AI Slop
The phrase “AI Slop” is already commonplace, and it inspires me to invent more neologisms like “Cry me a data center” or “Grok willing and the creek don’t pop-up”. I have written all 670 blogs over the last two decades without AI, or have I? I am a late-adopter with Post Technology Stress Disorder and you can see that in my blogs from the aughty-aughts. Heck, you can see it from a couple of months ago when I ranted about how real retail service companies cannot ever, ever change an old email or recognize a different phone number, no matter who is dead. And they are willing to give up months of revenue just to carry that rotting corpse further.
So what do I think of AI? My first reaction to AI writing was that it was like a 14-year-old who has been asked to turn in a three-page essay but only has one page of material. Repetitive. You see it in tons of social media posts which look like proper long-form discussions but hammer the emotional hinge of the story like six times in 400 words. That is the written version of the AI image that has the wrong number of fingers or arms. Of course, both of those examples are a year old so I suppose by now AI is like 15 and knows how to draw hands better.
This is a real life photo from 12 years ago no AI.
I have attended one workshop and one training in AI in the last 24 hours so here is what I learned, mostly from Huy Pham and Paul Kim, whom I first saw present on this issue almost a year ago in Arkansas.
AI is a marketing term for the latest iterations of pattern recognition technology. Basically it looks at large amounts of data and identifies patterns and recurring themes. So, like you learned in computer science 40 years ago – GIGO. Garbage in, garbage out. Huy and Paul work for APIAHiP (Asian and Pacific Islander Americans in Historic Preservation) and if they ask AI about Asian sites in the National Register of Historic Places and if AI looks at all 100,000 nominations and sees less than 1% it will tell you basically NO. There aren’t any. Not significant. Not important.
Since AI is basically pattern recognition, everything it produces will tend toward the mean, the median, the average and ordinary. It is not a place to look for exceptionalism or new ideas. Culturally, it has a flattening effect. What is new about it in the last few years – as opposed to the pattern recognition software of 20 and 30 years ago – is the Large Language Model. Basically you give it tonnes more examples. So it gets even meaner. It cannot provide conclusions, only predictions. It reflects what is common, not what is true. Garbage in, garbage out.
I guess I’m not a big fan
If you want the National Register of Historic Places to identify underrepresented stories, you need to do it yourself, because it requires not lots and lots of old data, but a new approach. You need to reconceptualize the process, which is not something in AI’s wheelhouse. Garbage in, garbage out.
“Hallucinations,” however, are in AI’s wheelhouse. They will confidently answer a nonsense question like “Who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1956?” and even provide fake citations from nonexistent journals, as we have seen recently. It seems the AI doesn’t know how to say “I don’t know” which is a prerequisite of real intelligence. It eagerly answers queries because – like the 14 year old – it can’t not. Even if it is hallucinating.
If you get the “Nobel Prize in Economics,” you will get it here, in Stockholm, but it will actually say Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, and it only began in 1969. Four of the five original Nobel prizes are also delivered in Stockholm under the terms of Alfred Nobel’s 1895 will, with the Peace Prize awarded in Oslo.
Presents predictions as conclusions. Repeats what is common rather than what is true. Hallucinates.
No wonder the predator class and the oligarchy are so enamored of it.
More microdosing and unlocked tranches than Sand Hill Road.
So, does AI work with historic preservation? I have always said that the beauty of historic preservation is that it treats every resource as an individual, with individual characteristics and individual significance that cannot be commodified. Zoning treats properties as a category, like grain being graded and loaded into a silo. It becomes a commodity sans terroir. Pattern recognition technology might be suited for zoning or other commodifying tasks, but telling the story of a place is specific and nonfungible.
Terroir.
So, to answer the question: AI can help if you need to find out how many 1926-29 Tudor Revival houses in the Monte Vista district have casement windows or how many National Historic Landmarks are shaped like elephants.
But if you are nominating a site with a story that has not been heard before – AI doesn’t know. Because it hasn’t been told. And it doesn’t know what it doesn’t know.
Why doesn’t someone get AI to do the dishes or wash the floor? Something useful, you know?
America 250 One Nation Under Roofs
This is the title of our new exhibit in Villa Finale Museum & Gardens Mathis Gallery building, which features items from the permanent collection that relate to the history of the United States. As the nation attempts to meet this milestone, our museum, under the direction of Curator Sylvia Gonzalez-Pizaña, has pulled both fine art and patriotic artifacts from the house. Some of my favorites include a collection of memorabilia from the Centennial Exposition held in Philadelphia in 1876. It is nice to view these items – normally arrayed on the second floor of the house – with more room to breathe and be seen.
There are also artifacts from the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis and 19C Stafforshire flatback porcelains that purport to be Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. They look a bit more like Prince Albert and Benjamin Franklin, but hey.
