need for documentation, which three years after her proposal came into fruition.

Dramatically, her work presented these buildings, in a state of decay, and interjected the South’s “reality”, in regards time and space. Whereas other women, such as Susan Pringle Frost of Charleston, South Carolina, were heading up preservation movements that instigated a “new cash crop… for the South, which was, sanitized and amnesiac architecture”, Johnston was addressing the actual situation of the South before it became Mickey Mouse history. Her images, despite what type of audience they drew, addressed the reason behind the South’s built environmental appearance. War and slavery was not just something of fleeting history, but all the events leading up to the Civil War and emancipation were internally saved within the volumes and shadows of the South’s buildings.

Frances Benjamin Johnston: Self Portrait
Captured in the shadows of the Cupola House, a Jacobean inspired Georgian house, the projecting portico of the Cupola House, provides the viewer with an experience which is beyond duplication. It can be reproduced, as a photographic image, but her ability to merge architectural history and preservation is second to none. The Cupola House has its own history, which began with its builder, a land agent for the last English Lord Proprietors, and continues today, as an adaptive reuse owned by the Cupola House Association, which is noted to be the earliest community effort to save a historic site in North Carolina. The Cupola House was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1971, and recently, as if December 2008, the Cupola House was awarded with a $115, 000 Save America’s Treasures grant by the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities and the National Park Service, which expresses the continued presence of Johnston’s immense documentation project.

Cupola House (1758), Edenton, North Carolina: Photo By Johnston

Even though Johnston, a pioneer of preservation, was deeply interested in capturing buildings in a state of decline, historic preservation and architectural history commonly focus on intact buildings and structures, and therefore ruins pose a unique study. They allow the viewer to interact with the past in a full sensory experience. Not only do ruins allow for introspective study, but they enact the process of preservation without the common imposition of restoring buildings, landscapes, and structures to their “appropriate” time period. The only complication to enriching viewers with the
 experience happens to be, composing equally dramatic photographs that captivate an audience.

It shall be stated, architectural history and historic preservation are tied together by the desire to push information through time, but they are equally hindered by temporal restrictions of time, space, and reality. While the photographic frame allows for easy replication of a perspective, it restricts the ability of time, space, and reality to fully evolve. Although, some photographic studies have attempted, by montage, to overlap time, and thusly created a type of photography that enacts preservation’s need to address the built environment as a useable human experience rather than just a sample of architectural vision fixed in time.

As stated by the National Park Service, “Architectural History is the study of the development of building practices through written records and design and the examination of structures, sites, and objects in order to determine their relationship to preceding, contemporary, and subsequent architecture and events”. While the standard definition for historic preservation is “the application of strategies that promote the identification, evaluation, documentation, registration, protection, treatment, continued use, and interpretation of prehistoric and historic resources” . There are also other disciplines that correlate with both architecture history and historic preservation. These professions are historic architecture, archeologist, historic landscape architect, historian, historic preservation planner, cultural anthropologist, engineering, folklorist, conservator, and curator. Not to mention, these professions are not the only related disciplines, but rather just direct examples that can easily be tied to architectural history and historic preservation.

It seems like an obvious point to make: architecture history and preservation’s tie-that-binds. At the same time, it is easy to overlook the importance of individual disciplines and techniques of documentation like photography, when we, students of the American educational system, are accustomed to absorbing curriculum without questioning its place. For example, as we trudge along through our undergraduate degrees, we check off requirements, and blink our eyes in delight as we speed along to some professional destination. Yet, it is the simplicity of what we study that explains why we study, and the complexity enters when we yearn to learn the how variations of our disciplines connect.

When we start to emphasize what historic preservation does for architecture history, as well as, the inverse, that the true brilliance of each discipline emerges. All too often, urban specialization blankets our desire to understand why we do what we do, and we demean our own desire for specialization through the ignorant flailing of commercial need (we lose sight out importance when focusing on economic demand for our academic specialization). Architecture History gives Preservationist the market to understand what is important for building techniques, it emphasizes the craft, and master architects/builders shine within the built effigies that preservationist preserve.

