Historic preservation

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Historic Preservation is the theory and practice of creatively maintaining the historic built environment and controlling the landscape component of which it is an integral part. The Secretary of the Interior of the U.S. government defines the historic environment as districts, sites, buildings, structures, objects, and landscapes which are significant in American history, architecture, archeology, engineering, and culture.

Related Topics:
Historic - Landscape - Secretary of the Interior - U.S. government - District - Site - Building - Structure - Object - American history - Architecture - Archeology - Engineering - Culture

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People practice preservation for many reasons. Preservation helps maintain identity, educates people about history, is an economic tool for planners and governments, and creates dialogues about shared values.

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The creative reuse of obsolete structures dates to the end of the 4th century in Europe, when the Theodosian decrees had rendered pagan temples obsolete, and Christian basilicas began to be built within those that were not demolished. Sacred wells became baptisteries from the 5th century. Creative resuse of historic structures remains at issue today.

Related Topics:
Theodosian decrees - Baptisteries

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In England, Antiquarian interests had been a familiar gentleman's pursuit since the mid 17th century, developing in tandem with the rise in scientific curiosity: Fellows of the Royal Society were often also Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries (Summerson). The UK's Ancient Monuments Act of 1912 officially preserved certain decayed and obsolete structures of intrinsic historical and associative interest, just as Modernism was lending moral authority to destruction of the built heritage in the name of progress. The UK's National Trust began with the preservation of historic houses and has steadily increased its scope. In the UK's subsequent Town and Planning Act (1944) steps were undertaken towards historic preservation on an unprecedented scale.

Related Topics:
Antiquarian - Royal Society - Modernism - Progress - National Trust

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In the US, cultural resistance towards any kind of zoning as a form of intrusive interference, slowed the formation of preservation trusts with a government connection. Though a Ladies' Association had already taken responsibility for the preservation of Washington's Mount Vernon in 1889, the Richmond, Virginia-based Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities was the United States' first statewide historic preservation group. The US National Trust for Historic Preservation, another privately funded non-profit organization, began in 1949 with a handful of privileged structures and has developed goals that provide "leadership, education, advocacy, and resources to save America's diverse historic places and revitalize our communities" according to the Trust's mission statement http://www.nationaltrust.org/about_the_trust/index.html. In 1951 the Trust assumed responsibility for its first museum property, Woodlawn Plantation in northern Virginia. Twenty houses in all have subsequently become part of the National Trust, most of them architecturally elite.

Related Topics:
Mount Vernon - Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities - National Trust for Historic Preservation - Woodlawn Plantation

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In his 1947 essay "The past in the future" Sir John Summerson gave a rough weighted listing of types of buiulding that in certain circumstances may deserve protection. In retrospect they seem self-evident, almost axiomatic, mixing values that were esthetic and "literary" (historic or associative), and they bear quoting, to which a one-word criterion is added to sum each up:

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:#The building which is a work of art: the product of a distinct and outstanding creative mind.

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:#The building which... possesses in a pronounced form the characteristic virtues of the school of design which produced it.

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:#The building which, of no great artistic merit, is either of significant antiquity or a composition of fragmentary beauties welded together in the course of time.

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:#The building which has been the scene of great events or the labours of great men.

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:#The building whose only virtue is that in a bleak tract of modernity it alone gives depth of time.

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