The Pendulum of Preference and America’s Historic Districts

The Pendulum of Preference and America’s Historic DistrictsRaleigh Keynote NotesSeptember 22, 2014Pratt Cassity

My biases:

I prefer local planning, activities, politics and action. I

often feel when discussions of local issues elevate themselves to

the national arena you begin to have diluted programs,

politicized reactions and loss of regional or unique local

character.

I prefer collaboration over conflict.

Inclusiveness over exclusion.

Predictability over surprises.

I prefer the Wise reuse of existing buildings and sensitive

removal of urban fabric or careful management of resources that

add to the hard to quantify “sense of place”

I could show you any number of images tonight of the “look” of what is

being built in historic districts today across the U.S. – but we

might be here all night as we all know those images, good, bad and

ugly proliferate the web and are easily obtained by almost anyone to

prove a point. Legitimate or not.

What I will demonstrate tonight is the empirical (or measurable)

“proof,” if you will, that design review (that is what your HDC and

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other overlays do) as an economic protection tool and as a perpetuator

of historic (existing) remains one of the most powerful tools in the

municipal stockpile to manage growth and change that is intrusive and

assure that incongruous additions to special character areas (historic

districts being one of those) are abated.

I will also make some observational thoughts based on my 30 years of

experience dealing with academia and its ever-expanding scholarship in

the area of managing existing historic resources and redevelopment in

historic districts (or greyfields). I also bring insight from

participating directly in the National Historic Preservation Program

through the partnership between all government and all sector levels:

the Federal (NPS and Advisory Council) State (SHPOs and Statewides)

and Local (review boards, commissions, non-profits and local economic

revitalization programs).

My observations will reveal that infill and additions to historic

buildings and districts have been an ongoing evolutionary process as

are the decisions about what qualifies as compatible. Compatibility has

behaved in an evolving manner partly because determinations of

compatibility are predicated on personal preference, individual discovery and

creative expression that is forever in flux. Trends in style, fashion,

architecture, graphics and other

design arts, by nature, change

regularly and very often build

upon or react against the trends

that preceded them. This is not a

preservation thing – it is a

societal thing peculiar to humans. It

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is like a giant pendulum being moved by forces of individual and

collective choices and temporal events.

Of all the things in architectural conservation, that concept has

remained true – most people really like the old stuff now but have

almost always disagreed on what they think should go next to, between

and across the street from the old stuff universally agreed on what

goes in between it all…. I will paraphrase President Lincoln by

reminding you that “you can convince all of the people some of the time, and some of

the people all of the time, but you cannot convince all of the people all of the time.” This

holds true for taste, personal preference and creative expression.

I also would like to paraphrase an early National Preservation leader

and personal mentor, the wise North Carolina pragmatist...Bob Stipe

from Chapel Hill … “these are reasonable issues upon which reasonable people can

reasonably disagree.”

An interesting hiccup in this debate of styles over form has occurred

in my own backyard with a discussion of “NEO-GEORGIAN Revival” as the

preferred infill solution on the UGA campus and on many other college

campuses. For any number of institutions, they've been at the heart

of this question which has bedeviled presidents, trustees' building

committees, architects, alumni-magazine editors, and everyone else:

Must a college's new buildings look like its old buildings?

Many, many people think they should. Intuitively, that seems to make

sense—and perhaps, in fact, it does, in some small settings. But the

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campuses of Jefferson's masterpiece (and US NHL in Charlottesville)

has its own share of bad buildings that were designed to imitate or

blend in with their older neighbors. Some of these copycat buildings

are merely bad in an ordinary background-noise sort of way, but some

of them are cartoon-grade terrible, especially those from the 1950s

and 60s. And just about all of them, it seems to me, are

intellectually indefensible.

I also hope to show tonight the impact of about 100 years of very

active local preservation in the US and over 50 years of American

Landmarking and later National Register programs administered through

the states. I will show the direct connections between our viewpoints

(that is American) and 18th and 19th century Western European and

Mediterranean architectural and urban design philosophies and

theories. Historic preservation (the very act of identifying,

retaining, reoccupying and making a profit from old things) has had an

effect on what the current generation of thinkers and do-ers feel and

believe.