The founder of our museum, Walter Mathis, was a genuine World War 11 hero, flying 65 missions in the European theater – primarily B-25s, and earning a series of medals, some of which are on display in the gallery and some of which are still on display in the house. He also collected Currier prints of the Mexican War 1846-48, some of which are now on display in our America 250 exhibit, along with examples of his excellent collection of early maps of New Spain, Mexico and Texas.
Not all of the artifacts are antique – Among a collection of busts of U S Presidents is one of Abraham Lincoln from the 1970s – manufactured by Avon to contain aftershave!
One item I encouraged Sylvia to include was a signed portrait of William Howard Taft, the only person to serve as both US President and Supreme Court Justice. It is a family heirloom given to Walter Mathis’ grandfather who founded the Coleman Pasture Company along with the Taft family. Taft’s brother had a ranch house called La Quinta where the President stayed in 1909. The photo of Taft was signed in 1924 when Walter Mathis’ aunt was wife of the La Quinta superintendent.
Some of my favorite artworks from the collection are also in the Mathis Gallery for the America 250 show, including the stunning Julian Onderdonk painting of Matagorda Bay, which is my favorite of the several Onderdonks in the collection. My top favorite artist is Mary Bonner, and some of her amazing graphic prints are visible in the show. She had a knack for creating dynamic motion out of line and contour that reminds me of Windsor McCay among others.
You can tour the exhibit for FREE during normal hours (10-4 Tuesday-Saturday) and also of course see “the rest of the story” in the museum for the price of admission. Or, if you are a Friend of Villa Finale, the house is free! While 250 years is no Han Dynasty or Roman Empire, it is still a major achievement, and it might go on even longer!
Authenticity after 60 years
In my investigations over the last 15 years into the limitations of the National Register of Historic Places I often suggested the use of “authenticity” instead of “integrity” in judging whether a property qualified for listing. In creating the National Register in 1966, U.S. heritage experts had chosen to go with “integrity” instead of “authenticity” which was more common internationally. Integrity is more mechanistic, and defined by architecture, which makes sense given the heavy influence of architectural practice on the U.S. preservation movement from the 1930s through 1960s. In dealing with the broader range of heritage sites in the 2000s, I thought deferring to “authenticity” could help address the diversity deficit in the National Register of Historic Places. You can see my 2016 blog about integrity and authenticity here.
Now that we are more than 60 years removed from the Venice Charter of 1964, it is interesting to note that “authenticity” has itself undergone a transformation away from a formalistic architectural definition and toward ideas of heritage as defined by the communities who steward them. To quote from the most recent World Heritage discussion of authenticity:
“Over time, the understanding of authenticity has undergone significant evolution from a
material-based notion to a pluralistic, functional, traditional, spiritual, intangible, culturally
relative and value-based concept, reflecting the diversity of human societies, the different
ways in which heritage is created, used, and remembered, as well as reflecting the
evolution of the notion of heritage.” Authenticity in the context of the World Heritage Convention: Evolution and Impact, 25th Session of the General Assembly of States Parties to the Convention concerning the protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, November 2025.
This is similar to what I have been saying in presentations and book chapters since 2010: Heritage conservation is a four-step process of Identifying, Evaluating, Registering and Treating historic resources. Heritage conservation happens when a community determines what elements of its past it wants in its future. As noted in the Burra Charter, the community whose heritage is being conserved needs to be involved in each step of the process – Identification, Evaluation, Registration and Treatment. If we bring community into the process too late, or if we assume as professionals that we are better qualified to Evaluate or determine Treatments, we will come up short. How you conserve Mount Taylor and how you conserve a Victorian house museum are not equivalent.
Mount Taylor, NM last month.
Villa Finale, the month before
Authenticity received its first definitional challenge about 1980, just a few years after the operational guidelines for World Heritage were established, following Western architecture-based practice that focused on design, materials, workmanship and setting. That challenge was Warsaw, Poland, completely rebuilt after World War II thanks to precise documentation done forty years earlier. The materials and workmanship were not authentic. But it was extremely important to the community. The next challenge came in 1992 when Japan brought with it an understanding of the integrity of process, rather than product. The Shinto temple is a thousand years old even as it is rebuilt from scratch every twenty years, because the tools and craftsmanship are one thousand years old.
Meanwhile in the West, we see no problem restoring an 18th century house with epoxy, nail guns and other tools and techniques that did not exist at the time, because we revere the object more than the process.
The shift toward a more holistic – and genuinely international – approach began with the Nara Document on Authenticity in 1994. To the original four aspects of authenticity were added form, substance, use and function, traditions and techniques, location, and spirit and feeling. The key idea was that authenticity had to be defined within a cultural context. And while that definition is not universal, the process – Identify, Evaluate, Register and Treat – is.