Cupola House, Present Day
As a Preservationist, I desire to protect buildings, landscapes, and structures that mean something to the architectural community. Not only am I looking at what was important, but I am also forecasting what will be important to future architects, architect enthusiasts, and society. I am not a preservationist who dances alongside the flame of whimsy. Simply because something is old, does not make it significant, and sometimes the old things we hold as significant are important for reasons other than we acknowledge. Frost and the “preservation mafia” of Charleston, South Carolina are, to me, examples of the wreck-less preservationists. These people seek to uphold a heritage of value and honor that did not exist… a sense of unfaltering Americana. They have the power, monetary influence, to impose their aesthetic taste and history onto the American people. When the ladies of Mount Vernon, or the Charleston crew, tried their hand at preservation, they created an empty vessel of bias and consumable America. They did not even begin to have the social mindedness needed to even mildly address the preservation issues created by their actions. In Charleston, black residents of the City were thrown out of their homes, because preservation efforts instigated the sale of the properties to, primarily, white northern investors. The return of the “traditional elite” meant that preservation, by nature, is discriminatory and faulted.

Contemporary preservation should preserve the full spectrum of history within the preserved buildings, structures, and objects. Not only are preservationist responsible for their subjective influence, but they should also be greatly responsible in representing objective realities in their work. Iconic imagery does greatly affect how we view our world, and if underrepresented, the impact of a single photograph can alter history. When captions are attached to photos, they add text to the context held within the “silent” frame, and can mislead future researchers.

Prehistory adds an element of abstraction from human history. Looking at the photographic images of Stonehenge, we find prehistoric architectural techniques that unfold unto other techniques, and become involved in a spectacle of time, space, and reality. Without the ruins, we cannot see where the stream of consciousness began, and we ultimately lose engineering, artistry, and cultural resources that speak to the symbolic and functional nature of humanity. Being able to preserve something before it turns to ruin is indefinitely the feat of a preservationist, but we shouldn’t view a ruin as being in need of restoration to some former glory. We seek to engage the community with the built environment, so that, architecture does not deteriorate to a state of ruin. While we can learn a lot from ruins, it is more useful for a community, society, to gain direct use from historic properties. If say Stonehenge retained its original use the mystery of Stonehenge would not exist, while sometimes mystery is interesting, most likely the knowledge lost in the mystery could serve as more beneficial than the source of mystery? Or does this mystery say something greater?

Stonehenge: A Ruin Standing With Impact: Present Day
Herein is the question, the answer, but Lise Hull depicts ruins in such a way that makes a cynical yet socially minded preservationist, such as me, stammer. “Ruins offer a different—sensory driven—pathway into the past. This is one of their most vital contributions. They visibly, physically, and emotionally breach the chasm between the present and the Middle Ages.” In her writing, she suggests that Windsor Castle, home to British monarchy, lacks the same association with the past, as per say, a castle ruin. While the pristine preservation of Windsor does show the strength of the nobility, it doesn’t create the same space as ruins. Ruins allow the viewer to imagine the space as it was hundreds, even thousands, of years prior to their occupation of the space. Time becomes a fleeting passenger for the viewer’s desire to overcome the bounds of space and time. Windsor, its collections of stately things, directly influence what the viewer experiences, and thus hampers the sensory experience regarding time and relativity. Historic preservationists are concerned with finding historic significance to place buildings, landscapes, and structures into appropriate eras of importance.

Windsor castle: Home to Monoarchy Not Man
While both preservation and architectural history are responsible for the keeping of collective memory, their responsibility should not stop at self imposed semantics. Standards and guidelines are necessary, but should not inhibit grow of free thought. While specializations are needed to continue advancement of study, as in the case of Windsor versus a ruin, each should be judged by its own merit, because each influences society is a different manner. Preservation tends to inspect buildings under a critical eye, esthetically biased opinions, which shape our collective memory, and provide future generations with a glimpse of “history”. Architectural Historians provide the details, jargon, to perpetuate study, and research the precedents of technique and artistry. So, ruins provide a neutral ground for both disciplines. On one hand, Preservationists quiver, because ruins provoke perception of time differently than most historic buildings.