The movement itself has created a preference for nostalgia, for

patina, for cobwebs and dust. The vintage photographs, roughhewn

timbers and exposed brick restaurants as well as the Ye Olde Timey

renaissance fairs, battle re-enactments and gusseted and pantalooned

tour guides at any number of American historic villages –

and even graphic design are all part of this phenomenon … and they are

here to stay. The public’s appetite for the vintage has increased

Even in the iconic stadia of American Sports – we saw what building in

context in Baltimore did to other copycat contextual design, it

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shipped it to Arlington Texas between Ft worth and Dallas, next to the

interstate, six flags over Texas and the Cowboys stadium – hardly an

urban brick warehouse context. In Texas it is out of context, BUT

WECOMED, simply due to a preference for the old fashioned stadium look

established by Camden Yards.

Revivalists, reproduction designers and revisionists are alive, well

and profiting. In the design arts they have been called post-

modernists, neo traditionalists, classicists, historicists, new

urbanists, historicized designers, fogeyists, or contextualists.

Whatever you call it – the look and the practice is very much a part

of the contemporary American landscape and is part of our collective

urban narrative.

A review of current publications provides ample architectural evidence

that "period" style new structures that are monumental or landmark

icons and is readily accepted as a contemporary building practice. The

enthusiastic support for historic preservation, frequently resulted in

an expanded line of restoration products that had the unintended

effect of making replication easier than ever. (Illinois Design

Review/Guidelines Manual Mike Jackson)

The neo-traditional town planning movement is yet another

manifestation of the return to the principles which created our

historic environments, not as an ill-conceived replication, but as an

honest modern understanding of the city building practice that matured

over the last two thousand years.

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All of this is being said I hope to frame tonight’s discussion and

shine more light on the reasons behind the seemingly polar opposite

viewpoints that can be summarized in two age old questions:

1. Should new buildings look like older buildings and appear to be

more traditional in historic districts; or

2. Should new structures appear like they are clearly new buildings

and follow essential historic urban form guidelines but allow

latitude in architectural vocabulary? ***

***NOTE: The less-traditional properties that may have a more

contemporary appearance have been falsely labeled “modern” – in

this discussion that term means something completely different

when you are referring to architectural styles and design

periods. So I hope we can avoid using it tonight to mean

structures that are less-traditional in appearance.

Ultimately it comes down to the difference between:

1. the stylistic or thematic expressions applied to building forms

and shapes (this is often called “Motif, style, ornamentation,

detail and/or exterior visual character”

and

2. Those shapes and forms in isolation … detail-less and without

stylistic preferences. Generally the placement on the parcel of

theses shapes and forms comes into play, so let’s call this

“URBAN FORM”

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Urban form concerns have consistently outweighed stylist expression in

determining whether a new building is compatible or not. Most

planners, professional preservationists and academicians prefer a more

contemporary architectural vocabulary. Quite a few comments were made

when Andreas Duany appeared on the cover of Preservation Magazine in the

1990s for the work at Seaside and the birth of new urbanism. Many of

the preservation movement’s leaders felt that his design practices

encouraged conjecture and conveyance of a false sense of history.

Ultimately his traditional approach was viewed by some as being a

heretical notion that denies citizens a truly “Authentic” experience.

Think what you wish, but this was one of the dominant founding

precepts of the movement and many held (and still do hold) it dear. It

wasn’t something that the US Park Service just dreamed up. It and

other preservation treatments and approaches have evolved over time

from earlier movements, especially archaeology and art restoration.

These were developed long before the National Historic Preservation

Act of 1966.

Spending the past 25 year traveling to local historic districts all

across the US you find that in almost every portion of the country,

the preference for a particular motif, style, detail or exterior

treatment varies widely from person to person, community to community

and designer to designer. That is an important distinction that will

become clear in a moment.

