University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Theses (Historic Preservation) Graduate Program in Historic Preservation 1998 The Impulse to Preserve: A Theory of Historic Preservation Debora de Moraes Rodrigues University of Pennsylvania Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/hp_theses Part of the Historic Preservation and Conservation Commons Rodrigues, Debora de Moraes, "The Impulse to Preserve: A Theory of Historic Preservation" (1998). Theses (Historic Preservation). 305. https://repository.upenn.edu/hp_theses/305 Copyright note: Penn School of Design permits distribution and display of this student work by University of Pennsylvania Libraries. Suggested Citation: Rodrigues, Debora de Moraes (1998). The Impulse to Preserve: A Theory of Historic Preservation. (Masters Thesis). University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA. This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/hp_theses/305 For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Impulse to Preserve: A Theory of Historic Preservation Disciplines Historic Preservation and Conservation Comments Copyright note: Penn School of Design permits distribution and display of this student work by University of Pennsylvania Libraries. Suggested Citation: Rodrigues, Debora de Moraes (1998). The Impulse to Preserve: A Theory of Historic Preservation. (Masters Thesis). University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA. This thesis or dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/hp_theses/305 UNIVERSITY^ PENNSYLVANIA. LIBRARIES The Impulse to Preserve: A Theory of Historic Preservation Debora de Moraes Rodrigues A Thesis in Historic Preservation Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science 1998 7 1 Supervisor Reader David G. De Long QustaVo Araoz Professor of Architecture Executive Director. ICOMOS Graduate Group Chair F/anK/G. Matero Associate Professor of Architecture /",-7 i vi m I? / C\ Dedicated to the memon- of my mother, Eva Maria de Moraes Rodrigues. Acknowledgments At the University of Pennsylvania. I would like to thank my advisor. Professor David G. De Long, for his interest in my topic and for all the knowledge he has imparted. For his careful reading of my final draft. I thank my reader. Gustavo Araoz. At Yale University, thanks are due to Beverly Joy and Robert Dincecco of University Planning, and to Susan McCone. a Yale Di\inity School student. Finally. I thank my family, especially my father. Josemar Rodrigues. and Lorena and Joseph Bottum. for all their guidance and support throughout my graduate studies. Ill 2 Contents Acknowledgments iii Illustrations v Introduction 1 Chapter 1 Problems and Absurdities in Preservation Practice The Van Rensselaer Mansion 8 The Palace of Fine Arts 1 Penn Station 16 The Chicago Stock Exchange Building 20 The Gropius House 23 The Marin County Civic Center 25 Conclusion 28 Chapter 2 Theory from Viollet-le-Duc to Le Corbusier 35 Eugene Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc 35 John Ruskin 41 Modernism 47 Chapter 3 Theory in the Late Twentieth Century 52 David Lowenthal 55 M an fredo Tarfuri 59 Christine Boyer 68 Conclusion 76 Chapter 4 The Sterhng Divinity Quadrangle 78 Protest Against the Proposed Scheme 87 The Lawsuit: Save the Quad v. Yale 90 Chapter 5 A Theory of Historic Preservation 93 Bibliography 113 Index 127 IV Illustrations Figure 1. Photograph by Michael McGovern. in "Who's News." Historic Presenation 47 (November/December 1995): 21. Figure 2. Photograph from 1801-1803 Walnut Street. Fell-Van Rensselaer Mansion folder. Philadelphia Historical Commission. Philadelphia. Pennsylvania. Figure 3. Photograph from 1801-1803 Walnut Street. Fell-Van Rensselaer Mansion folder. Philadelphia Historical Commission. Philadelphia. Pennsylvania. Figure 4a. Photograph from San Francisco History and Archives Room. San Francisco Main Public Library, in Sally B. Woodbridge. Bernard Maybeck: Visionan- Architect (New York: Abbeville. 1992). 100. Figure 4b. Engraving by G. B. Piranesi. in Pininesi: Rome Recorded (Rome: American Academy in Rome. 1990). 163. Figure 5a. Photograph from the Collection of the New York Historical Society, in Steven Parissien. Peniisxlvania Station: McKini. Mead and White (London: Phaidon. 1996). 30- 31. Figure 5b. Photograph by Bill Diehi. in Lorrame B. Diehl. The Late, Great Pennsylvania Station {New York: American Heritage. 1985). 151. Figure 6. Photograph by John Vinci, in John Vinci. The Tradiiii^ Room: Louis Sullivan and the Chicago Stock Exchcmge (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1989), 61. Figure 7. Photograph by the Society for the Preser\ation of New England Antiquities, in Walter Gropius. Gropius House (Boston: The Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities. 