While on the other hand, Architectural Historians grimace, because ruins depict the dismantling of civilization. What should be taken from ruins is the grace of natural decline, and the ability to inform, even if, only a pile of stone and mortar. We often want to preserve things exactly as they were at their “highest” point of glory, does reality really allow for such sustainment of glory, or is this just an attainment of fantasy? Ruins would suggest that we need to seek out variations of pristine examples that not always include intact high vernacular. Perhaps the high vernacular is best represented as social stratification, rather than pristine elements of “society”. Society is, in turn, greater than elite examples of its architecture.

In the end, the examination of the inflected image determines our need for continued research and magnification of architectural images. If only to expose ourselves to subtext in photographic images, we can use ruins as a key to addressing the influence of time onto preserved buildings, structures, and objects. The continued question of appropriate period of significance will, most likely, continue with the discipline of historic preservation, but, as with Johnston and Woods, we can begin to see that our perception of time, space, and reality deserves representation. In order to gain a holistic understanding of space, architectural or not, the viewer should always search deeper before accepting a defined history.

Bibliography

Cupola House Association. Cupola House History. 2009. http://cupolahouse.org/history.html (accessed November 6, 2009).

Edenton, North Carolina. Heritage Tourism Division. December 10, 2008.
http://www.visitedenton.com/News/News.detail.asp?ID=17 (accessed November 5, 2009).

Hull, Lise. Understanding the Castle Ruins of England and Wales. Jefferson, North Carolina, and London: MacFarland and Company, Inc., 2009.

National Park Service. Historic Preservation Professional Qualification Standards. unknown. http://www.nps.gov/history/local-law/gis/html/quals.html (accessed November 1, 2009).

Woods, Mary. Beyond the Architect's Eye: Photographs and the American Built Environment. Philidelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009.

Thursday, October 20, 2011

R.I.P. Columbia

This morning I was able to view the remains of the recently dismantled Cleveland Landmark, the Columbia Building. It was demolished for a casino-related parking structure. While public outcry begged the City to support its own self proclaimed preservation efforts, the City ultimately decided that a casino-related parking structure was more sustainable than a Landmark.

Now, this is my personal opinion, and any views expressed in this writing are mine and mine alone.

It saddens me that preservation, while an established profession, has failed to evaluate itself. Mitigation tools that are meant to promote preservation tend to be non-integrated into other existing systems.

The facts remain in the Columbia case that its status of being a Landmark failed. It did go through the process meant to mitigate its demise, but it was never meant to be saved from the start. Therefore, it did not receive fair treatment.

A Landmark should mean that the intent, from the start, is to save it.

All actions should move through the established process to measure any foreseeable harm to the resource.

My first year serving in the Preservation Corps taught me more than I should know, but this makes my future professional career all the better.

I am not a restorationist, I do not believe that anything outside of museums and civic buildings should undergo this type of treatment.

I may not even be a historic preservationist, as what I am out to perpetuate is the efficient management of the built environment, and not pre-packaged idealism placed onto historic artifacts.

What I am is someone who sees the value in a Landmark, as an object that can serve future generations. The best designs are those that seamlessly meld into existing vistas. So far, in this country, the only two systems that can answer these questions are sustainability and preservation. From here, I think we can start educating not only the community, but also the professional market.

Looking over the twelve large-scale black and white format archival pictures was like peering into someone's casket, but there is hope that these documents will serve researchers and active-problem solvers in the future.

Friday, October 14, 2011

McLuhan's Verbi-Voco-Visual Explorations

"There was never a critical situation created by human ingenuity which did not contain its own solution", Marshall McLuhan, Verbi-Voco-Visual Exploration, (New York: Something Else Press, INC, 1967), 15.

"For nearly a century we have employed reconstruction as historical method. Instead of a view of the past we simply re-create a model of it", 15.

"Our tendency has been to make possible the coexistence of all cultures and also of all pasts. But this means that we can also anticipate the efects of all our present actions and technology. What we must know in order to achieve this is the fact that the media of communication are not mere catalysts but have their own physics and chemistry which enter into every moment of social alchemy and change," 15.


"When all kinds of information flowed slowly in a society, educational irrelevance could be corrected by self-education and by individual brilliance. That won't work today." 15

Monday, October 10, 2011

Kitchen and Johannesen

One thing that is certain, Ohio is home to many preservation leaders, and two examples of stellar resources are Judith Kitchen, director of technical services at the Ohio Historic Preservation Office, and the late, Eric Johannesen, architectural historian and preservationist.