The particular school, vocabulary or style that a building expresses

is most often referred to as a personal preference or individual

taste. HDCs are constantly warned not to be taste commissions or

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style police. This is due to the legal precedents and a legislative

mandate to avoid arbitrariness or capriciousness. They and other

municipal regulatory boards are compelled to be OBJECTIVE and always

try to steer clear of even coming close to SUBJECTIVITY. Personal

preferences move into the area of subjectivity; while urban form is

measurable, less arbitrary and therefore more objective.

Municipal Planning processes have been proven to be effective and

legally defensible protectors of consistent urban form, however the

legal risks of being seen as capricious sharply increases when style

and self-expression begin to be regulated. Peter Drucker very

famously said (and it has been appropriated by any number of

politicians since then), that “if you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it,”

This holds true in quasi-judicial decisions made by appointed local

boards. American urban form usually follows very traditional and

exacting historic settlement patterns and can be quantified and

measured in mathematical or empirical ways. Stylistic preferences are

less concrete and more fluid and ephemeral. From a legal point of

view, that makes Urban Form more legally defensible than stylistic or

thematic designs.

The design elements of form, massing, scale, proportion, roof shape

placement and orientation are infinitely more legally defensible based

on precedents and Constitutional issues related to “TAKINGS” “DUE

PROCESS” “FAIRNESS and EVENESS” all being established through

“landmark” decisions of the Supreme Courts and other appellate bodies.

Urban form can be regulated without arbitrariness, while the elements

of style, embellishments, ornament and sometimes even color become

problematic. The courts have consistently upheld the regulation of

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new buildings in special character areas within limits. Those limits

are usually specified in state enabling legislation and through

community consensus.

That said, there are a few historic districts where stylistic concerns

are very important,

those districts built in a single predominant style (Santa Fe –

often called replication),

where the community developed along the prescripts of a master

plan (Santa Barbara, Coral Gables – often called new towns,

garden cities or neighborhood enclaves, master-planned projects),

Or when a thematic result is desired (Williamsburg, Sturbridge

Village – generally called historicism).

In our capitalistic society, ultimately matters of personal preference

and urban form are given less credence by the more objective and

measurable ECONOMIC IMAPCTS from historic district management and

regulatory tools.

What do the economists say about HD protection?

In study after study (many of them having their origin and

corroborating evidence from studies here in NC), show that National

Register listing alone stabilizes unpredictable, plummeting or spiking

property valuations; local district regulation when coordinated with

zoning, subdivision regs and building codes, results in slowly

accelerating and predictable increases in property values. None of

the studies to my knowledge have looked at the effect of imposing

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stylistic preferences on districts as opposed to creating a more

flexible approach to architectural expression.

However, it has been shown that when property is similarly developed

or redeveloped in the same urban design framework (whether through

master planning or form, size, shape regulations) the same stabilizing

and then predictable increase is observed. These studies have been

done in areas with covenants and studies have been conducted that

ultimately proved cities like Houston where a convenience store is

next to a car dealership is next to multi-family apartments is next to

a single family bungalow – property values tend to plummet. This

should lead one to surmise that property value protection that comes

from design review overlays is more related to form than style. In

fact the form based code advocates say that it is ALL about form. They

say that function is not that important to positive and predictable

returns from economic investment. However, tonight’s discussion

should be less about use and function and more about form and

appearance. (Rypkema et al.)

I have been repeating these terms often call design elements (size,

shape, scale, form, mass, placement) as a mantra. Those are not terms

that developed easily or immediately in the history of the

architectural conservation movements of Europe or in the new world.

They are the proven components of successful urban design and

architectural compatibility. Carefully managing change of those

characteristics or elements of design …..no matter if the district is

made up of eclectic architectural styles that span many eras or if it

is like the Santa Fe model that is “stylistically pure,” …. Result in

more even-handed, consistent, and predictable urban growth.

