Imaging Offers Options

Technology shifts paradigms, and the recent laser imaging featured on the pages of the New York Times is no exception. The Scottish team's imaging has provided a means to virtually reconstruct damaged edifices and measure the unmeasurable. It is, supposedly, superior to all the technology that was use before it.

However, I am a cynic, and I am specifically cynical that the laser technology is not plagued by some of the same challenges that apply to more traditional methods of envisioning and measuring historic structures. After all, the first measurements derived from observation were derived hundreds of years ago, and those can be highly accurate. Yet they still depend on a standard of measurement based in physical objects, which of course do decay. Likewise, laser technology isn't divorced from the physical realm. Light decays, and its measurements are based on physical standards, which also decay. And of course these machines are operated humans, and humans err.

Translating the Stories of the Dead to the Living

I think too often we forget about all the humans involved in historic preservation, and in the committing of oral and other history to the next generation. Which is why people like Christina Marshall, featured in a Banner-Herald article titled "Athens Cemetery History Set in Stone" should be featured more often.

Too often historic preservation is boiled down to exemplary architecture or even remnants of physical space. Tombstones can certainly take this form, since their history is written more or less upon them. On their face, tombstones are a form of funerary art and they mark the passage of a life. However, tombstones, like most other physical spaces and markers of the past, exist in a context that can be very complex. Without skilled interpreters, or at least passionate ones, this context tends to go unrecognized.

Oconee Hill, like a lot of others of its vintage, has been altered over the years to allow the dead to move for reasons as varied as marital status changes of the survivors, because of other cemeteries changing status, or because of political or social context There are reasons why one grave has an elaborate headstone and another is lost in the undergrowth, or why one is lovingly tended and another is neglected. The space itself tells some of the story, but a historian's voice communicates it more effectively to the fellow living.

$1 Houses!

UC Berkeley has an offer for an enterprising buyer in the San Francisco Chronicle: two turn-of-the-century homes for just $1. Well, and a commitment deposit of $100,000 and a commitment not to destroy any of the surrounding trees.

Actually, this may be a good deal for the buyer (I have my doubts), but it's a terrible deal for historic preservation. As is usually the case, Berkeley wants the land and not the houses. Prohibited, philosophically disinclined, or otherwise limited from demolition, the university offers the houses up for removal. In the process, the houses will be at minimum removed from their historic context -- it's better than demolishing them, but not much. Most likely the houses will suffer significant damage and lose a lot of their historic fabric.

It's too bad Berkeley can't apply some of its famed alternative thinking and figure out a way to incorporate these houses into its campus plan. Surely some departments need office space, or some students need housing. Or, heck, other articles in the Chronicle have been reporting on Berkeley's efforts to find permanent housing for its new President and Provost -- maybe they'd like to move in?

Preservation on its Merritts

I was delighted to see this recent article in the New York Magazine on the Merritt Parkway in Connecticut -- not only is Merritt a pleasure to drive (most of the time), but it remains more or less in historic form. I also really enjoy unconventional preservation challenges, so highways are right up my alley.

The article notes, correctly, that a historic highway is a delicate thing, and it's often undone incrementally with good intentions. A signal upgrade here, a widening there, and suddenly a historic route is unrecognizable as a snarl of traffic or a maze of Jersey barriers.

The Merritt, though, is most distinguished by its historic bridges, which are somewhat likely to be protected if the awareness exists. It's tempting to widen a bridge. It's also very expensive, very complex, and very inconvenient. And if the bridges are also recognized as the architectural gems that they are, perhaps that will be sufficient to aid in their preservation.

Xenophobia or Cultural Bias?

I find the recent New York Times article on the renovations afoot at the Hotel Lambert on the Seine fascinating.

There are the obvious intrigues of historic preservation, such as endless debates about installing elevators, accommodating cars within designs that predate the invention of them by hundreds of years, and so on. But leave it to the french to make the story also about xenophobia and cultural bias.

Naturally, the complaint is that the proposed renovations would threaten the cultural patrimony of France itself. This is generally a good thing to be concerned with, but for two things:

1. The french government has a lot of safeguards, and it appears that the use of a particular architect who is well-versed in just the sort of delicate and complex restoration that is proposed will probably ensure that it is done properly, at least with proper oversight.

2. Similarly histrionic groups said the same thing about Euro Disney. Which, to be fair, is an abomination, but hardly a nefarious mechanism for degrading France's cultural patrimony.

So I suppose I have no idea what to make of the competing sides, except to note that it would be a shame if a proper and well-done restoration were averted due to hysteria.

A Night With Al Capone's Ghost

I've always been fascinated with Alcatraz. Raised on true crime novels about the likes of Machine Gun Kelly, I was fascinated by The Rock from an early age. When I finally got to visit it a few years ago on one of what were then experimental night tours, I felt like I had been there before. It's a interesting site -- people think of the prison, obviously, but it has a lengthy and complex history going back to the colonial era that is evident in the physical attributes of the place.

It's so close to San Francisco that a quick jaunt will allow you to visit and the prisoners could hear the city's parties on major holidays -- yet the tides were so perilous that no one has decisively been known to escape. It's also a big challenge for the National Park Service. Shut down due to the logistics of keeping it supplied and maintained, Alcatraz is a huge and rotting landmark. It is a hell of a challenge, and when you visit you will see entire buildings more or less abandoned to decay.

So I was pleasantly surprised to see the Night in Alcatraz's D Block a Haunting Experience article in the San Francisco Chronicle. While I'm sure there are pitfalls to allowing civilians to maintain machinery, I feel strongly that a landmark like Alcatraz has no hope of surviving without the investment and involvement of the public.

And why does the public invest? Some clearly are invested in heritage. Some must get a thrill. Some are interested in criminal history. What they all seem to have in common is a desire to experience a unique and genuine connection with the place. And by literally interacting with the physical environment of Alcatraz, both the place and the people are altered.

"Permitting Issue" Threatens Unconventional Business

The recent articles about the permitting issue in the Athens Banner-Herald have been raising all kinds of thoughts for me, as a preservationist, and also as someone who's passionate about land use.

For starters, this is the kind of case that gets people worked up about government intervention in people's lives, consistency, fairness, and so on. Jittery Joe's, which I should disclose I am heavily physically dependent on and have been patronizing since 1994, when it was actually run by its founders and not franchised, has been operating the roasting location for at least five years. It has been operating as a roaster with some retail since nearly the beginning. So why is Athens-Clarke County just now swooping in to demand that permits be issued to accommodate the parking that makes the retail possible?

Beyond that, the whole issue is very odd because directly across the street until about five years ago a feed mill operated, and that feed mill functioned with about an equally intensive retail use and with about as little improvement to the parking surfaces in the vicinity. In fact, if you went back 50-some years in the area where the Jittery Joe's roaster is located, you would find virtually all of the businesses in the vicinity operating as some form of factory or production facility with a little retail. There was a feed store, a general store, and a number of farm/well/building material suppliers. And none of them had what Athens-Clarke County would consider a legal parking lot.

So, ad hoc it may be. But the roaster is actually operating in line with the historical land use of the area. Further, the type of building that the roaster occupies is one of the most endangered types of properties -- it is a quasi-agricultural and non-permanent structure fashioned out of tin and brick. It has no chance of becoming a B&B or house museum, has little chance of gaining any kind of statuatory protection, and in general is highly likely to be demolished in favor of more solid and formal structures. So the roaster is one of the few chances that such a building has to continue existing.

Basically, while I get Athens-Clarke County's perspective on the issue, I'd hate to see it cause the roaster to case being viable. It's basically its building's only hope.