In my position as a member of the Ohio Historic Service Corps, I have had the fortune of working with many Ohio Historic Inventories completed by Johannesen, when he was serving as a State Officer at Western Reverse Historical Society (before the Regan Era state cuts shut down satellite offices spread across the state). Johannesen is also the author of many books covering architectural history in the Western Reserve region.

Additionally, in my studies, I have been introduced to Judith Kitchen's many publications, which are all straight forward prose that encourage understanding and better preservation practices.

While at the Ohio Historical Society last week for training, I picked up a copy of Johannesen's Ohio College Architecture Before 1870 and Kitchen's Characteristics of Effective Local Historic Preservation Legislation... for less then ten dollars!

Not only does the Ohio Historical Society preserve significant archaeological and historic sites, but they also are responsible for outstanding publications put together by staff and liaisons.

These two publications are pocket sized references necessary for any one's preservation library.

Johannesen paints a picture of the livelihood and expansiveness found in Ohio's early colleges. His writing is a great example of how to connect history with the built environment. He provides not only architectural descriptions, but he places them within their historic context. It is a great example for those learning to write about historic context and the built environment, and it is also a great refresher to those who feel they are already are writing well. Establishing historic context is not simply writing about historical events may have happened during the period the building was constructed, but it is about finding those events through the built material. Tertiary information is a great way to support a building's broader context, but it is all too often used as a weak example of site specific significance.

Kitchen's primer is a go-to-guide for those writing and coming to understand preservation law. It makes a bold point that local ordinances are the most comprehensive measure for community level preservation. Thumbing through this read may also provide a reader with definitions of preservation jargon, and it may also help shape the reader's understanding of preservation as it clearly spells out what can be done at this level. All too often interested community members come to preservation hoping that it can save their building, and then after the building is gone, their interest also wanes. Hopefully,  preservationists will start using local ordinances as a starting place for outreach. First explaining what can happen in a community helps shape future actions. This resource is also a great read to help community members under stand what an ordinance does, as it explains how it was composed in the first place.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Status of Secondary Literature Review: One

In order to think and provide my readers with more context, I am completing a secondary literature review for sources included in my thesis, Adapting Preservation.

Not only will this serve myself, as a digital note, but it will also enable you to delve into the academic path that I have taken. While these reviews are certainly not all of the sources I have read over the past decade, they are relevant to my topic, and they provide an accessible dialogue.

In some cases, a preface is not enough room for an author to completely explore their thoughts, and it may not be enough director content to provide the reader with direct connections to the focused topic.

It can be stated that in developing a thesis topic one starts out broadly and ends up with a focused concentration. While the topic may seem broad when limited in definition, successful theses can succinctly wrap up all foreseeable loose ends in less than a hundred pages.

My first selection is a book entitled, Truth, Love, and Social Change: and other essays on community change, by Roland L. Warren (1970). The preface makes a bold statement about the authors prespective, "The writing of this preface has been delayed by still another national crisis that has closed mroe than a hundred colleges and interrupted normal activities in hundreds of others. As I write this, the National Guard is quelling campus disturbances in one state and putting down a black riot in another." (vii)

Warren is enable to narrate historic events in personal terms that affect the writing, but also the reader's frame of mind when approaching this volume. He continues, "As usual, communication takes place more readily within like-thinking groups than between antagonists. Two contrary points of view on specific issues have arisen. Two distrinct vocabularies have developed to describe any sets of events. Along with them, two quite different interpretations of the nature of American society and the root of its problems have emerged as the means by which these strong differences are expressed." (vii)

For the sake of my thesis, we must approach the obvious reality that sustainability is still considered a nontraditional approach to design and life. It is not mere coincidence that terms like conventional and unconventional are coined when describing greening projects. While there may not be the same type of engaged violence as in race and war riots, the fight between environmentalists and consumers has greater long term weight than gun fire or physical brutality. Those who represent the ecological impact of industry are called derogatory names, and they are often dismissed as alarmists.

Warren's book examines the application of change.

How do preservationists move from their stand-by of applying historic character and significance to utilizing sustainable arguments that respect all old, but not necessarily historic, structures?

How do they convince the commercial audience that they should be thoughtful in their purchases and demand high quality and design? That they should maintain their buildings and be mindful of alterations? That they should limit demolition as an option of both social change, security and the scape goat of larger issues?

