Blog #2 - Preservation

While I can't recall anything from earlier years, I do recall many places that I would visit when I lived in Houston, Texas a couple years ago. I was at the University of Houston for a semester and would travel downtown or to the Galleria area. Since I would take the bus I ended up walking around a lot of areas, passing by shops big and small that were of historic presence. Walking into an art supplies store downtown, I was astonished by how very different this was to anything I had seen in Wisconsin. The buildings that were built so long ago were being used for regular shops, so long as a certain portion of things were kept. I remember talking to a lady in the local art store about the building and brought up the intricate outside looking amazing. She mentioned that it a historical building that the city was going to tear down, along with quite a few others, until they decided to keep these pieces up. Very few buildings within that area that are historic are empty, they all are serving a purpose within still being physically standing.

Some buildings that people want to preserve, they are just doing this because it is a building from the past. As I saw in Houston, the city wanted these buildings to still serve a purpose, either as a touring place for visitors to see, or as a restaurant or storefront that has a lot of presence within the community. These are the areas that I feel are important to keep historic buildings, provided they are functionally sound and are safe for the people that enter everyday.

As far as the gender being a woman, Ann Pamela Cunningham, I was shocked a bit. The way she was able to rally people from all parts to start a movement like this is phenomenal. Not many people are able to pull something like that off, especially in those times. Since the National Council for Historic Sites and Buildings of 1947 was established, they have done a lot to help preserve buildings and areas. With federal funding not being supplied since 1998, I think it would be a lot harder for some of these buildings to stay up. It hurts the ones that truly deserve to be up instead of just keeping a building just because it is old. Many people look at the past because they want to hold onto it, at some point though, we need to see what is better for the future of our communities. Change will happen at some point, we can interchange the old with the new in an exciting way for everyone to enjoy I believe.