1970). n.p. Figure 8. Photograph in David B. Rosenhaum. "Out of Sight. Out of .Mind." Engineering News Record 233 ( 12 September 1994): 18. Figure 9. Photograph by William Schwarz. in Aaron Green. An Architecture for Denuicracy: Frank Lloyd Wright: the Marin Countx Civic Center (San Francisco: Grendon. 1990). 37. Figures 10a. and 10b. Photographs in Nikolaus Pevsner. Ruskiii caul Viollet-le-Duc: EngUshuess and Frenchness in the Appreciation of Gothic Architecture (London: Thames and Hudson. 1969), 39. Ruskin, in John Ruskin. The Seven Lamps of Architecture. Figure 1 1 . Drawing by John e^'^printing (New York: Noonday Press. 1977). plate V. n.p. On Figures 12a. and 12b. Photographs in Mohsen Mostafi and David Leatherbarrow, 7-8. Weathering: The Life of Buildings in Time (Cambridge: MIT Press. 1993). Preserving Figure 13. Photograph by Laurence Laurier Associates, in E. R. Chamberlin, the Past (London: J. M. Dent, 1979), no. 15, n.p. Powers Figure 14. Drawing by Arthur Cotton Moore, in Arthur Cotton Moore. The of 1998). Presenxition: New Life for Urban Historic Places (New York: McGraw-Hill. 193. the Past to the Present Figure 15. Photograph in Charles R. Longsworth. Conuminicating 21. (Williamsburg. Va.: The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. 1981 ). Figure 16. Photograph by the author. Figure 17. Photograph by the author. Kliment Frances Figure 18. Drawing by R. M. Kliment & Frances Halsband, m R. M. & Halsband Architects, Yale Divinity School Feasibility Study. February 1997. 3. Frances Figure 19. Drawing by R. M. Kliment & Frances Halsband. in R. M. Kliment & Halsband Architects. Yale Divinity School Feasibility Study. February 1997. 7. Figure 20. Photograph by the author. Architectural and Figure 21. Photograph from the Delano & Aldrich Collection. Avery Fine Arts Library. Columbia University. New York. Law. Figure 22. Photograph by Cervin Robinson, in John J. Costonis, Icons and Aliens: 42. Aesthetics, and Environmental Change (Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 1989). Figure 23. Photograph by the author. Figure 24. Photograph by William Seitz. in Jill Herhers. Great Adaptations: New Residential Uses for Older Buildings (New York: Whatson. 1990). 56. VI 1 Figures 25a. and 25b. Photographs from the Department of the Environment (Crown Copyright), in M. W. Thompson. Ruins: Their Presenatiou and Display (London: British Museum Publications. 1981). 39. Figure 26. Photograph by William Garnett. in Peter Blake, God's Own Junkyard: The Planned Deterioration of America 's Landscape (New York: Holt. Rinehart and Winston, 1964). no. 107, n.p. VI Introduction A Theory of Historic Preservation If beauty is en- All historic preservation is vexed by a simple philosophical point. creature of historical tirely in the eye of the beholder, if historic importance is merely a everything and nothing interest, if the past is wholly a projection of present anxieties, then everything and deserves to be preserved—for everything and nothing is equally valuable, rare. nothing is equally significant, everything and nothing is equally just as we We lack, of course, the conservative capital to preserve the past entire, undecided from lack the revolutionary resolve to destroy the past entire. And so we lurch 1960s rock mu- historic preservation to historic preservation, preserving the ephemera of Renaissance paintings, sic with the same energy that we preserve the National Gallery's that we allowing tourist traps to disfigure Gettysburg's battlefield with the same abandon allow new brick walkways to beautify Baltimore's harbor. Historic preservation is some- coherent thing that we do without being entirely sure why we do it: a practice without theory or accepted justification, and consequently a practice doomed to some absurdities. sites be pre- Part of the problem is this; the demand that historic buildings and for it wrests some of the tradi- served is. by definition, socially subversive of the present, capital. good neo- tional rights of property away from the authority of ownership and A of historic preser- Marxist could embrace that fact and use it to build the coherent theory 1 — vation that we currently lack: all the judgments of beauty and historic importance that people think they are making when they demand historic preservation are in fact nothing more than unconscious expressions of the power relations of class, race, and gender—but historic preservation can in certain cases still be a good thing to do because it helps to move property from private to public control, and it has a revolutionary effect in raising class-consciousness and unsettling the vested interests of the rich, white male owners. And another part of the problem is this: the demand that historic buildings and sites