Fixing Historic Preservation: a Constructive Critique of “Significance”
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Peer Reviewed Title: Fixing Historic Preservation: A Constructive Critique of "Significance" [Research and Debate] Journal Issue: Places, 16(1) Author: Mason, Randall Publication Date: 2004 Publication Info: Places Permalink: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/74q0j4j2 Acknowledgements: This article was originally produced in Places Journal. To subscribe, visit www.places-journal.org. For reprint information, contact [email protected]. Keywords: places, placemaking, architecture, environment, landscape, urban design, public realm, planning, design, research, debate, historic, preservation, contructive, critique, significance, Randall Mason Copyright Information: All rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. Contact the author or original publisher for any necessary permissions. eScholarship is not the copyright owner for deposited works. Learn more at http://www.escholarship.org/help_copyright.html#reuse eScholarship provides open access, scholarly publishing services to the University of California and delivers a dynamic research platform to scholars worldwide. Fixing Historic Preservation: A Constructive Critique of “Significance” Randall Mason The idea of “significance” is exceed- Second, once judgments are made projects that tell their particular sto- ingly important to the practice of about a site, its significance is regarded ries. The broadening of preservation historic preservation. In significance, as largely fixed. Such inertia needs to from its curatorial roots has been a preservationists pack all their theory, be overcome, and each site’s signifi- very important and salutary develop- ideology and politics—and their cance needs to be seen as time bound ment—these other goals increase the wonder at the capacity to use and in need of periodic revision. diversity, inclusiveness and robustness historic fabric to reflect on the past. Third, many decisions about sig- of historic preservation as a social A “statement of significance” gathers nificance are made by experts, whose movement—but it has also led to together all the reasons why a mindsets are often quite unreflective some confusion about core purposes building or place should be preserved, and uncritical. By contrast, the and methods. why it is meaningful or useful, and imperative of preservation—as in the Conceptually, the heart of historic what aspects require most urgent rest of society—should be to allow preservation lies in the intellectual protection. Once defined, significance more voices to be heard. and emotional connections we make is used as a basis for policy, planning Recently, more critical and between memory and environment— and design decisions. progressive uses of the concept of what I’ll call the “memory/fabric con- There are problems, though, with significance have begun to appear. nection.”2 The connection is what the use and conceptualization of This has corresponded with a shift in allows old buildings to be seen as significance. The overriding one is the core purpose of the field from sources of wonder, documents about that the preservation field fails to fully simply preserving material fabric to the past, or ways to reform wayward appreciate its contingent nature. the more complicated tasks of citizens and advance political causes. By making the fixing of places and preserving the significance of fabric The rich relationship between their meaning the primary emphasis and places. In this regard, the point of memory and built fabric has con- of preservation, we have unduly objec- this essay is not just to noodle around cerned such diverse scholars, designers tified and scientized our understanding with the significance concept, but to and practitioners as Bachelard, Boyer, of memory and historicity. Since revisit the questions of why we Halbwachs, Hayden, J.B. Jackson, significance is the field’s primary tool preserve and what theories inform Lowenthal, Lynch, Nora, Rossi, for doing this, it is worthwhile to our decisions. As such, it may serve Ruskin, and dozens of other anthro- break down the problem. as the prelude to proposing ways to pologists, geographers, sociologists, First, significance has too often retool this important concept. historians, architects and planners. been used as a blunt instrument— These writers have celebrated the or worse, a black box. Judgments Why We Preserve wonder we find in old buildings, and about significance are narrowly At the nineteenth-century roots of also mapped society’s uses of the drawn, pegged closely to the archi- the field, the goals of historic preser- material past. But the preservation tectural history canons and historical vation were curatorial and memorial: field has not always availed itself of associations validated by academics. to represent aspects of the past for continuing scholarship on the subject, As a field, preservation has shown contemporary society through often simply looking to find validation little appetite for thinking critically the preservation of physical remains. in it, and too rarely opening itself to about significance, or theorizing a Today, however, historic preservation self-critique. The question we should way of handling significance.1 has expanded to encompass a number ask more aggressively concerns the Instead, it has tended to rely on a of different agendas: developers proper balance between two standard of self-evidence similar to seeking profits in adaptive-reuse approaches: shaping buildings and that used by U.S. Supreme Court projects; community advocates places in the physical sense (protecting, Justice Potter Stewart in 1964 to (wealthy or disadvantaged) attempting restoring, reconstructing, tearing define pornography and obscenity: to block undesirable development; down, etc.), and assuming these mate- “I know it when I see it.” anti-sprawl advocates lobbying for a rial efforts tacitly shape memory; and more sustainable world; cities seeking concerning ourselves with reshaping Top: Pueblo Bonita at Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. new heritage tourism attractions to memory, and using buildings and Photo by author. promote economic development; and, places as a means to this end. Bottom: Fajada Butte at Chaco Canyon. of course, myriad social groups pursu- As the preservation field became Photo by author. ing specific historical and memorial professionalized over the twentieth 64 Mason / Fixing Historic Preservation Research & Debate century, it has overemphasized the fabric side of the memory/fabric con- nection.3 The reasons for this focus are clear: the scientific methods and objective standards used to treat fabric gave legitimacy. Specialized knowledge about materials and decay gave the new profession an area of activity distinct from that of architects, plan- ners, historians, and others concerned with the built environment. The result has been a dominant preserva- tionist mentality of fixing things, liter- ally and metaphorically: fixing broken buildings and deteriorating structures, gentrifying downcast historic districts, standing in the path of bulldozers, and (not least) fixing the meaning of preserved buildings and sites. In the last decade or so, an alterna- tive view has started to gain ascen- dancy. It considers the raison d’être of historic preservation to be the cultiva- tion of memory, and it argues that techniques to protect fabric are simply one means to achieve this. Whatever additional benefits flow from preser- vation, the new thinking goes— significance—which is that as an in explaining how society’s contemp- well-preserved buildings and artifacts, expression of cultural meaning, it must orary use of historic preservation profits to investors, a healthier be expected to change, involve multi- is related to contemporary social downtown, a beautiful landscape, an valence and contention, and be contin- issues—for instance, the burgeoning ecologically more sustainable city— gent on time, place, and other factors.5 presence of African-American the core benefit is the cultivation of Preservation theory traditionally histories in U.S. public memory of the society’s collective memory. Fabric is doesn’t deal with this reality. It needs post-Civil-Rights-era generation. essential to sustaining memory. to be re-“fixed” to embrace cultural According to sociologist Maurice change and social process (the driving Trouble-Shooting “Significance” Halbwachs: “[I]t is the spatial image forces behind significance), and this is Significance is shorthand for the alone that, by reason of its stability, a whole lot different from arresting meanings of a place, and the ways a gives us an illusion of not having decay. We can predict that collective place is made useful—a sort of mission changed through time and of retriev- memory will change, though we can’t statement about why a place should be ing the past in the present.”4 But to predict how it will change. preserved. “Statements of significance” the alternative view, material matters Contrast this with the theories occupy the central position in have now become the tail that is underlying fabric-centered planning and decision-making models wagging the dog. preservation: physical scientific laws widely used in the preservation field.6 In other worlds, preservation’s documenting unidirectional change Like all definitions useful in policy- “fixing” mentality, rooted in the fabric- (things fall apart) and enabling making, significance reduces the centered traditions of the field, has prediction of outcomes. The fixing complexity of a situation so that logical gotten transferred to how we think mentality, though it works very well decisions can be made and