All posts tagged: Historic Preservation

Living at the intersection of past, present, and future

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(Note:  I made the following remarks at the funeral of Dr. James K. Huhta on Monday, May 8, 2017, in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.  Jim was the founder of the Historic Preservation Program at Middle Tennessee State University, an early mentor in the field, and—along with his wife Mary who died 11 months earlier—a dear friend.) I thought I would start my remarks with a history joke…but they’re all too old. Feel free to groan, because I will keep on with the bad puns and jokes if you don’t.  Just as Jim would have done. In recent days, I have talked with people who knew Jim from all walks of life. We all acknowledge the deep pain of the past year to the family, friends, and this community. But like these friends and colleagues, I want to reflect today on his many accomplishments and his impact on others, before the inexplicable challenges of recent years became too much for him to bear. Several people recounted how Jim’s optimism for the future set them on a path which …

Clarity of Vision

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We all benefit when we are clear about what matters. I  have always admired the clarity of vision that comes through the work and writings of Morris Vogel, the retiring president of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum.  Morris is one of my colleagues at the National Trust, and I value our professional relationship.  On a personal level, Morris is someone I look to for both advice and inspiration. In these days when the nation is – once again – struggling with its checkered history on immigration, the Tenement Museum has stepped time and again into these conversations in ways powerful, relevant and timely.  I found the following statement, which Morris recently shared with his board and staff, a great reminder of how clarity of vision and mission is so important in finding one’s voice. “Tenement Museum leadership in the museum field means that our colleagues at other institutions regularly ask how we handle difficult issues, and we’ve recently fielded requests for information about how we determined our pro-active response to the government’s refugee ban. …

Problem Solvers

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I spent much of last week with eight mayors, and seven other resource panelists at the Mayors’ Institute on City Design in Charleston, South Carolina.  The mayors – two women and six men – came from cities as large as San Bernardino, California, and as small as Juneau, Alaska.  Three of the cities were state capitols, at least two were located on historic Route 66, they spread from coast to coast, every community had a historic core that the mayors saw as vital to their identity and future, and all were ethnically diverse. The political leanings of the mayors – and those of their cities – spanned the spectrum.  Some had been in office for several years, others were relatively new to either the mayoral office and/or public service.  One was a writer on social justice.  Two were accountants by training, while another was a banker.  One had spent much of his career running YMCAs.  As befits the mayor of a city that abuts Canada, the mayor of Juneau had worked for the U.S. Customs …

Panama Hotel

Those who do not know their history…

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The recent executive order temporarily banning travel from seven predominantly Muslim countries brings to many minds an earlier, ugly incident from American history.  As is often the case, those who do not know their history are destined to repeat it. An op-ed in yesterday’s New York Times spoke to this earlier, discriminatory ban.  When Lies Overruled Rights tells the story of the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. “Seventy-five years ago on Sunday, under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, all people of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast were forced to leave their homes and report to incarceration camps. Two-thirds were American citizens. Fred Korematsu, my father, then 23, refused to go. A proud and loyal citizen, he had tried to enlist in the National Guard but was rejected and was wrongly fired from his job as a welder in an Oakland, Calif., shipyard He was arrested and tried for defying the executive order. Upon conviction, he was held in a horse stall at a hastily converted racetrack until he and …

A Wider, More Generous, More Imaginative Perspective: Preservation in 2017

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(Note:  This post originally appeared – in a slightly edited form – on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Preservation Forum blog.) 2016 was a time of reflection and anticipation for many Americans, including preservationists. We celebrated the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service and the 50th anniversary of the National Historic Preservation Act, but we also used this year to anticipate the future. Moving past those milestones, we have the opportunity—some would say the obligation—to rethink preservation and seek our place of relevance in the changed political and social climate of 2017. Many people contributed to our convenings on the future of preservation. Out of those conversations, we envisioned a preservation movement that grounds its work in human needs and aspirations: “A people-centered preservation movement empowers people to tell their stories and to engage in saving the places that matter to them; plays an increasingly important role in creating sustainable, resilient, equitable, and livable communities; and works collaboratively with a wide range of other fields to fulfill fundamental human needs and achieve essential …