Another 30 years has passed, and authenticity has continued to evolve. By the 2000 expert meeting at the Great Zimbabwe, authenticity was linked explicitly to living traditions, stewardship and ritual. Many cultures do not place as high a value on material remains as they do on speech, memory and community values. In May of this year, the International Conference on Cultural Heritage in Africa: A Dialogue on the
Concept of Authenticity was held in Nairobi, Kenya discussed how African heritage is dynamic, community-centered, and deeply rooted in both tangible and intangible values. A similar discussion is planned for Southeast Asia.
The other problem, as you might imagine, is that “authenticity’ has no equivalent in Japanese, Arabic and certain African languages. Different societies conceive of continuity, value, trust and authority in different ways. As the document notes, the challenge may be existential: How do you ask for proof of Outstanding Universal Value if values are culture-based and not universal?
When the history of a site includes preservation
The School of Architecture and Planning at UT San Antonio hosted a colloquium last weekend that began with a keynote by Davide Galleri, PhD of the University of Naples, who spoke about Robie House, the epitome of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie Style and a building I have long known. Indeed, the black and white photo he used of the 58th Street face of the house was the view out my dorm window in 1979-80.
This one is from 2008 after they had torn down my Eero Saarinen-designed dorm.
Galleri’s history of Robie House revealed an interesting conundrum. Most of the house’s history is not about a house as much as a site of landmark preservation. The original owners were there less than two years, and the two subsequent homeowners were gone by the time the building was 30 years old. Like every building in history, it was first proposed to be demolished when it was about 30 years old, in 1941. Preservation pressure kept it alive under institutional ownership until it was threatened again in 1957, when Wright himself argued for it. It was purchased and saved by the same guy who was doing the urban renewal of Hyde Park and demolishing 1000 acres of buildings. It then limped along under the ownership of the University of Chicago for a couple decades before becoming a proper house museum. So, of its 115 years of history, arguably 85 of those years are the history of preservation.
And they still haven’t got the dining room set back.
The more I think about it, this is not unusual. Every building faces its first demolition threat or need for a major overhaul at about 30-40 years. That is when a preponderance of building systems from roofs on down will need to be replaced or trashed. It is normal for most of a building’s history to be about preserving, rehabilitating or retrofitting it. Right now the “Thompson Center” in Chicago is being completely redone exactly 40 years after it was built.
I did not realize until Galleri’s lecture that Robie House faced its first demolition threat in 1941. I always knew about the 1957 battle, since it coincided with the beginnings of the battle over Penn Station in New York, which was the exact same age as Robie House. Even though it looked different.
Heck, when you think about it some more, you realize that the inscription on one of the most famous landmarks of the Western world is all about how it was restored by Marcus Agrippa.
I took this photo 43 years ago, so, like, there is even more preservation history now.
My new place of work, Villa Finale Museum and Gardens in King William, follows this pattern as well. Built in 1876, it was expanded until about 1902, and then enjoyed about 20 more years of being a fancy house, a decade as a slightly bawdy house, and then joined its neighbors at the age of about 65 in being chopped up into a bunch of apartments during the postwar housing shortage. When Walter Nold Mathis bought and restored it in 1967, he was kicking off the restoration of many other houses in King William that had also been chopped up. For almost 60 years this has been a preservation story, and for the last 15 that story is being told to the public each day.
2010.
My favorite example is just two doors down from Villa Finale – James Reily Gordon’s stunning Romanesque Kalteyer House.
Go back to the 1970s and it looked like this.
Now, Galleri and some of the other academics there on Friday night started getting into the questions of how things are preserved and how they are changed, and whether something can be considered authentic or original. Galleri got into the discussion of integrity, which in my experience has caused a lot of trouble and provided little advantage. See my take on these issues and how they have excluded important landmarks here. I also scribbled down “Ditch period of significance” because what is the period of significance? The original construction? Or is is one step back and the original design before it was modified during construction? And who did the modification – was it the architect? And exactly how many angels will fit on the head of a pin?
Loading the angels…..
When restoring Colonial Williamsburg in the 1930s, perfectly historic 19th century buildings were scraped because they did not fit into the period of significance. Even 50 years later during the restoration of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Home and Studio they destroyed work Wright actually did in 1911 to convert it into apartments, in order to go back to the 1899 appearance. So which is it?
Rather than get into a scholarly debate about originality, design and execution, and the great chasms of authenticity and integrity, I think we need to consider that preservation or rehabilitation is part of the story of every building that makes it past 30-40 years. In fact, I am working on a book that considers many lost Chicago buildings, and it is kind of amazing to see how many architectural wonders bowed out before they turned 50.