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What has been observed in America’s historic districts is that a

positive economic response has occurred when either a more traditional

(or classic) infill solution is inserted into a district or a more

contemporary (less-traditional) solution is built. It is the building

envelope that is occupied by the structures that matters: their set

back, their height, the roof pitch, the window placement.

In architectural conservation circles and other design arts this is

called “the level of intervention” with sensitive intervention being

the most preferred state (English Heritage, Sir Derek Lindstrum, York

Institute of Advances Architectural Studies).

What has been written in the literature and the academic journals

proves a variety of approaches to building compatibly within historic

districts, setting areas:

Ray Worksett in his 1969 Conservation manual: The Character of Towns says

that if new buildings adhere to some basic similarities then

compatibility can be assured.

1. Building Line (set back)

2. Building Height and skyline

3. Width of the Unit compared to its height

4. Quality of detailing and materials

5. Proportion of Window to wall

6. Lot coverage (footprint)

Alice Bowsher in her 1978 guide for Design Review in Historic Districts points to

two options and perhaps a third for building in historic settings:

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The first question that must be addressed is this

1. Can contemporary design be built? She points out that advocates

believe is contributes to vitality and cultural continuity they

argue that if the new building acts as a “then the integrity of

both the new and the old are compromised. Imitation detracts from

authentic buildings, misleads the trained eye and in functions

like drive-in banks and gas stations it is ludicrous.

2. Can new buildings be considered appropriate if they borrow

elements and stylistic features as reproduction of another

period? Some who hold this view contend that few architects have

the skill to relate contemporary design to the other styles in

the district therefore it is best protected through the use of

period motifs.

3. She however goes on (and remember this is 1978) to say that a

continuum between more traditional and more contemporary should

be allowed and a particular type or style should not be dictated.

(the arc of acceptability)

Norman Tyler in the 1999 text: Historic Preservation: An Introduction to Its History,

Principles, and Practice terms the options for additions to a historic

district as:

1. Matching

2. Compatible

3. Contrasting

The breadth of writing about infilling range from the early

contemporary works (and more recent) from Brent Brolin1 (like The Failure 1 The Uses of Architectural Ornament.An iBook (for iPad) to be published soon. Includes hundreds of illustrations, plus animated movies.

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of Modern Architecture in 1979 and from the Preservation Press Old and New

Architecture: Design Relationship edited by Paul Goldberger in 1981, to Steven

Semes (2009) The Future of the Past: A Conservation Ethic for Architecture, Urbanism, and

Historic Preservation.

The gist of most of them boil down to a simple formula that new

buildings in historic districts can do one of three things:

1. Blend in with their neighbors

2. Be hidden from their neighbors

3. Or stand out and celebrate their differentness.

Michael Davies a British architect and a caseworker for the Society

for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) in Design in Historic

Environment (www.buildingconservation.com) lists his range of

interventions as

1. Pastiche

2. Traditional

3. Subtle

4. Modern

5. Arrogant

The Designer’s Eye: Problem-Solving in Architectural Design (New York: W.W. Norton, 2002). Architectural Ornament: Banishment and Return (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001) The Battle of St. Bart's: A Tale of the Material and the Spiritual (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1988). Flight of Fancy: The Banishment and Return of Ornament (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985). Sourcebook of Architectural Ornament, with Jean Richards, (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1982). Architecture In Context: Fitting New Buildings with Old (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1980). The Failure of Modern Architecture (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1976).

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Steven Semes, noted American classicist, adds his list of intervention

“food groups” as

1. Historicism

2. Literal Replication

3. Invention within a Style

4. Abstract Reference

5. Intentional Opposition - Steven Semmes refers to a particular

abhorrent (in my opinion) attempt to make changes in existing

environments – his phrase for it (and it mostly applies to

additions to historic buildings) is INTENTIONAL OPPOSITION. This

is rarely viewed as an appropriate historic preservation

solution, however it is viewed very often as a completely

adequate and sometimes much lauded creative expression. As long

as this dilemma exists we have this question forever surfacing

between the trained designers and the avocational preservations.