Even before the main chapters' of Warren's book, he quantifies a solution by word and action.

His criticism is crisp and sharp. He begins his introduction with an observation by Karl Marx, "The philosophers have only interpreted the world differently; but the point is to change it." This call to action makes the audience think, and it points to the underlining question in Adapting Preservation. Should there be an implied difference between historic and sustainable preservation?

I have witnessed design review meetings that seek to implore interdisciplinary design, which works as a collective loop rather than, now deemed archaic, the linear design method. It does not work. Warren goes on to jest about the relativity of democracy. Is democracy just an improbable ideal that society attempts to impose on itself to feel better?

When a group of interested citizen's advocated against the demolition of the Columbia Building, a Cleveland Landmark, they collaberated and rallied with definitive representative organizations to get their point out. But these definitive representative organizations would not politically support the groups actions. They merely listened to them, knodded, but kept the political waters calm. Make no waves.

In the end, the Landmark was demolished for a parking structure related to a casino development.

Was that a shock to some? Yes, the group wholeheartly thought their methods of collaberation would make change. Not so much.

Harking back to Warren's statement, "like-minded communicate easier than adversaries", and it is pretty clear that while this group was feeding itself... it wasn't feeding anyone else.

Groups want to stay the same.

Inserting change into the vocabulary makes pretty much the bulk of individuals uncomfortable.

The professionals like to perpetuate their methods, politicians really can only offer what the group wishes to hear at said point in time (campaign approach), and the common folk are only conveyed when it directly affects their life with some positive stimuli.

So, what about historic and sustainable preservation? Warren's analysis would conclude that it as the force of consensus that enables sustainable preservation to be an outcropping of historic preservation. In the United States, historic preservation is different than conservation. Abroad, heritage conservation is the broad definitive applied to this action. It can be surmised that it is the will of democratic thinking that creates the need to have a "grab bag" of strategies to affect change (or the will of action).

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Facet of Personality

The most difficult for me in beginning my journey of this thesis project was connecting the pieces. Sure, I know my personal interests and best qualities, but I wasn't sure how to make that a relevant thesis topic that would fulfill both the requirements of my degree and my personal wants. I swirled around numerous topics, all of which were vital and rampant topics, and then finally I have come to this place.

Over the past three years, I have wondered around waiting for the perfect topic. I considered so many along the way before committing to this very one. No matter what I selected, it was going to be inherently complex, because that is just how I think. But, the complication entered that a master's level thesis has to be concise in order to fully articulate your argument in less than fifty pages of material.

This blog is an extension of my thesis project. I have created a multimedia format that will allow me to complete my program requirements, but also approach a more personal end product by using academic, blog and video format. In the end, the only archival aspect of my project will be my final printed thesis, but the electronic version will be accessible online with more content than capable to capture in a printed discourse. It is my hope that this format will help provide context to my printed thesis, as well as, help clarify my topic. I feel that in my academic writing is an objective representation of my thoughts, and this format is a way that I may bring you a more personal interpretation.

Now, you may be asking, what is your topic?

Adapting Preservation is a discourse on the implication of sustainable preservation.. It asks questions about historic preservation, and its offspring, sustainable preservation. The goal of this discourse is to help preservationists access their intent, and enable them to consider the consequence of their actions.

This thesis is not a doctrine, nor does it create standards to follow. What it strives to do is establish a method of thought that concentrates both the professional and the academics intent into a conscious-state of action. It has been said that preservation is action, and this thesis follows this thought.

In my graduate studies little conversation occurred surrounding theory. There were hints of it and suggestions by professors, but the discussion never really took off. This is no critique to my educators or colleagues, but a simple result from a rash of individuals coming from various disciplines with little background on the context of preservation itself. I am also part of the group, and I also failed to inspire engaged discussion. In my first year of study, I entered my director's office, pretty much desperate to understand the framework of preservation so that I could take off and explore. It was assured to me that by the end of my studies I would indeed be a master. Three years later, I feel as if I am finally at a place to accept this title.

The most significant point that I have gained is the need for outreach. Not only to the public, but also among the professionals leading preservation. I have attended advocate meetings, public hearings, commission meetings, and courses involving the public, professionals and students, and there was one opinion shared amongst all groups. How do they not understand the significance of preservation?