Masonic Temple by Burnham and Root
Marshall Field Wholesale Store by Henry Hobson Richardson
Prentice Women’s Hospital, Bertrand Goldberg, 1975.
Culture is – by definition – the tending of things that change over time.
Heritage Conservation in 2025
In chaotic times, one might think that the preservation of historic sites might be a respite from chaos, but as with all firehoses, the current recrudescence has soaked all sectors. I was in Washington DC last week for our annual Preservation Action Advocacy Week, which seemed like many of the others, despite the steady drumbeat of the 24-hour news cycle trying to make sense of the firehose. We met with six congressional offices and were well received in all, because for a long time historic preservation (heritage conservation) has had bipartisan support. Texas has had a very good state historic tax credit for the last decade, so our pitch to retain the federal one hit home for the Texas congressional delegation.
The firehose of course refers to the huge quantity of executive actions that have affected most domestic and foreign sectors. In terms of “preservation” the obvious initial impacts are loss of staff at historic sites of the National Park Service, overriding of Section 106 review due to a declared energy emergency, and loss of preservation staff in many other federal agencies, including the GSA which oversees real estate, USDA, Transportation and others. Given that the firehose has been on for less than two months, and given that some firings or overridings are reversed, it is very hard to assess the damage at this time. Of greater concern would be any permanent dismantling of federal review processes, most of which are carried out by states and other sovereign entities.
The role of heritage conservation is to preserve the histories of all communities that make up a place. And the act of heritage conservation is a process by which a community determines what elements of its past it wants in its future, and how those elements are preserved. This process can exist at any and all levels but it only really is effective at the community level. And, as one of our speakers (Valerie Grussing of NATHPO) noted: “Community moves faster than government.”
I have worked in the heritage conservation field for 42 years, working for non-profits the whole time. I have occasionally been hired for specific projects by government entities, mostly at the municipal level. So it is at the level of the blessed community that we must continue our efforts to uncover and conserve the history we find in our local places.
The Cult of Mithras
When I traveled to Rome thirty Novembers ago I saw many wonderful historic sites and artifacts and artworks but one that made a particular impression was a mithraeum, or “temple” to the cult of Mithras, an early competitor to Christianity. The mithraeum was located beneath a medieval church in Rome. Indeed, many of the hundreds that have been discovered are beneath churches, and while Mithraism and Christianity competed in the realm of eastern-oriented mystery religions from the 1st to 4th centuries, Mithraism was suppressed along with paganism after the 4th century.
Gathering places of the Mithraic mysteries have been found from England to Hungary and the cult was a particular favorite of the Roman military. The basic worship was of Mithras, a sun-god borrowed from Persian mythology, and the key image was Mithras astride and slaying the sacred bull. This bloodletting offered salvation to the participants in the rituals, which included a ceremonial breaking of bread and wine and a promise of resurrection. Mithras is always wearing a Phrygian cap.
So, what was trending in 1st century Rome? Basically, eastern mystery religions, and you had two big choices. The first was Christianity, originally a Jewish sect that had taken a more Catholic approach and had established major centers in Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria and Rome. Part of its appeal was monotheism. One can imagine that the pantheon of traditional Roman gods was becoming a bit outdated in a globalized Mediterranean world. Part of its appeal was its Orientalism. The mysteries of the East were borrowed and reimagined. It also offered eternal salvation thanks to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, who died for the sins of others.
The second choice was the cult of Mithras. It was also assembled from pieces of eastern mythology, including an adapted Zoroastrian Mithra and an adapted and adopted Osiris, the Egyptian god of resurrection. The rituals included a kind of agape, or ceremonial meal which struck contemporary Christians as a direct copy of their eucharist – complete with bread and wine. They even called the clerical officials “pater” (Father) and their altar illustrated the bloodletting that led to salvation.
So, which to choose? Well, there was one other aspect of Mithraism, and that was that it was male-only. Very popular with the military. In contrast, the early Christian church not only had female martyrs like Perpetua and Felicity, but was often spread – especially among the upper classes – by women. Constantine had his Helen in the 4th century, Augustine his Monica in the 5th and Volodymyr had his Olha in the 10th. Since its founding, more women than men have attended church, While excluded from clerical positions in most cases, women religious have always outnumbered men.
Sta Maria Maggiore, Milano.
One of the biggest challenges that Christianity presented to Roman Mediterranean culture was its focus on mercy and universal salvation. This ran completely counter to Roman ideas of justice, which admitted no humility, no mercy and certainly no forgiveness. In contrast, the message of Christ WAS forgiveness. It made no sense to Romans. For those initiated into the cult of Mithras, your hero and god was depicted literally in the act of killing something. (The technical term is tauroctony)
Mithraea offered resurrection, a full dose of eastern mystery, complete with a Phrygian cap, a ceremonial bloodletting, a meal and best of all – no girls. You could have your eastern mysteries without the kind of radical inclusion the Christians were preaching.