A UNESCO Study Affected Variables on Successful Infill Design in Urban Historic

Context2 comes these factors:

1. Replication

2. Facsimile

3. Correlation

4. Simile

5. Metaphor

6. Contrast

2 Arts and Design Studies www.iiste.org, ISSN 2224-6061 (Paper) ISSN 2225-059X(Online)Vol 3, 2012

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I think you now see that this bouncing back from revival style, to

non-revival, replication to differentiation leaves historic

Preservation (Captial H, Captial P) in a position that might sometimes

confuse the avocational preservationist.

It obviously leads to the question:

WHAT IS THE PREFFERRED PRESERVATION SOLUTION?

The trend to embrace traditional design as an appropriate way to

infill districts has been slow to emerge among the professional

preservationists. It has picked up speed in recent years.

Style, tastes, preferences, choices are now a full pendulous swing, it

can be seen as an arc of acceptability, … still few commissions

REQUIRE a particular expressionist appearance except the ones I’ve

mentioned earlier.

The arc is the CHOICE part of our democratic process of zoning

overlays. It is the area in which the designer and the property owner

can express their own flair – much like gardening and landscape design

(which is rarely nor successfully regulated).

We have all these districts out there managing change and approving

infill and they all vary in what is being proposed and ultimately what

is being built. You now might ask several questions:

Is there a shared characteristics between all the regulatory

programs and managed districts? The answer is YES: It IS THE

PROTECTION OF URBAN FORM. 15

Why aren’t HDCs regulating more intensely the architectural

vocabulary, the ornamental details of new infill, why do they

instead focus on the broader notion of architectural freedom and

creative expression?

The answer may surprise some of you. First of all replication

(especially required reproduction infill, is EXPENSIVE. A poor job at

reproduction is much more egregious to some than a poor job at

contemporary infill. More deeply the answer lies in the attitudes of

design theorists on a much different level of design discussions than

those that occur in America’s average towns. It has its basis in

academic circles and centers for the design arts (as seen in New York,

Chicago, Miami and Los Angeles). It is in fact connected (ever so

slightly) to the proper use of the term MODERRNISM. The Le Corbusier,

Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, and Frank Lloyd Wright versions of

Modernism, and for that matter knowledge, moves forward by the

introduction of new material, new findings, change and advances –

rejecting the past. This is part of our western academic moorings. It

is especially ingrained in the architectural and urbanistic thinking

that was happening in late 18th century and 19th century Western Europe

and the Mediterranean countries.

Stewart Brand (editor of Whole Earth Catalogue), author of How Buildings

Learn, observes “It used to be that old buildings were universally

understood to be less valuable than new. Now it is almost universally

understood that old buildings are more valuable than new.” The work of

historic preservationists has greatly contributed to this ideological

reversal.

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Brand credits the writings of French archeologist A.N. Didron and

English romantics John Ruskin and William Morris for establishing the

underlying philosophies of the current preservation movement. Didron’s

ideas expressed in Bulletin Archeologique (1839) continue to serve as a

maxim for modern preservationists. Didron writes, “It is better to

preserve than to repair, better to repair than to restore, better to

restore than to reconstruct.”

Ruskin builds on these ideas in The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1848). In

this text, Ruskin cautions against the dangers of falsifying history

through restoration. According to Ruskin restoration, “means the most

total destruction which a building can suffer: a destruction out of

which no remnants can be gathered: a destruction accompanied with

false description of the thing destroyed.” In 1877, Morris attempts to

put these theories into practice by founding the Society for the

Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB), thus initiating England’s

preservation movement.

Despite the recommendations from Ruskin and Morris to preserve rather

than restore historic structures, this method does not become common

practice until the 20th century. Brand terms the opposing methods of

restoration versus preservation as “scrape” versus “anti-scrape.”

Brand writes, "In the intensely public debate it was Victorian

“scrape” versus Ruskin’s and Morris’s “anti-scrape” – tear off the

plaster to expose ancient stones (even if they were plastered

originally) versus Leave the Building Be, including the original

plaster and everything that was added later to keep the building

working. “Scrape” won the 19th century, “anti-scrape” the 20th."

