Material, Material, Who is the Fairest of Them All?

Harriet Estel Berman blogged about the topic of documentation with reference to artistic works. She states:

"Photographic documentation (including video and film) can be especially important when working with alternative or unproven materials. While the temporal nature of the materials may be a critical characteristic that makes the work interesting, the documentation may be the only aspect that survives for posterity.  A photo clearly establishes exactly how the artist visualized the work, fresh - before it ages, degrades, or disappears."

When it comes to conserving the built world, preservationists have been combating the cycle of deterioration with photographic documentation for over a century. The WPA era brought about the HABS/HAER project, and numerous other film ventures. The City Poem emerged as a moving story of depression era Americana.

But, preservationists continue to fight the urge to document alone, despite the relative success of such endeavors.

Public history has hammered into the preservation psyche for several decades. Social history and the American vernacular remains a prevalent piece to contemporary preservation, as mounting environmental concerns continue to nag professionals. For some, the "preserve at all cost" mentality is wrought with elitism and a classicist mentality, which includes the preservation and focus of social, public history. As Americans clamber to produce revisionist histories, the environmental concern is pushed onto the back burner.

Now, this post is not arguing that social history has no place in preservation, but it is arguing that preservation is a material based discipline.Shouldn't preservation be focusing on the conservation of material rather than narrative?

The photo document is strong evidence. In some cases, a picture is worth a thousand words, or a thousand vernacular structures that have been severely altered. If preservationist accept that some buildings are meant to meet the bulldozer, document accordingly, then perhaps efforts can begin to focus on more substantial issues, like carbon footprint and the lagging job market.

The author of this post has surveyed and written over 400 histories of buildings across Cleveland, Ohio. Sometimes, the picture is the best story. Sometimes, the building is just a building. The real cost to community is focusing on revisionist histories.

Time rights past wrongs, but only through education and progress of the individual.

Human beings, tribal animals, truly can never be appeased by one history.

We can learn from photo documentation, and it costs far less than attempting to stabilize a sinking neighborhood. We can archive, preserve and make certain that these images are protected. We can't guarantee the same to failing neighborhoods, and a historic designation doesn't always save the most threatened unless effort is unleashed in numerous ways.

Environmental consciousness allows preservationists to promote their cause, inspire others, and conserve object. Social history is still important, but sinking precious financial resources into such endeavors most often does little. Photo documentation is a tool to be used cautiously. One can document "progress". One can argue the preservation of vital resources, and the integration of new techniques to further sustainability communities.

Clyde Alexander Patterson

Today I had the opportunity to page through a box of paper collected by Clyde Alexander Patterson.

He taught at Kent State University in Architecture and Environmental Design.

He led numerous historic building surveys in Cleveland during the mid-late 1970s.

Now, a box of paper sits in the attic of City Hall, as well as, his personal briefcase.

I will be posting some of his publications on effort to promote work done before the advent of the internet that now can gain public access through digitization.

Sustainable Preservation

"Every year, another 1 million acres of farmland in the United States is given over to buildings," Carroon.

Sustainable Preservation by Jean Carroon is, mostly, viewable through Google books.

There is a clear explanation of how EXISTING buildings are inherently green.
It is important to explain what this means to those you speak to...
Often, I overhear preservation professionals throwing out these key phrases with little background information.
The general public doesn't have the facts, and offering a few sentences after making such claims is very helpful in convincing those who aren't in the know.

The concept of "long-life/loose-fit"  (as coined by Steve Brand in How Building Learn/ What Happens After they're Built) is noted in this volume, and it is really the zinger for the argument pro-sustainability. Historic Preservation has the adaptive reuse method, which demonstrates successful long-life/loose-fit examples.
Layering this concept with conventional preservation practices shows that we can respectfully add green technologies to historic buildings while keeping to our traditional standards. It just takes a little more thinking outside of the box to appropriate design a retrofit project that both enhances and respects the EXISTING building.

Additionally, the complex nature of construction costs have slashed the argument for new construction as more cost effective than greening retrofits. Carroon references two reports by Davis Langdon that "there are so many cost factors in construction today that it is nearly impossible to detect any statistically significant difference between the cost of conventional and green buildings."