Ironically, once the Roman Empire adopted Christianity, the religion of mercy apparently showed none to the Mithraites and their theology of cruel justice.
Conserving Heritage in the wake of Historic Preservation.
Way back in 2009 I embraced Donovan Rypkema’s challenge to rebrand “historic preservation” as “heritage conservation,” which I did in a blog here. I had recently finished my dissertation on the history of historic districts, observing how the community planning movement of the late 20th century changed historic preservation from a curatorial pursuit to an exercise in democracy. To be truly democratic, more stories reflecting ALL populations needed to be told, and “heritage conservation” to me included the invaluable efforts to rescue lost history and those sites that have great community significance but little or no architecture.
Or both.
Shortly after that I began an effort which continues to this day to look at ways that the National Register of Historic Places could tell the full American story. The curatorial – and architectural – emphasis of the 1930s-1960s limited these stories. Ned Kaufmann estimated at the turn of the millennium that only 2-4% of National Register sites told the story of women and people of color, and today the number is still likely below 10%. Since 2012 I have participated in or moderated several sessions at the annual PastForward conference of the National Trust for Historic Preservation looking at this issue. 2015 was a highpoint, with a panel discussion at PastForward that included two State Historic Preservation Officers (SHPOs), a presentation at the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (thanks Brad White!) and a lecture at the Eighth National Forum on Historic Preservation Policy and Practice that was published in 2018 with specific recommendations for amending the National Register and the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation. The rubric was Addressing the Diversity Deficit and many people contributed valuable ideas and insights.
My initial presentations on the subject of reforming the National Register and the Secretary’s Standards were met with anger by Carol Shull, longtime Keeper of the National Register, although by 2016 she told me they were “getting better.” I can recall meeting with Julianne Polanco before she was SHPO for California and telling her I wanted to totally redo the National Register. She calmed me down and pointed out that you could do a lot of good for diversity with existing tools if you just used them properly. She was on my 2015 panel at PastForward along with Allyson Brooks, Washington state SHPO. They both used the existing tools very creatively to promote diversity. Consequently, my 2018 recommendations were reforms, not radical recasting. In fact, official National Register guidance began to shift toward heritage conservation that same year when they issued a guidance that said interior spaces that had lost all of their architectural finishes could still retain historic significance under Criterion A (history).
Like this interior of the Forum on 43rd in Chicago. Actually, it has some of its finishes. But is needs to be conserved not because of those finishes but because of the community story they circle.
In 2020 I moderated a PastForward panel that included the new head of the National Register, Sherry Frear and my San Antonio colleague Sarah Zenaida Gould, one of the founders of Latinos in Heritage Conservation (along with Julianne Polanco and many other friends) called “A Deep Dive On Integrity.” This was COVID times, so it was a Zoom panel and it managed to attract over 500 participants. In four weeks I will be on another panel with Sherry and Sarah on the issue of Integrity, at the PastForward conference in New Orleans. In addition to the diversity question, there is also the confusion of “integrity” with structural integrity. The word itself is the problem, dating to 1966 when we Americans were too scared to use the word “authenticity.”
This house has historic integrity, but not structural integrity. The Park Service will be knocking it.
So now there is a dust-up between the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, led by Sara Bronin, who has issued policy statements and comments on a whole variety of contemporary issues and how preservation should react to them. On the other side are State Historic Preservation Offices and National Park Service folks who actually implement the National Register and the Secretary’s Standards. Most recently, there is a call from ACHP for comment on a series of regulatory streamlining proposals to promote climate resilience.
Pointing to the flood level lines at Mies’ Farnsworth House, c.2009.
Like many of my colleagues in the National Preservation Partners Network, I do not find myself in one camp or another. On the one hand, some of the streamlining proposals from the ACHP comment are canards that either don’t happen (transit line and bike lane planning, review of the inside of residences, mechanical and electrical systems) or have already been accepted as reasonable or reversible (solar panels, engineered wood products). On the other hand, the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards have not been updated or reviewed in over 30 years, which is way too long.
Even in 1990 we did not regulate paint color.
On the one hand, the idea of streamlining regulatory processes is attractive. If it works. If current regulations are turning around in an average three business days, then that is not exactly earth-shattering. The issue does not seem data-driven but anecdote-driven. It feels like a series of solutions in search of a problem. Also, many of the “solutions” were long ago implemented by various agencies who are quite skilled at following the rules.
Not the Postal Service.
