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?
Alamo Plaza and Diversity
This year I published a chapter called “Addressing the Diversity Deficit: Reform the National Register of Historic Places” in a book called Creating Historic Preservation in the 21st Century. This is a topic I have been working on for many years. You can see some of my writing on it here and here.
The National Register and the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Treatment are not culturally neutral tools. For historical and pragmatic reasons, they privilege architecture and white male history. Worse, those cultures oppressed in the past are forced to relive that oppression when told that their historic sites lack “integrity.”
Where “Invisible Man” was written in the 1940s, Manhattan.
Those who were second-class citizens had to make do with second-class facilities and now second-class landmarks. Second-class status is perpetuated when we make minority landmarks live up to rules designed by and for the dominating culture.
Woolworth’s, designed by Adams and Adams in 1921.
The relevance of this struck me in regard to the State of Texas plan to demolish the Woolworth’s Building on Alamo Plaza, which emerged three months ago (see my blog about it here.)
This was a major building by a national chain at the major intersection of Alamo and Houston Streets. The interior is heavily altered, but the exterior looks much as it did when built in 1921. It is on the National Register and a local landmark. But wait. There’s more.
The San Antonio Woolworth’s desegregated its lunch counter on March 16, 1960, peacefully and without demonstration. This was a first for the South. The Greensboro, N.C. sit-in at a Woolworth’s lunch counter had been only six weeks earlier. It was a first for Woolworth’s, a national chain that was still being picketed nationwide and would not officially adopt an integrated lunch counter policy for months.
A few days later Jackie Robinson, in San Antonio, compared the event to his entry into Major League Baseball and said “It is a story that should be told around the world,” according to the New York Times.
Five other stores also integrated peacefully on that day, and none wanted to be called out. The San Antonio Express and News reported:
“Speculation was that the flat refusal by the group to name the stores may stem from recent reports that some of the larger chain stores have ordered their managers not to integrate.
Also, a spokesman from one store said earlier that most of the businesses are for integration, but none of them want to be named as the first to make the move.”
Kress, one of the other stores.
Photos of the Woolworth’s store ran in the San Antonio News that day, and Kress was mentioned in the Light. While some of the other stores’ locations survive, thanks to Greensboro, Woolworth’s remains forever front-and-center in civil rights history.
SO – what happens now? Three months after they released their initial plan to demolish the Woolworth’s building, the Alamo is now hiring an architect to evaluate the buildings based on the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards and their significance at the national state and local levels.
If you have experience with minority culture sites, you can see where this is going.
They have already released an illustration showing how the three building’s interior floors don’t line up. That will be Reason 1, although it will be wrong, because in this particular case you could gut the interiors so they do line up – just like Joske’s did – and still have the exterior where the young African-American boy peering into the store was photographed on March 16, 1960.
Joske’s, November 2014.
And you can still interpret the long-lost mission wall and buildings inside – in the shade.
Reason 2 will be that the building does not have sufficient integrity on the interior. This conclusion would require ignoring both the minority cultural context and current directives on evaluating interior integrity. Recognizing its deficiencies in addressing cultural and historical sites, in December 2016 the National Park Service issued new guidance that encourages conserving “a space’s historic associations even though its component features and materials may be themselves so highly deteriorated that their integrity is irretrievably lost.”
Woolworth’s storefront on Houston Street – the markings on the ground show where mission buildings were. Also where Travis lived during the siege. Probably his slave Joe as well.
Reason 3 will be this: If you demolish Woolworth’s you will still have other sites that witnessed peaceful integration in March, 1960. That is true, and incredibly insulting.
It says your history can make do with fewer landmarks. It says because you have Neisner’s, Kress’ and Green’s then you don’t need the only one people have heard of.
Erasing an authentic place for a reconstruction?
Whose history would be erased for whose?
Photo: UTSA Special Collections Courtesy San Antonio Express News