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Basic intervention theories of historic preservation are framed in the

dualism of the retention of the status quo versus a "restoration" that

creates something that never actually existed in the past. John Ruskin

was a strong proponent of the former sense, while his contemporary,

Viollet-le-Duc, advocated for the latter instance. Viollet-le-Duc

wrote that restoration is a "means to reestablish [a building] to a

finished state, which may in fact never have actually existed at any

given time." The type of restoration employed by Viollet-le-Duc, in

its English form as Victorian restoration, was decried by Ruskin as "a

destruction out of which no remnants can be gathered: a destruction

accompanied with false description of the thing destroyed."

This argument is still a current one when restoration is being

considered for a building or landscape. In removing layers of history

from a building, information and age value are also removed which can

never be recreated. However, adding features to a building, as

Viollet-le-Duc also did, can be more appealing to modern viewers.

In the United States most preservationists continue to adhere to the

“anti-scrape” method as outlined in The Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for

Rehabilitation. This document first published in 1976 has undergone

subsequent revisions. It continues to set the rehabilitation standards

that building owners and designers must follow in order to receive

government incentives such as tax credits.

It contains the PESKY Standard 9 – the contemporary yet compatible

one. This is where so many preservationists base their ideas about

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infill however these are guidelines about rehabilitation and

additions, not particularly infill.

The 1964 Venice Charter, the foundation of post-war preservation theory and

practice, promulgated worldwide to this day by UNESCO. The charter

declared that additions to historic monuments “must be distinct from

the architectural composition and must bear a contemporary stamp”.

but the main intent of the provision was to prevent kitsch –

including uninformed “traditional” design intended to make

the building “look more historic than it actually was,”

In the United States, the spirit of the Venice Charter is

embodied in the Secretary of the Interior's Standards for Rehabilitation,

first issued by the National Park Service in 1977 and last

revised in 1995. In addition to some sensible guidance, the

Standards include this problematic requirement:

"The new work shall be differentiated from the old and shall be compatible with

the massing, size, scale, and architectural features to protect the historic

integrity of the property and its environment."

Contemporary

Adjective

1. existing, occurring, or living at the same time; belonging to the same

time:

“Newton's discovery of the calculus was contemporary with that of

Leibniz.”

2. of about the same age or date:

“A Georgian table with a contemporary wig stand.”

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3. of the present time; modern:

“A lecture on the contemporary novel.”

– derived in part from what the styles and preferences are at any given

period. What is the look of most of the building that is occurring outside

HDs, then that is what the professional reviewers will unintentionally use to

influence on their particular interpretation of the word “contemporary” if

that is traditional….then contemporary will include traditional options,

postmodern – then there is likely to be more post-modernism appearing in the

HDs.

Compatible –

Adjective

1. capable of existing or living together in harmony:

“The most compatible married couple I know.”

2. able to exist together with something else:

“Prejudice is not compatible with true religion.”

3. consistent; congruous (often followed by with):

“His claims are not compatible with the facts.”

That ARC OF ACCEPTABILITY has certainly widened its swing in recent

times but it still embraces variety and diversity, not dictated

stylistic solutions. SHPOS, the NPS and many academic programs

encourage thinking to occur at that contemporary end of the swing

rather than the Classical or revival end of the arc.

Now at the local level we see even more variability. In larger

communities with more architects, those places that might have a more

literate and artistic demographic, you see more contemporary and

creative design solutions than in places where they have more of a

contractor – design/build environment. In those places you see more 20

scaled down vernacular traditional solutions. Is one better than the

other? I think not. Is it the community’s right to choose – you bet

it is! This is what this discussion is about.

Additionally it proves that The PROCESS works as long as you have

local consensus about the

direction things are going.

That form, scale and massing

are probably more integral to

compatibility than style,

motif, ornament and details.

URBAN FORM is the name of the

game no matter what clothes you dress it in.

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