On the other hand, I have watched regulators argue about very silly minutiae. Admittedly, I am the opposite of the precious preservationist. I love original materials because they can’t be had today for love or money, but if they are already gone, game over. Bring on the Hardie Board and plastic lumber.
Modern wood is so bad you can see how bad it is at 60 miles an hour.
In addition to not being terribly precious, I am not an architect, so I don’t have tons of faith in technology. One of the articles of faith is that energy upgrades work. I have a lot of experience with energy upgrades whose claims are driven by sales, not data.
One of the suggested policies:
- Broadening the scope of building envelope energy efficiency improvements, including replacement windows, doors, and insulation, without further historic preservation review.
My response:
This fails to take into account three facts. First, many historic windows and doors perform as well as modern replacements. Restored old-growth windows are warrantied for 50-60 more years than contemporary products. Second, window and door ratings are based on the uninstalled product, yet most of the thermal leakage, even in new construction, happens at the frame. Third, while interior insulation could go without review, exterior insulated finish systems (EIFS) can significantly shorten the life of a building’s skin due to the method of installation and quality of materials.
Just do what Barrio Dogg did – ignore the permits and regulations and cover the building with enough goop to change the original proportions!
And then there is the profit motive. Windows and doors may be less than 10% of construction costs but they are among the biggest markups (20-25%) for contractors, so they are a profit center.
At the end of the day it is not about policies or practices, but process. Whether a given state or federal agency is fast or slow in the process is a consideration, but the larger consideration in any democracy is having a public process. If we want to tell the full American story, we need to have a place for everyone to speak.
I have always said that the brilliance of heritage conservation reviews is that unlike zoning, the resource is not graded or commodified: every review is about the individual resource and the conservation of its characteristics as defined and valued by the community. Let’s not lose that.
DECDEMBER UPDATE:
Sara Bronin, Chair of the ACHP, spoke at our Duda Forum on November 16 right after the DRAFT Program Comment on Housing, Climate and Transportation issues was released. I have taken a look at the new document and find that many of the objections I raised in my own comment on the comment were in fact addressed, and I no longer see a tendency to give blanket approval to unproven replacement windows and insulating systems. Much of the document is now focused on glossing over reviews involving repair or maintenance of windows and doors (fine) and maintenance, repair or in-kind replacement of elements like roofing, foundations, canopies and foundations (mostly fine). It encourages caulking, pointing, and weatherstripping and has benefited from some wise input regarding previously painted surfaces and low-pressure water washing. So someone listened!
Heritage Narratives
Thanks to the intergalactic webernet, we live in a time of narratives. Stories. Mostly these are short form: Reels and memes and Tik Toks and brief videos, but narratives nevertheless. Stories. A good story does not need to be true or follow rules of evidence like court cases or history books, i.e., they don’t have to be real. They are arguably better stories if they aren’t real. Humans are inherently story tellers and probably inherently fabulists. When friends and colleagues express frustration at the preponderance of blatantly untrue narratives, I try to explain that the solution cannot be provided by evidence. You need a narrative. But that does not mean you have to be a fabulist and fabricate.
History is rife with examples of massacres and conquests carried out in the name of unproveable religious or ideological narratives. Sure, those narratives may have been window dressing for underlying economic or political realities, but they worked their fabulism on the participants.
What does that have to do with heritage conservation? Well, in her important new report The Relevancy Guidebook, Bonnie McDonald of Landmarks Illinois talks about preservationists as storytellers. One of factors limiting preservation’s appeal and constituency has been an inherited focus on architecture. This has exacerbated the diversity deficit as I have written about here and here and elsewhere. Preservationists need to focus less on architecture and more on story.
Architecture became a default mechanism for preservation for a number of reasons. First, the earliest preservation laws coincided with the advent of architectural history in the early 20th century. Second, the introduction of historic preservation tax incentives brought in a slew of real estate developers who wanted their preservation as mechanistic as possible. Not the squishy world of stories. Third, we trained a generation of practitioners and bureaucrats on jalousie windows and jerkinhead roofs and like any profession, there is a frisson associated with the forced erudition of a secret language.
Just another duostyle Doric portico in antes
And this is already happening. When I did one of my early National Register nominations in the 1980s of the Kenwood United Church of Christ, I had all of this fascinating information about the important people who attended the church, including the famous poet Edgar Lee Masters. The State Historic Preservation Office made it clear that I could leave that information in, but it would have no bearing on the significance of a Romanesque church of Maryland granite by the city’s first professional architect.
In contrast, when our National Register of Historic Places nomination for the Texas Pavilion/Institute of Texan Cultures building went to the State Review Board in January, they specifically asked for more pictures with people in them! A formalist focus will appeal to some, but people and their stories appeal to everyone.
That’s my photo – Guilty of formalism!
