As it has every summer since 1988, The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a private group with an official-sounding name, has released a list of America's most endangered historic sites.
While nobody disputes that certain areas do deserve preservation or the Trust has done good work in protecting them them, many places on the 2012 list have little to do with actual history and much to do with a busy-body attitude that seeks to diminish private property rights and waste tax dollars on dubious "preservation" efforts.
In many cases, this attitude ignores real human needs. Take, for example, one entire urban neighborhood on the list: Atlanta's Sweet Auburn. There's no doubt that the neighborhood has historic significance since Martin Luther King was born and ministered to a church there. But King's birthplace has become a museum and the church -- which looks much like it did in his day -- remains an active congregation. So the Trust has turned its attention to a mostly vacant nearby commercial strip where King and his family probably shopped. Even though the neighborhood lacks a drugstore, coffee bar, supermarket, or sit-down restaurant -- all things private business might well build if preservationists didn't get in the way -- the Trust wants to "protect" it from inappropriate efforts that might bring in such amenities.
Bad as it is, the effort to "defend" Sweet Auburn's residents from the ravages of CVS and Starbucks isn't the worst item on the list. That prize has to go to an "endangered" designation placed on the Princeton New Jersey Battlefield. The battlefield is already a state park. But some local busybodies still want to prevent Princeton University from building some housing in any area near the battlefield because they believe, among other things, that soldiers en route to the battle marched across it. Really.
And some sites aren't historic by any commonly understood definition of the word. Many courthouses in rural Texas (another item on the list of "national treasures") are in poor shape but it's not clear why they're of any national significance -- most have hosted nothing beyond workaday civil and criminal trials and few are architecturally distinguished. There's no reason why Texas taxpayers should do what the trust wants and shovel millions more into "protecting" them if their own counties don't see a value in doing so. Likewise, there's no reason why a building that once housed a gym where boxer Joe Frazier trained is of any importance at all: while Frazier himself does have importance to sports history, it's not typical or expected to preserve sports figures' practice sites so tourists can visit them. They just aren't very interesting. The same goes for utterly ordinary corrugated steel warehouses in the Port of Los Angles and an unexceptional small town in Ohio. Nothing truly historic happened in either place.
In at least one case, the Trust seems to oppose the idea that people should be able to experience the history that it claims to want preserved. A ranch that Theodore Roosevelt once owned may well be a place of historic significance but the Trust wants to "protect" it from a road being build nearby that would allow more people to visit.
In fairness to the Trust, a handful of places on the list such as a house where Malcolm X once lived and a hospital that treated many immigrants on Ellis Island do seem like they're both historic and genuinely endangered. But most of the places on the list are neither endangered nor of any historic significance by any commonly used definition of the term. Things change and the mere fact that some buildings have been around for awhile shouldn't make them public property or much less require that taxpayers shell out to "save" them.
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And another historic steel bridge, the Canterbury-Boscawen bridge is coming down. The Granite State is well on its way to removing all its historic metal truss bridges.
And Mitt Romney was just here too, condemning the stone arch Sawyers bridge in Hillsboro, calling it "The Bridge to Nowhere." $150,000 in TARP money was used to repair it.
So come on down, Eli, the the Granite State where the Tea Party rules! If New Hampshirites want to see heritage, we can always go to.... Vermont!
Hon. Steven W Lindsey
state rep
Keene, NH
The people you are calling busy bodies are historians. They are in the business of preserving the tangible links to our past. I'd say YOU are the busy body in this scenario.
The ridiculous amount of misinformation in this article aside, your apparently intentional misunderstanding of the reasons we preserve our heritage is sad and misguided. You do a disservice to everyone by posting this drivel without any research to support your assertions. And that road that would make the "ranch" more accessible to tourists...tell me Mr. Eli, what ranch, that presumably has surrounding land that makes it a "ranch" where cows might chew grass, for example, would you visit that was developed with a road and buildings (that were built because the road was there)? Context is important, or are you so short-sighted that you believe a high-rise constructed adjacent to the MLK, Jr. house is okay because the house was saved?
The only positive note I can glean from this article is that I'm thrilled you aren't interpreting sites for the NRHP. So many other countries preserve their heritage and manage to be economically viable, pedestrian friendly, attractive to ...who?...right, tourists, and offer affordable public transportation. The U.S. has a severe delusion that "progress" can only happen if something old is heavily modified or wiped out. You're part of that problem. Congratulations.
Sincerely,
"The Historic Preservationist"
http://rstreet.info/
"The R Street of tomorrow will take advantage of multiple modes of transit, a gritty industrial past, and distinct urban form to create a truly unique neighborhood in the City of Sacramento.
They are mostly endangered because the counties don't have the resources to maintain them properly (Marshall, Tx is a great example). Recognition at the national level (through the very program this article criticizes) could provide the critical vetting necessary for these counties to gain access to grant money and donor funds.
I was pretty shocked to see the courthouses included in the list.
What seems to be missing in this years list is the excellent writing that the Trust had prior that did a good job of explaining the threat to the sites, as well as regional vetting of the listings. Given that many regional office staff have been eliminated (and it looks like the writers too), you can see the lack of preservation expertise in the descriptions and the choice of listings.
But that doesn't mean these places are not still endangered, and there are so many more out there. Do your research please.... and realize that America cares little for its past, so it is always a fight to save things.
He served as Vice President of the Heartland Institute, best known for working with Philip Morris to convince people that tobacco isn't harmful and for "proving" that climate change isn't happening, but if it is, it's good for us.
He served as a senior editor at the American Enterprise Institute, noted for having crafted George W. Bush's public policy (we see how *that* turned out) and for snapping up Newt Gingrich after he ended his highly entertaining campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.
He worked as a project manager for the Unisys Corporation, notorious after an FBI investigation uncovered major corruption in its business practices. The settlement of the corruption case required all Unisys employees to get ethics training each year, a practice apparently still in force.
He worked as a speechwriter for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who was twice named one of the "Most Corrupt Members of Congress" by the government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and who killed cats while a medical school student because he was "under pressure to succeed".
Lune
1. The National Trust hasn't received any taxpayer funding since 1996. Its preservation efforts and those of its local partners are entirely funded by membership dues and donations. Eli's just lying when he says that the Trust "waste[s] taxpayer dollars on dubious 'preservation' efforts".
2. Preservation efforts begin at the local level, when people who actually live in an area determine that some part of their area heritage deserves preservation. The Trust then helps these local groups realize their goals. Eli's "busy bodies" live only in his imagination.
3. Sweet Auburn has been a designated historic area since 1976, and it got that designation not because its a strip mall where MLK may have shopped, but because it exemplifies "the flourishing segregated neighborhoods founded by African Americans during the Jim Crow era in the South." The commercial district has lovely old buildings. Nothing in the preservation plans will prevent any particular business from moving into renovated historic structures in the commercial district. In fact, "a drugstore, coffee bar, supermarket, or sit-down restaurant" are just the sorts of businesses that the historic preservation group hopes to attract. Cities all over the US have undertaken efforts to preserve and revitalize their historic commercial districts, with much success. Perhaps Eli doesn't see much value in Sweet Auburn because, after all, it was thrown up by a bunch of blacks.
No room to discuss Eli's other voluminous lies.
Lune