While I wanted my thesis to reach some grand level of logic, filled with suggestions and protocol, I am left with the discourse of understanding. How do we begin administering a profession without digesting its depth?

It came to me that my gift is processes and leading others towards understanding. I find fulfillment in the process of enlightenment. Being able to look back at my first semester with an honest summary admitting I knew little, and now comprehending that while I may have more information under my belt... there is always more to gain.

So, back to my topic.

What is adapting preservation?

As my research unfolds, and my academic writing compounds, I will be blogging about resources I find along the way, and how they impact my understanding.

In the end, my quest is to understand not what is historic preservation, but how I got through the process of a master's thesis in historic preservation. The goal of this accessory to a thesis is to pass on my struggles so that someone else can carry on and improve on what I am unable to accomplish.

Scholarship isn't about proving you are somehow better than a group, but understanding how to improve yourself through leading others to the same enlightenment.


Thursday, June 23, 2011

What the heck is Preservation going to do for me?

After attending a community hearing last night for the proposed Magnolia Wade Park Landmark Historic District, it became painfully clear to me that I need to write-- something.

Who reads it?
I don't know, nor am I concerned with marketing to an audience.

But, I am concerned about clearly writing to an audience to take off a veil of mysticism that seems to cover City government and Preservation.

First off, let me clear some things up (since clarity is what I am striving for).
Unless you are spending sixty plus hours a week pondering the complexity of local government, you probably won't even come close to getting all the information or seeing every reason behind the scenes. Even if you are spending your entire life serving a community, you may not even really know, or have access to all the pieces.

So, let us make it simple-- stop!

Stop trying to rationalize something that is out of rationality.

We live in a complex system that attempts to balance good and evil. Noone comes out a winner. We simply exist. Yet, some of us try to live our life through truth in search of justice.

Back to the Landmark District and Preservation.

What the heck is Preservation going to do for me?
Besides fine me and "take" away my right to do with my property as I please.

News flash, property is nothing but a deed contract with constructed restrictions and some feign of ownership.

Let's grow up a little and stop kicking out feet like children mad that their mom said they could only have one ice cream cone instead of the five they really wanted.

What the heck is Preservation going to do for you?

Well, statisically you can pull a whole lot of positive numbers from increase of local job creations to sustainability of neighborhoods and increase of private investment. You can also add into that monetary mix a raised sense of happiness and enjoyment of one's surroundings. Not to mention, the increase of historical awareness and knowledge.

What the heck would a Local Landmark District in Magnolia Wade Park do for its residents?

Since it is already an established National Register Historic District, there are already financial incentives for commerical owners. Noncommercial owners get nothing from the national designation except the glory.

Local designation would give residents a voice in maintaining their neighborhood's sense of place (how it looks and feels and all the good nostalgia feelings that goes along with it). Right now, there is no local designation, which means the noncommerical owners are pretty voiceless in terms of resisting demolitions, parking lots and out of scale new construction (all of which negatively impacts home values and likelihood of selling your property).

Slapping out of scale buidlings in historic areas, well intended or not, negatively impacts the ability of historic home stock from selling.

There is an arguement from nonprofit organizations, like churches, that state they want to be exempt from participating in historic designation. They already avoid paying tax and still recieve benefits from being part of a City. Some churches downsize, leaving empty buidlings, and thusly negatively impact an area's ability to be a viable home market. And then there are vacant schools... a whole other can of worms.

The point to this madness, planners exisit for a reason, and dedicate their life to trying to sort of the good bad and ugly for the overall betterment of a community.

Sometimes the big money project is going to roll through, because it will bring revenue. It may level an entire neighborhood to accomplish its goal. If its good design it may last longer than something with poor design and tons of planning flaws.

Ulitmately, unless this is your profession and passion... you don't have to ponder all the angles, and  you don't even have to feign political interest. If you are electing the right people to lead... righteousness will surface (even if only in small increments, its still there).

Clearly, those who want to argue about their right to personal property may actually understand the restrictions of a deed. Those who want rights, and preach about their liberty, have to understand there is obligation and sacrifice to having rights. Be it serving via military, volunteering, donating, or just being a sane human being... one has to give something in order to receive.

