What is the culture of heritage conservation and how has it evolved? I’ve spent over four decades in this field and have studied its earlier history as well, so I have some thoughts. In my current position, I see a lot of the history of this culture. Here I am in a mansion saved by a collector who donated that house and his phenomenal collection of over 12,000 items of fine and decorative art to the National Trust. Arguably that is the heritage conservation culture of the first half of the twentieth century, an antiquarian concern with preserving artistic treasures.
Walter Mathis, who restored Villa Finale, was part of this culture. A collector from childhood, he had an eye for fine and decorative arts and a collectors mentality. But he did more than save one house as a treasure and fill it with other treasures. He saved a whole neighborhood – restored partially or fully another 14 properties and even bought nondescript commercial buildings to help finance the preservation of his museum and the neighborhood writ large. Here are a few of the other houses he preserved:
Famously Walter Mathis found “like-minded” individuals to help him restore and occupy houses throughout the district. “Like-minded” meant they were urban pioneers of the 1960s and 1970s, people who valued a walkable historic neighborhood adjacent to downtown. People who were not enthusiastic about the shopping malls and sprawl housing that characterized the majority culture of that time. They may have been artists or collectors of art, but they were also urban pioneers, an evolution of the preservation culture that came before.
These cultural outliers and upstarts existed in every city, from New York’s Greenwich Village and Brooklyn Heights, to Chicago’s Old Town, Denver’s Larimer Square, Boston’s Beacon Hill and Back Bay, Charleston’s Ansonborough; from the heavenly bungalows of Pasadena and LA to the moss-covered staircases of landmark-laden New Orleans. In addition to residential districts like King William, Brooklyn Heights and Old Town, there were also districts that transformed industrial and commercial buildings into new urban pioneer communities, like the Third Ward in Milwaukee and LoDo in Denver. This was not simply an antiquarian culture. It added something new, but old at the same time.
In a sense, the culture of these historic districts reflected the old-time architecture, because the cultural values of the pioneers and early settlers were urban and urbane – the values of walkability, a life-work balance that emphasized community, and a community that emphasized working together to achieve things no individual or family could. Jane Jacobs commented on this in 1960, and Herbert Gans solidified it two years later. You could argue it was a reaction against the postwar culture’s invention of the nuclear family and its attendant zoning and transportation.
Successful historic neighborhoods are always highly organized, often with permanently staffed organizations. That began in King William in 1947 with the creation of the King William Conservation Association, which sought to save the old Victorian German neighborhood and preserve its original values. By 1967 there was a new King William Association made up of urban pioneers who wanted to raise families, restore houses, enjoy music and the arts and live in beauty and shade just minutes from downtown. The King William Conservation Association faded away in 1975, but the King William Association lives today. The culture has evolved.
They have festivals and promotions and events that cement the community culture and allow it to grow. King William has its King William Fair during Fiesta, but it also has its First Friday art walks. It has Ruby City art museum and the Blue Star arts complex, formerly an industrial site. In a city of parties, it is party central. And here we are and here I am.