View of Florence

The Well-Tempered City

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Jonathan F.P. Rose is a man of many interests and talents.  A developer, Rose builds affordable housing and mixed-income community centers.  He is a jazz aficionado and — as suggested by the title of his newest book — a classical music devotee.  Rose is also an interdisciplinary scholar and writer.  In The Well-Tempered City:  What Modern Science, Ancient Civilizations, and Human Nature Teach Us About the Future of Urban Life, Rose brings those talents and interests together in a wide-ranging and thoughtful look at the past – and future – of the places where 80% of the world’s population will live by 2080. (Full disclosure:  My employer — the National Trust for Historic Preservation — has recognized Jonathan’s work with a Preservation Honor Award, and I have worked with him through his role as an advisor to a couple of our projects.) The Well-Tempered City is a book that reflects a lifetime of work and thought about how cities best serve people.  Early in the book, Rose notes that, “Since the founding of the very …

Pearl Harbor Day

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A couple of years ago I wrote a post called Why We Memorialize and Remember Sacred Places on the reasoning behind my decision to cite December 7, 1941, as my top candidate deserving of the descriptor “The day the world changed forever.” I thought it would be a good post to share again – here on Pearl Harbor Day.  Memorials are about memory, which is “an essential part of consciousness” as quoted in my colleague Tom Mayes’ series of essays on Why Do Old Places Matter? In this day and age, we glorify the individual and forget that it is the collective – the community – that holds us together.  Places such as the U.S.S. Arizona memorial – and I would argue the Waikiki Natatorium War Memorial – are indeed “places where moments in personal history become part of the flow of collective history.”  History that transcends individual experiences and lifetimes. It is important to remember that we are judged not just by what we build, but by what we choose to save and remember …

Macon musical history

Not my average radio interview

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Folks in Macon, Georgia, take their musical roots seriously.  (Think Otis Redding, the Allman Brothers, Little Richard.)  So on Friday morning when I was booked for an interview on WNEX, The Creek — a new Macon radio station featuring Southern roots music and local issues — I assumed it would be different from the local NPR stations where I normally find myself talking about preservation. I was right.  And (with the possible exception of my time on the Honolulu public radio station), it turned out to be much more fun than my average NPR radio interview! We were in town to launch our National Treasures campaign for the Ocmulgee National Monument.  Lands affiliated with the Ocmulgee National Monument have been home to Native Americans for more than 17,000 years.  However, over recent decades the places with ties to the site have been threatened by urban sprawl, the subdivision of forested tracts, and ownership fragmentation. The National Trust and our partners are seeking to re-designate the monument as a historical park, expand the current boundaries, and …

Loss, rebirth, baseball, and why old places matter

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You may have heard that my team – the Washington Nationals – lost last Friday, a loss which ended their season.  You may be surprised to know that while disappointed, I can live with that outcome. After 50+ years of watching sports, I find that low expectations are the key to happiness. In my mind, baseball – with its timeless, cyclical rhythms and its “symbolic and literal journey ‘home’” – contains values and appeal that overshadow mere winning and losing and match the values and appeal we espouse in discussing why old places matter.  What touches many in both fields is a sense of the familiar, the building upon the past while adding new meaning today, and a reality that recognizes difficult as well as celebratory history. A. Bartlett Giamatti – PhD professor in comparative literature, president of Yale University, commissioner of baseball, and a lifelong fan of the Boston Red Sox until his untimely death in 1989 – understood both accomplishment and loss. In A Great and Glorious Game, Giamatti said of baseball, “It …

Conservation as a Creative Act

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A 2011 terrorist bombing in the national government quarter of Oslo damaged two central modernist buildings and set the Norwegian government on a path of demolition and replacement that raised questions of national remembrance, security, preservation, and democratic consensus. That incident provides the context for a new and expansive work about preservation, urbanism, and architecture edited by architectural designer and scholar Bryony Roberts, the 2016 Rome Prize winner in Historic Preservation. Tabula Plena: Forms of Urban Preservation takes its title from a contrast to the familiar architectural and planning term, tabula rasa, the clean slate—a site that is cleared and thus provides the freedom for design without constraints. Preservationists in the United States know this situation all too well, from the urban renewal battles of the 1950s and 60s to today’s call for clearing urban blocks to allow new high-rise buildings that will provide more “density” in our rapidly growing cities. Roberts and students from the Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO), working in collaboration with a team of students from the Columbia University …