Maybe its the whitewashing of the American psyche that does not allow for radical thought involving compromise and deep thought? Maybe I'm just ranting?

The reality of the situation is that Preservation can give a whole heck of a lot, if folks take the time to understand the importance and urgency of the cause.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Western Reserve History through Place: Journal 3

January 27, 2011

After the Natural History Museum, it was going to be hard to be back in a classroom again. But, Dr. Stith had some great power-points that explored the Fur Trade and the Revolutionary War period in NEO. Mr. Fagan provided a great introduction to early building style in Ohio, and I am anticipating getting a chance to explore architectural history further. Ned at Landmarks said it well, "learning architecture is only accomplished when you start the journey exploring what you are drawn to first". Otherwise it's a bunch of geometry. Appling social history to architectural developments is why I am into preservation. I love being able to say, see that style, this is where it came from, and this is why we like it!

I am a believer that we don't randomly do things. We may not understand our reasoning at the time, but somewhere deep in our psyche is reason. Education is the process by which we explore the unknown, and we gain insight through this process. I am interested to see my knowledge of the built and natural environment grow, and I am more than happy to write about what I figure out!

Making connections is what it is all about.

I am interested to explore architectural remains, and gain a better clarity about how we can better preserve them. Again, I feel that we should be embracing as much knowledge as possible, and avoid limiting ourselves to certain disciplines.

My main critique about specializations is the limiting quality that it can have on a scholar. Sure, you may know every style known to man, but can you explain the purpose behind these creations? Can you apply historic context? Personally, I am working on this specialty. I love the digging, and I love a good puzzle. I would still like to analyze American architecture in ethnic enclaves. Do we really reflect puritanical England in most of our architecture, or is the more to the story? How much does our education impact our ability to read the cultural landscape? For example, do we see puritanical England everywhere, when perhaps there is something else happening? Something a little bit different, and uniquely American?

Western Reserve History through Place: Journal 2

January 22, 2011

Field trip to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

Awesome! For me, getting the chance to go to the Natural History Museum without my children is a dream. Normally, I am jumping around from dinosaurs to woodlands creature displays and back again. I don't typically get a chance to reflect on any of the material. I do get a chance to inspire my children, and my eldest son is really excited and interested in everything… so it's a good feeling to provide your children with such a luxury. Indeed, living in Cleveland is a great opportunity, and I feel privileged to have so many distinct and great cultural resources to share with them.

Growing up in Sandusky we may be made it each museum once, spread out over our primary school years, and I was lucky to have a parent interested in the arts, who brought me to establishments more often than what most school children in the city experienced. Sandusky had two museums, when I was growing up, one being the cultural center at the High School, and the other being a house museum. There was never the push for excelling in school, nor did the course requirements really ask that much from the students. By my sophomore of high school, I was a bored student, who would gladly draw cartoons, and get thrown out of class for daydreaming. I always loved history and science, but since I wasn't in the "accelerated" class (which was determined in first grade by the way), I was not expected to excel in anything. We had unchallenging criteria, but most of my classmates were still either failing out of school or just passing. My grades were all over the place, and I had a "C" average thanks to ranging grades. Luckily, my sophomore history teacher cared, and he took interest in his students, not just their grades, or his marks as an educator for that matter. He saw that I was bored, and he asked if I wanted extra assignments. Extra assignments! I was excited to have a challenge. He assigned me additional reading, and thus begun my career in academia. I remember reading Candid, and I remember finding the paper I wrote some years later. I constantly think back to this teacher, and mentally thank him for showing interest in my intellect. He helped me test into the "accelerated" level for my junior year, and in turn, helped me accomplish my undergraduate and now graduate degrees.

Back to the Natural History Museum, and my amazement at the levels of amazing-ness held within its walls and beyond. While I intuitively love the place, I had no idea the level of prestige attached to it. I am continued pleased to find out little factoids about the Cleveland area and its institutions. We are really lucky to be here, and I am so enthused to have it to share with my children.