The quote by Stewart Brand states that, "A building is not something you finish. A building is something you start." What the take home is from this book is that Sustainable Preservation is real, happening, and what we should be convincing the greater community to do.But first, outreach that inspires acculturation toward reuse is necessary.

SHOAH Institute

This winter I attended a digital humanities seminar at Case Western Reserve University.

One of the presentations included the SHOAH Foundation Institute started by Steven Spielberg.

While not free--- it is an interested project to reference.

There are interviews available for free on YouTube.

Change is a historical theme.

I really fail to understand why in the American ideal of  historic preservation that change is considered the enemy.

Also, I am confused as to why in the American ideal of historic preservation that preservation is lumped into one concept. Whereas, the actual practice displays three treatments for managing historic resources: stabilization, rehabilitation and restoration.

If then, we can acknowledge that preservation is more than simply keeping a building some period of time, like a museum artifact rather than a living system, and that it has more than one means to its goal, then why can't some of its practicioners

Adapting Preservation Prospectus

Adapting Preservation Prospectus

The above link is to a final draft of my prospectus, Adapting Preservation: The Cleveland Environmental Center.

You are invited to attend my public prospectus hearing at Ursuline College on February 28, 2012 from 7-9pm.

Please contact me for room information via jwobig@ursuline.edu

An electronic version of the presentation will be made available after the formal hearing.

One of the more historically significant subdivisions in Glenville is the C.C. Baldwin Allotment. Baldwin, one of the founders of the Western Reserve Historical Society (formally, the Cleveland Library Association's Historical Department). His son is one of the founder's of Baldwin Wallace College and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

Last year, I spent my time surveying a portion of the Glenville neighborhood in Cleveland, Ohio.

It is a prominently residential area with one main node of commerce along E.105th Street. The neighborhood cascades along Rockefeller Park, as listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Few standing resources predate the park, and most of the buildings are from the first decade of the 20th Century. Part of the problem of my survey from last year stemmed from there being little left from this significant time period. Before the invasion of early 20th Century Cleveland Doubles, there were homesteads, barns, and light industry here. Blacksmiths and adventurous business class families.

What will we remember from the 20th Century? Will there be anything left to show the history of African Americans, who have resided in Glenville, despite the street wars of the 1960s, the urban blight of today?

1237 E.100th Street, Cleveland, Ohio Yesterday, myself and Don Petit of the Landmarks Commission, were driving around snapping historic candid shots for the upcoming meeting this Thursday. As several resources along Superior Avenue on E.99th and E.101st Street are on the docket for potential landmark designation, we ambled down some of the streets from last year's survey. How quickly the built environment changes. 1237 E.100th Street, Cleveland, Ohio As we turned from Tanner Avenue onto E.100th Street, the second lot on the easterly side of the street showed a gaping hole and a staircase to nowhere.

To the north-east, Glenville Village prospered, offered entertainment amenities, like League Park and a horse race track, and boasted residential and commercial assets.

Doan's Corners (formally Doan's Settlement, then East Cleveland, then annexed to Cleveland),  located at Euclid Avenue, E.105th (formally, Doan), and E. 107th Street being one of the earliest stops in the Western Reserve, named for the surveyor Nathaniel  Doan, who built an Inn on a portion of the land he gained for his survey work. Of course, his survey work is the 1797 survey led by Moses Cleaveland, the founder of Cleveland.

History relatively so recent that trace elements exist in original paper documents housed at the Western Reserve Historical Society Archive and Library. Yet, history far enough in the past to have little weight in our contemporary lives, or does it have more impact than we realize?

I will admit, it was difficult to stroll down E.100th Street to find another resource reduced to, as the demolition contractor said, "brown rubble". While I am not a born resident of the neighborhood or have any family ties to the area, I have gained a developmental history on the area that covers multiple generations from the inception of the Western Reserve.

It is hard to be unaffected by the removal of an artifact, that to some appears a nuisance, but to the historian and preservationist an opportunity.

It is frustrating to know that people's bad investments somehow become our loss.

Also, frustrating to know the social history of mid-20th Century, Urban Renewal, and the realization that it is happening--again.