Preservation and a Sense of Orientation for American Cities

Abstract

Imperatives for urban historic preservation in the United States are retaining diverse elements of the past, perpetuating distinctive identities of places, involving amateurs in landscape care, and practicing conservative approach to environmental change. These aspects of the preservation movement were identified by comprehensive survey of historic districts and preservation organizations in the Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco Bay areas. The preservation movement provides sense of by accentuating memory and beauty in the ordinary landscape. THE United States Conference of Mayors sponsored report on historic preservation in 1966. According to the report, the country suffered from a feeling of rootlessness associated with the postwar building boom and high mobility rate. The preservation movement could assuage that feeling and could provide American society with a sense of orientation by using and objects of the past to establish values of time and place.' The report proved to be influential. The National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 incorporated many of its ideas, including the specific charge to create sense of for Americans through the preservation movement, into federal law. In this article, I examine how this charge has been carried out in three metropolises-Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and the San Francisco Bay area. The discussion is based on comprehensive inventory of historic districts and survey of preservation organizations in the central cities, suburbs, and exurbs of these regions. The sense of inspiring present-day efforts at historic preservation differs from the motivations of earlier preservationists, whose main lessons were patriotism and respect for the accomplishments of their forbears.2 In pursuit of goals of stability, identity, and environmental control, current preservationists follow four imperatives: to retain diverse elements of the past, to perpetuate the distinctive identities of places, to involve amateurs in landscape care, and to practice conservative approach to environmental change. In order to understand how these imperatives function in particular places, it is necessary to be knowledgeable about three general, interrelated trends in the preservation movement in recent years. * I acknowledge with gratitude the support provided for this research in 1980-81 by the Maybelle G. McCullough Endowed Fellowship from the American Association of University Women. 1 United States Conference of Mayors, With Heritage So Rich (New York: Random House, 1966), p. 207. 2 David Lowenthal, The American Way of History, Columbia University Forum, Summer 1966, pp. 27-32; and David Lowenthal, The Place of the Past in the American Landscape, in Geographies of the Mind (edited by David Lowenthal and Martyn J. Bowden; New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), pp. 89-117. * DR. DATEL is research associate in the Department of Environmental Design, University of California, Davis, California 95616. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.112 on Wed, 07 Sep 2016 05:16:57 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW An important recommendation in the Conference of Mayors report was the need to consider not only 'proper' historic credentials, but also pleasing appearance and sentiment in designating properties for preservation.3 This advice was heeded. Federal law recognized that the public significance of property could rest on its architectural, historical, cultural, or archaeological qualities. Nearly all local historic-preservation ordinances in the three regions I studied permitted the protection of landscape features for their artistic or affective qualities. Almost two-thirds of the preservation groups surveyed had an interest in architecture and environmental amenity that was equal to or greater than their interest in commemorating historical events or honoring local heroes. A second recommendation was that preservation should not be limited to individual structures but should be involved with areas and districts which contain special meaning for the community.4 Today, several thousand historic districts are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1981 the National Trust for Historic Preservation identified 832 American cities and towns where historic district zoning was in effect.5 The Philadelphia Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area (SMSA) had eighty-five historic districts, the Washington, D.C., SMSA seventy, and the San Francisco Standard Consolidated Area forty-two. Thirteen percent of the District of Columbia, six percent of the City of Philadelphia, and one percent of the combined cities of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose were within historic district