How much preservation is too much?

General Casey

First Sergeant
Joined
Jan 26, 2016
Location
Massachusetts
So, first off, I am a big supporter of preservation and preservation organizations. But it got me wondering the other day about how much is too much?

The way I look at it is that everything, whether it be land or a building, is historic.

I actually had this occur in my community recently when the town decided to demolish a playground that had been built in the 1980s and abandoned due to chemicals in the wooden structures a few years later. The playground sat abandoned in the woods until a few months ago when it was demolished. People got upset and said the community was erasing history. Well, yes technically it's historic, but what purpose does saving and preserving an old playground have? What does it teach us about our past?

That's what I think a preserved space should do. Now, we should definitely preserve places like Shiloh and Gettysburg, but what about smaller battlefields that are practically unheard of? Let's say that there was a battle in which 200 Union soldiers fought 200 Confederates for a few hours. Casualties were light and the action is rarely mentioned in the official records. Does the land where that battle took place be forever preserved from development? Land is always going to be in need and there is only so much of it. Should hundreds of thousands of dollars - even millions - be spent to preserve a few acres that no very few people know about and would possibly even visit? Or do a few markers and interpretive panels tell the story just as well? What does that small little battle tell us about the war?

Should preservation groups and organizations focus their money on high target acquisitions and properties that are important?

Again, I fully support preservation, but I am also a realist. I got asked to give money to a group that was trying to preserve an old factory building that had fallen into disrepair and had become a safety hazard and was slated to be demolished. A group wanted to buy the building and rehab it and needed three or four million dollars for the project. In my opinion that was money that could have gone to more desirable preservation sites.

What do you all think? Is there a point where preservation just gets to be too much?
 
So much has already been lost . If there was a significant skirmish or event perhaps a small amount of land could be set aside for a marker . I completely understand where you are coming from . I have supported the CWT for many years and I think they do a great job . I appreciate it when they are able to buy up private land and buildings in such places as Gettysburg and restore the land close to its 1863 appearance . I can't relate to saving a 1980s playground . There is a difference between nostalgia and historic sites and just because something is old doesn't mean it is worth saving .
 
Is there a bit of elitist view here. Preserving Civil War sites = good, other sites not so good.Who gets to decide what is historic or worth preserving?

a playground that had been built in the 1980s and abandoned due to chemicals in the wooden structures a few years later.

A playground with contaminated wood may not seem deserving to us, but to others it might be.
 
You have described the problem. Some buildings and sites are truly historic due to significant things that happened there. Many others are equally old, but have no other claim to fame. Many people would say that they are just old. How do we differentiate between the two? Between historic and merely old? There lies the conundrum.
 
@major bill I'm not saying we shouldn't be preserving other sites that aren't related to the Civil War, but the way I look at it, everything is historic to somebody. The example I gave with the small insignificant skirmish, let's say my great great great grandfather was one of the participants, I might be one of the driving forces behind the site since I have a personal connection to it. Something like that might be beneficial to have a marker and some interpretive signage.

@Kurt G I agree with just because it's old doesn't mean it's worth saving. I do enjoy seeing historic buildings being reused for commercial or residential space (my community is doing that with an old school from the 1900s) but also older buildings have maintenance issues, building code issues, etc, which often times costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to repair. Often times it's just easier to knock down and build anew.
 
@Patrick H Well said. I used to work at a historic house museum. It was located in a very historic community in Massachusetts, was built by the local minister who was active in the Patriot movement during the Revolution, where he witnessed the first shots of the war, and was occupied by two famous writers - Emerson and Hawthorne. That was a house that deserved to be saved.

Now we have homes preserved because a celebrity was born there. I feel like in 50 years we will have Tom Hanks' boyhood home preserved just because someone will claim it's historic. Is it interesting? Yes. Historic? Not so much.

It reminds me of when they were redoing the Visitor Center at Gettysburg. Supposedly preservationists got upset because the building that housed the Cyclorama was from the 1950s and they thought that it should be preserved on a battlefield from the 1860s.
 