Narrative is especially important if you are trying to conserve heritages that: 1. Did not or could not express their identity in architecture; 2. Had important historic things happen in everyday buildings without architectural integrity; or 3. Were actively erased by the dominant power structure. In these cases you need to gather the stories first, before you ever go out looking at buildings.
The Texas Pavilion/Institute of Texan Cultures building is a case in point – the only downtown building by a Mexican American architect (Willie Peña). San Antonio’s Mexican-American history is defined more by erasure than preservation, as I illustrated recently.
So many of the histories we are capturing in the 21st century are those of groups who were either erased, like the indigenous and ethnic/racial minorities; or hidden, like the LGBTQ community. In the dozen years I have been working on improving the diversity of the National Register of Historic Places, we have seen significant improvements in how to deal with these properties, and a bevy of historic context statements that have done a lot to uncover, rescue and record these formerly secreted histories. Today the National Register is actively working on updating guidance to capture more stories and to reflect the full spectrum of American history.
But much more needs to be done. One could say that the mainstream historians of the past overlooked these secret histories. “Secret histories” – now there is some branding that could spark the required frisson – the dopamine kick – that “insiders” get when they follow a fabulist narrative. But, like the work the National Register and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation and us local preservationists – it would have evidence. Do you think it would work?
Only downtown landmark by a Mexican-American architect to be demolished
San Antonio, Texas has always been a majority Hispanic city, but for most of that history, Mexican-Americans faced legal and cultural discrimination and exclusion. Now, sadly, the only major downtown building designed by a Mexican-American architect is going to be demolished. The University of Texas at San Antonio recently announced its plans to demolish the Texas Pavilion/Institute of Texan Cultures building designed for Hemisfair ’68 by William Peña of Caudill, Rowlett and Scott.
The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, but as smart people know, that is not enough to save it, despite the enticing prospect of 45% investment tax credits (see my recent blog here). The media speculation for the last decade has been that the site is ideal for a new Spurs stadium (Spurs IV – A New Hope) even though it is smaller than their current stadium site by a lot.
See below – that is the Texas Pavilion/ITC on the left and the current Frost Bank Center on right. Which has more parking???
The Spurs were asked to meet with the City a year ago, which has fed a bevy of speculative articles over the last year (Pro Tip: Read them carefully and see who is quoted.)
ITC in foreground, Spurs II (Alamodome) in background left.
Who was Willie Peña and why is he the only Mexican-American architect who designed a major building in downtown San Antonio?
Born in Laredo, Peña was a student at Texas A & M when World War II broke out. Commissioned as a second lieutenant, he fought in the Battle of the Bulge and lost a leg, earning both a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star medal. The French gave him the Croix de Guerre. Finishing his architecture degree in 1948, he became the first employee of the influential Houston architectural firm Caudill, Rowlett and Scott and became a partner the next year. He became a national pioneer in architectural programming, literally writing the book (Problem Seeking – now in its fifth edition) on it.
William Peña, Courtesy CRS Center, Texas A & M University
Many of our downtown landmarks were designed by Anglo architects like Alfred Giles, James Riely Gordon, Atlee Ayres, Ralph Cameron and O’Neil Ford. The Mexican architect Ricardo Legorreta designed the Central Library, and the Conservation Society has honored Humberto Saldaña for his downtown restorations, but there are no downtown buildings designed by a Mexican-American architect except the Texas Pavilion/Institute of Texan Cultures.
So why does UTSA want to tear it down? Probably because it is easier for them. As a unit of the State, they don’t even need to ask for a demolition permit. The demolition is currently scheduled for Summer 2025.
They will need to get the demolition money, which could easily approach the $7 million they have deferred in maintenance on the structure. They plan to move some portion of the collections to the Frost Tower and hope to build a new museum behind the Alamo for $100 million.
That means they need to net over $107 million on the sale of the land, which I suppose is doable for a $1.2 billion stadium.
Casa Navarro
Sadly, the city has erased much of the history of its most numerous population. The famed Laredito neighborhood was destroyed in the 1950s and 60s, and only a last-minute effort by the Conservation Society saved Casa Navarro in 1959. It became a National Historic Landmark in 2017, yet even today Hispanic history and design is referenced in less than 4% of National Register of Historic Places listings, even with the recent inclusion of the Texas Pavilion. In 2014, the first Spanish language TV station – Univision – was demolished downtown.
It is time for this erasure of Latino history to end.
Brackenridge Park
I have been on the Brackenridge Park Stakeholders Advisory Committee for the last half year and was one of the facilitators at the public hearing January 8 which drew some 114 people for two hours of discussing what Guiding Principles should be used for evaluating future projects in Brackenridge Park. We will be having another public meeting January 30 where we will share the revised criteria. There is also an online survey you can fill out before then here.