The most impactful part of our field trip to the museum was discussing the early native peoples of Ohio. I am a full blooded American, meaning, I have a little bit of everything, but one of those ethnic backgrounds is Seneca. I grew up wrongly identifying my native heritage as Cherokee, but learned around fifteen that I was actually Seneca, from the Iroquois Nation. I found the exhibits informative, and the exhibits really provided an enriching learning experience. I am a visual person, so having models and sketches of villages to back up what Dr. Stith and Mr. Fagan were saying… really enhanced the experience. I was really interested to see the fortifications of early villages, and it is interesting to couple that with the geography of the area. It is fascinating to see how we adapt our built environment to the natural surroundings. I am deeply fascinated in the movement of early peoples to that of our current culture. It is pretty dramatic to see how we adapt natural resources, how industrialization changed this connection to nature, and how we are now struggling to reacquaint ourselves to the simplest of concepts.

I would like more of an opportunity to work with pre-history, and then to be able to apply this to the built environment. I am someone who is always wonder, what else? What else haven't I learned, and what else could I explore? I love to feel like a kid again, figuring out something, and advancing my knowledge.

Western Reserve History through Place: Journal 1

January 20, 2011

Western Reserve History through Place is co-taught by Dr. Bari Stith and Nick Fagan. Dr. Stith specializes in Ohio History, and Mr. Fagan is a graduate of Kent State University with dual Master Degree's in Architecture and Library Science. This course will substitute for Historic Preservation's required course, Issues. I feel that this course will provide me with the time to dedicate to both mastering Western Reserve history and Architectural history specific to the region. Both of these areas will build my capability as a preservationist, and the course will provide me with the pieces of specific Ohio history that I have not had in over fifteen years. I feel that is both imperative as a historian and preservationist to understand your region, and I am lucky to be able to participate in such a course that addresses this directly.

Our first course was a basic introduction to the course and its syllabus. Dr. Stith furthered the class, by beginning pre-history in Ohio, and initiating conversation about history and culture theory. I found the discussion about the Wisconsin Glacier extremely informative. One aspect of my studies that I have wanted to develop is my knowledge about regional history and evolution of the built environment. In my position with AmeriCorps, I complete historic inventories and direct surveys. In writing my survey summaries, I have felt limited in my ability to convey the natural resources affect on the built environment. Yes I have understood the impacts of waterways, and such, on the development of transportation routes, but I have no yet had the time to dedicate to further researching this topic.

In my undergraduate studies, I did take some natural sciences, and geology was one of these courses. That specific course did not touch on pre-history, and I feel that this would have made a dramatic impact on my scholarship sooner. I feel it is rather a moot point to discuss riverbeds, if the development of those riverbeds is never discussed. I understand there is a limited amount of time, but a quick footnote doesn't take an eternity. Now that I have this information, I will be able to better illustrate how natural resources affect the built environment, and I will be better able to advise interested individuals into performing research.

Here is a link about Ohio Soils in Relation to Glacial Impact: http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=1289

Here is a very limited source about the Wisconsinan Glacier: http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=2893&nm=Wisconsinan-Glacier

Here is a link that shows a natural resource of a glacial ridge: http://www.metroparks.net/ParksGlacierRidge.aspx

Here is a detail source with decent maps showing historic receding of glacier and creation of great lakes: http://seagrant.wisc.edu/glaciers/

One Issue I picked out of the presentation is merely the lack of application pre-history has on contemporary preservation. I feel that we should insert more of this knowledge into preservation articles and standards. It is really interesting to see how dramatically natural resources do affect the built environment, and I was really inspired by this session. It is really interesting to see how we are taught that different disciplines are so disparate, but in fact, archeology and preservation do feed off one another.

Monday, January 31, 2011

OHI Meet-Up

This past Saturday, January 29, I meet up with a few folks who are passionate about preservation: Mark, Nina and Lenore. It was great to chat with them over coffee and tea about Cleveland and the preservation plan for Ohio. I was happy to be able to share my knowledge with them, and it was a good to see my scholarship being worthwhile.

I am in school to provide a service for others. Without others benefiting from my hard work, there really isn't a point to the years of study. Preservation is one of those careers where you are in it for your greater community. Yes, I love the concept, I enjoy studying it, but I really enjoy sharing what I've learned.

The Ohio Historic Inventory is one of the methods we can use to document historic buildings, sites, and objects. It was a great affirmation to hear those at the meet up saying I presented it in a coherent manner. My biggest fear is having people stare at my blankly.