@Patrick H Well said. I used to work at a historic house museum. It was located in a very historic community in Massachusetts, was built by the local minister who was active in the Patriot movement during the Revolution, where he witnessed the first shots of the war, and was occupied by two famous writers - Emerson and Hawthorne. That was a house that deserved to be saved.

Now we have homes preserved because a celebrity was born there. I feel like in 50 years we will have Tom Hanks' boyhood home preserved just because someone will claim it's historic. Is it interesting? Yes. Historic? Not so much.

It reminds me of when they were redoing the Visitor Center at Gettysburg. Supposedly preservationists got upset because the building that housed the Cyclorama was from the 1950s and they thought that it should be preserved on a battlefield from the 1860s.
To me the old Cyclorama building looked terrible , but there were some who wanted it preserved because of some claimed architectural significance . In Traverse City , Michigan they have repurposed an old asylum into various restaurants , shops and breweries . The exterior of the buildings looks almost the same as they did when built in the 1880s . This project is still ongoing and has historic tours and is a very popular tourist site .
 
@Patrick H

It reminds me of when they were redoing the Visitor Center at Gettysburg. Supposedly preservationists got upset because the building that housed the Cyclorama was from the 1950s and they thought that it should be preserved on a battlefield from the 1860s.

I was under the impression that preservationists wanted to preserve the old Cyclorama buiding because it was designed by a famous architect and because Ike Eisenhower commissioned it.

Anyway, I personally thought that the old Cyclorama building looked horrendous.
 
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If you Google the architect "Frank Lloyd Wright," you will find a bunch of articles about people who want to tear down Frank Lloyd Wright houses across the country. Some of these houses were in awful shape because they weren't well taken care of, and the real estate on which they sit are now worth more than the house. There have been some controversies in regards to tearing down these houses.

Well, in Western PA, we are the home of Wright's creation "Fallingwater." Some people travel to the Pittsburgh area just to see this building. So, this set of entrepreneurs in Western PA are purchasing the Frank Lloyd Wright homes that people want to tear down in other states, transporting them to PA, making them livable on cheap Pennsylvania lots, and then renting them out as rental lodging to Frank Lloyd Wright fans who travelled to PA to view Fallingwater. So, the buildings don't get completely torn down, and the owners of the prime real estate where they once stood now get to use this real estate for other purposes.
 
A playground with contaminated wood may not seem deserving to us, but to others it might be.

Then those others can pool their money together and buy it, if they wish to preserve it, they are free to do so......…

I suspect if they were the highest bidder, it would be theirs.

Whether people are willing to pony up their own money, seems to do a good job of weeding out frivolous preservation attempts, because if enough people deem it worthy the funds can be raised. If not it shows a lack of interest in its preservation...…..
 
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It is a dilemma sometimes and often is taken to what I consider extremes. We've had a number of local cases regarding old buildings but also things like trees. Some years back it was decided that the library needed to be modernized and expanded. In order to do so two trees had to be removed. Both had been planted in the 1960s. Well, people actually tied themselves to the trunks and one guy climbed up in the branches and wouldn't come down because he thought we should save "the ancient Ginko." Last year, some wealthy people donated a lot of money to have a city Japanese garden re-done by a world-famous creator of traditional Japanese gardens. As with the library, the plan involved removing two Douglas Fir trees that had been planted by school children in the late 1960s. A relatively small group of noisy protestors made such a big deal out of it that the wealthy folks took their money back. Geez, Douglas Fir trees are not rare in Oregon and it's not like they were 500 years old. It was ridiculous to let those people kill off what could have been a world-class project to "save" two ordinary young trees but that's what happened.

In the cemetery preservation field there are those who debate how much is too much and when does preservation become restoration and should we restore anything. Some are real pedants. Their arguments are usually that nothing should be done that isn't 100% historically correct which means no modern products such as glues or special mortars. Some go so far as to say that monuments shouldn't even be cleaned. While I certainly do think careful, professionally-approved products and methods should be employed, I just don't see not trying to preserve historic monuments.

In terms of building preservation, money usually ends up being the ultimate policy maker and if nobody can come up with the millions it would take to restore a structure or outbid the competition then the bulldozers arrive. Regarding buildings, I think @Patrick H summed it up nicely.
 
