Preservation is a reasonable thing to do. It's the old saying of, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." Preservation is the act of stopping and asking, does this still work? Can we still use this? At heart, preservation is a rational, sensible idea. On the surface, the Iron Horse Hotel seems to celebrate this idea. This historic building has been preserved, and where it needed improvement it was modified in a contemporary yet complementary style.
It's the lightbulbs that started to get to me, though. Throughout the building there are these old-fashioned Edison style lightbulbs. These aren't the original bulbs, of course, they're manufactured by some company out west and sold to the Iron Horse for about $15 a pop. They're dim, they're expensive, and they're not very energy efficient. By all rational measures, they are indeed "broke." They don't fit into the idea of preserving what works and modernizing what doesn't. They are decoration. Worse, they are kitsch. They are a waste.
In the end, this isn't some grand monument to preservation. This is a hotel, and even if it is a particularly nice one, you can't expect a complete elimination of hotel tackiness.
Interesting post. I think that from the image of your light blub, I would have suspected that you had a different interpretation. Your image conveys as sense of monumentality of the light bulb itself. Making it appear much grander than a small bulb could be. What about authenticity? Isn't that bulb appropriate to the original date of the building, therefore technically form appropriate than the halogens in terms of preservation? It can be a gray area between style and kitsch.
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