Notes, Blog 1

Kristina Shortt

Why Save the Past?

1. Szczesny-Adams

8/29/2011

Assignment 1:

• Preservation is not only being done by concerned citizens, but by the government as well, the fever for it starting in the mid-1800’s, a defining characteristic of the time
• 1930’s New Deal called for many different types of conservation projects in the hopes to stimulate jobs, thus bringing preservation of buildings into the light again.
• American preservation: 1812 Robert Mills drew up never used plans to reconstruct the Independence Hall steeple, planned to be rebuilt for patriotic reasons
• Mostly women were involved in conservation efforts
• Began with single rooms and small museums, has expanded to include much larger museums and buildings that people use and work in today, also having concern for rural villages, farmland, and other forestry and geological landmarks
• Prosper Merimee (French Monument Service 1834) attempted to distinguish restoration from reconstruction, fixing a building that remains as opposed to the complete rebuilding: “We understand the conservation of that which exists and the re-creation of that which definitely existed (Murtagh 2).”
• Eugene Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, a romantic rationalist: the effort “to establish a completed state which may never have existed at any particular time (Murtagh 2).”
• The aging effects of time have tricked people into thinking that his (Viollet-le-Duc) additions to Carcassonne are truly from the Middle Age
• John Ruskin was complete opposite from above’s overzealousness. “Restoration is always alive. It means the total destruction which a building can suffer. It’s as impossible to raise the dea as to restore a building (Murtagh 3).”
• William Morris, a colleague of Ruskin said “restoration is generally speaking  modern euphemism for wholesale destruction and the worst desecration (Murtagh 4).”
• Preservation, not to be confused with restoration or conservation, has a more blanket definition, such as the historic preservation movement. One could also say that it means to “keep from injury or destruction, to save (Murtagh 4).”
• 1839 A. N. Didron, French archeologist: “It is better to preserve than to restore and better to restore than reconstruct (Murtagh 4).”
• Secretary of the Interior definitions (Murtagh 5)
• Preservation: act or progress of applying measures to sustain the existing form, integrity and material of a building or structure, and the existing form and vegetative cover of a site. It may include initial stabilization work, where necessary, as well as ongoing maintenance of the historic building materials
• Restoration: the act or progress of accurately recovering the form and details of a property and its setting as it appeared at a particular period of time by means of removal of later work or by the replacement of missing earlier work.
• Reconstruction: the act or process of reproducing by new construction the exact form and detail of a vanished building, structure, or object or a part thereof, as it appeared at a specific period of time.
• Maintaining can be done by limiting the amount of visitors to a building, where they walk and what they touch.
• Heavy or light restoration is determined by the amount of restoring being done. Something as simple as a window sill is considered extremely light
• Creeping reconstruction: overzealous restorers do too much restoration to a building
• When in doubt, John Ruskin’s in the advice to follow. Too much restoration can lead to entire reconstruction
• Personal tastes don’t come into consideration, whatever is being restored/reconstructed, must be done as closely to the original process and materials as possible. If there isn’t enough information about the time, process, or original owners of the building then a reconstruction should not be chanced
• Reconstitution: when original parts of the demolished buildings remain and are used in the construction of the new one
• Replication: duplicating an extant artifact on a site removed from the original, usually as a means of saving the original from inordinate wear by frequent use
• Rehabilitation: the act or process of returning a property to a state of utility through repair or alteration which makes possible and efficient contemporary use while preserving those portions or features of the property which are significant to its historical, architectural, and cultural values.