It is a dilemma sometimes and often is taken to what I consider extremes. We've had a number of local cases regarding old buildings but also things like trees. Some years back it was decided that the library needed to be modernized and expanded. In order to do so two trees had to be removed. Both had been planted in the 1960s. Well, people actually tied themselves to the trunks and one guy climbed up in the branches and wouldn't come down because he thought we should save "the ancient Ginko." Last year, some wealthy people donated a lot of money to have a city Japanese garden re-done by a world-famous creator of traditional Japanese gardens. As with the library, the plan involved removing two Douglas Fir trees that had been planted by school children in the late 1960s. A relatively small group of noisy protestors made such a big deal out of it that the wealthy folks took their money back. Geez, Douglas Fir trees are not rare in Oregon and it's not like they were 500 years old. It was ridiculous to let those people kill off what could have been a world-class project to "save" two ordinary young trees but that's what happened.

In the cemetery preservation field there are those who debate how much is too much and when does preservation become restoration and should we restore anything. Some are real pedants. Their arguments are usually that nothing should be done that isn't 100% historically correct which means no modern products such as glues or special mortars. Some go so far as to say that monuments shouldn't even be cleaned. While I certainly do think careful, professionally-approved products and methods should be employed, I just don't see not trying to preserve historic monuments.

In terms of building preservation, money usually ends up being the ultimate policy maker and if nobody can come up with the millions it would take to restore a structure or outbid the competition then the bulldozers arrive. Regarding buildings, I think @Patrick H summed it up nicely.
The fact that people think trees planted in the 1960s are historical makes me feel very old .
 
Is there a bit of elitist view here. Preserving Civil War sites = good, other sites not so good.Who gets to decide what is historic or worth preserving?

Elites with money and influence. Such as in Chicago where old houses of the wealthy are deemed worthy of preservation but many of the most famous things in the city's history are unworthy of even a marker. Tastemakers like their history respectable--preserve the house where some boring businessman lived but don't even acknowledge that Big Al or Frank McErlane even existed.
 
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I completely agree and have aired the 'can't save everything' thought here in the past. People say so much has been lost...well, a lot has been preserved. People have to move on otherwise, what's even the purpose of remembering the past? I have donated to the old Civil War Trust for preservation but like the OP, I'm also a realist who realizes life has to move forward.
 
Ok, I'm still back with recognizing 1960 and 1980 as ancient past. Ouch. Surely there's a giant mistake somewhere and I'm not that old?

I'm not sure where I stand on some of this. Have to draw the line at playgrounds or really anything after plastic makes an appearance. There are several historic buildings around here, largely ignored. A post Revolution trading post is a mile from here and several old stage stops not far away either- another just went on the list to be demolished. The thing is, when they're gone they're gone. Does any generation have the right to decide what the next might treasure and feel to be important? That's a question, not a judgement.
 
So, I feel the need to talk about something that I read on someone else's blog that made me laugh.

I have an interest in the Battle of the Monongahela (AKA Braddock's Defeat) that happened in the 1750's just outside of Pittsburgh, during the French and Indian War. The French and their Native American allies ambushed and defeated the British. George Washington was an aide-de-camp to the British commander, Edward Braddock. General Braddock died during the retreat. Washington had to oversee Braddock's burial and also lead the retreat since most of the high ranking British officers were killed during the battle.

Anyway, I found this blog for this history enthusiast who visits such battlefields. He visited the site of this battle (Braddock, Pennsylvania) and blogged about it. He posted beautiful maps and described the battle.

And THEN, the blogger complained heartily because "progress" altered the battlefield's original landscape.

I laughed because the "progress" to which this blogger referred was the U.S. STEEL MILL that Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick built on top of the battlefield in the 1880's.

Carnegie and Frick and their associates have been accused of A LOT of things (labor strife, causing the Johnstown Flood, etc). I personally don't think that they lost any sleep over building a steel mill on top of a 1750's battlefield.

By the way, this is Civil War-related because in 1861, Andrew Carnegie was appointed as Superintendent of the Military Railways and the Union Government's telegraph lines in the East. Vast amounts of trees have fallen to produce books about Carnegie's contributions to Union telegraph communications during the War.
 
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