Urban parks have inherently competing interests within them. They are designed to preserve and promote nature. They are also designed to promote recreation. Those two elements can be at odds. They are home to wildlife, but also part of human life and again, those two uses will be in conflict at times. The Guiding Principles are designed to help negotiate these inherent conflicts. Here is what I said at the meeting, according to the San Antonio Express-News: “When you are dealing with a place where people are doing things, and there’s also nature and wildlife, there will always be conflicts at some point. So, respect for compromise is one of our guiding principles.”
Here is a bird eating a fish in Brackenridge Park recently, so we have those conflicts as well.
Brackenridge Park is kind of unique. The Brackenridge Park Conservancy (founded by the Conservation Society of San Antonio in 2009) did a Cultural Landscape Report for the park a little over a year ago. See, unlike most parks – Central Park in Manhattan, or Jackson Park in Chicago – the park was not undevelopable land that was transformed by a landscape architect into a community amenity. That is how most urban parks are formed.
Central Park. Designed by Frederick Law Olmsted AFTER he visited San Antonio.
Brackenridge Park is actually a natural area near the source of the San Antonio river that was preserved as a park. The largest part of it was donated to the city by George Washington Brackenridge in 1899. He owned it because he owned the first public water system in town, so it is kind of a real estate development story, but it is still unlike most urban parks in that many elements of the landscape are NOT designed.
The 1877 Pump House in Brackenridge Park, built for the first public water system.
Consequently, the Cultural Landscape Report and our Guiding Principles include reference to 12,000 years of human interaction with the park, long before it became part of New Spain. One of the reasons we are in this whole community process was the strong reaction to proposed tree cutting by citizens concerned with both the environment and traditional spiritual practices of indigenous people. I covered the tree issue, and my own participation in traditional cultural practice regarding trees here last year.
View from the river to the golf course. Like many urban park golf courses, it is one of the oldest in the area.
So, unlike most urban parks, there are portions of Brackenridge Park that are arguably “wilderness”. “Wilderness” is where both natural area conservation and historic preservation began 150 years ago.
Here. Well, also Yellowstone. 1872.
Today the wilderness model of natural area conservation is as outdated as the house museum model in historic preservation. Over a decade ago the two started coming together to create a new, more practical and less Puritanical approach to conservation as a whole, as I described here in 2013.
Goats in Brackenridge Park in 2023 to help clear undergrowth. Sheep – designed to eat grass and thus “mow” the lawn areas, were part of the original 19th century design of many large Chicago parks.
Brackenridge Park not only has 12,000 years of human history, but a lot of interesting cultural practices as well, such as Easter weekend, when many many families camp out in the park for three days.
So the whole exercise is setting up principles and criteria to help negotiate between natural, cultural and other environmental wants and needs. As I explained at the opening of the public meeting, these goals will be in conflict and the principles and criteria are a way to balance their competing interests.
Well, that is a lovely waterfall! But unlike some parts of the park, there is nothing natural about it. This is an industrial site – a quarry – that was transformed into a Japanese garden over a century ago. This part of Brackenridge Park was designed, and it was an adaptive re-use of an abandoned industrial quarry. Heck, there are even lime kilns surviving from when the dimension stone gave way to gravel.
The Japanese Tea Garden is one of the highlights of San Antonio I always bring visitors to see. I am a frequent user of the park and my bike rides through it at least once a week offer a variety of natural and cultural highlights. We begin coming up the concrete ditch along Avenue A next to the golf course, which again is not a very natural landscape.
We continue across the Mulberry bridge and past the Witte museum. Last year the egrets had taken over the next section of trees to the level of public health hazard.
We then stop to enjoy the river flowing over the Low Water Crossing, built in 1937 for automobiles to get from one side of the park to the other. Probably not ideal for water quality to have cars splashing through there, and it hasn’t been allowed in some years. We will often see the Zoo mini train in the distance at this point.
We then follow the river south through a portion of the park that is undesigned save for picnic tables and walkways and a road. In addition to dog walkers and picnickers we occasionally see trapeze artists and jugglers in a small meadow as we near Mulberry Avenue again.
We follow the river south of Mulberry along Avenue B between the golf course and the River Road neighborhood until we come to another 1937 crossing, scheduled to be replaced. Here the artificial waterfall attracts migratory waterfowl.
Soon we are back in the neighborhood reveling in the aftermath of the forest bath and commenting on what we may have seen – tents, jugglers, low riders, family picnics, fishers and historic buildings. It is a swirl of competing uses that is richer for its complexities and contradictions. One of the participants in the January 8 public meeting said, we should maintain the “romantic and quirky” character of the park.
Joske pavilion, 1920s.