Design Guidelines D’OH!
There are some basic principles of heritage conservation/historic preservation you will always hear from me. The first is that preservation is not a series of rules or standards but a PROCESS. It is a better process than zoning or building codes because it treats every property as an individual with its own character and history. Zoning and building treat properties as alienated commodities, one-size-fits-all.
Fortified Saxon village, Transylvania. I guess these two pictured structures are the same. Both are made of the same material and designed for both commerce and fortification. They must be identical.
Which is why preservation folks often bump up against zoning attorneys, because the whole treating-resources-based-on-their-actual-characteristics thing is especially annoying to them. After all, their expertise is commodification. You don’t have a house, you have a residential unit.
3-2 $2400 a month ignore the picture.
I taught Historic Preservation Planning for almost twenty years and one of the two final paper assignments was ALWAYS developing design guidelines for a specific historic district. The principle, which was clear since the advent of historic districts, was that you can’t really have design guidelines that apply to all historic districts in a city. Some are Victorian. Some are bungalows. Some are Mid-Century Modern. Any design guidelines that applied to such diverse districts would have to be so bland as to be useless.
This is a San Antonio historic district, so it should follow the same rules as….
this San Antonio historic district, or this one (they all look the same, right?)
I would show my students the Mid-North Historic District Design Guidelines from 1973, created at the time the historic district in Chicago was designated, because EVERYONE KNEW that each district had its own characteristics and needed its own, specifically tailored design guidelines. But that did not happen due to money. So, a perennial Master’s student assignment was born.
Mid-North historic district, Chicago
Fast forward thirty years and the Conservation Society of San Antonio gives a grant to the River Road neighborhood to craft design guidelines. I also helped them from the technical side, since my dissertation was on the history of historic districts and I have a lot of experience with design guidelines.
This is River Road. Some commonalities with bungalow districts, although with more Revival Style and fair amount of Moderne influence, especially in windows, unlike other districts from that period.
Those are the windows on the right – very particular to this area.
And they came up with an excellent document. It was set to be adopted by the Historic and Design Review Commission today but some people in the neighborhood (attorneys probably, or some other commodifiers) raised a last-minute stink so they pulled this thoughtful document from the agenda. Apparently they think that the citywide guidelines are enough, which means they missed the entire point.
Which means they think that River Road looks the same as everywhere else.
Quod erat demonstratum.
D’OH!
OCTOBER UPDATE – DUDA FORUM
I am at the Duda Forum on Historic Preservation and Sustainable Development and Kate Singleton of the City of Dallas reported on how Dallas regulates its historic districts. They have a citywide “boilerplate” for design guidelines but then they differentiate it based on the characteristics of the district. DALLAS DOES IT RIGHT! Not only do they understand that every historic district needs its own individual design guidelines, they also do it for Conservation Districts! Trevor Brown (on the same panel) described how Conservation Districts each have their own regulations that vary dramatically between districts. Some only regulate materials, some do setbacks and massing. Trevor stated that it is a “Neighborhood-driven process” which is exactly what preservation is supposed to be.
Preservation is a process whereby a community determines what elements of its past it wants in its future.
Every place has its own character and needs its own guidelines.
If you need a primer on how historic districts work, here’s one of mine from 2009.
Rehabilitating Treatments
“The goals of the preservation movement have evolved. The methods, for the most part, have not.”
Rast, Raymond W.1
The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation recently asked for comments on the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties. These standards have not been redone in over 30 years, and I have been involved in the effort to improve the National Register of Historic Places – and by extension – the Secretary’s Standards – for about fifteen years, including a 2013 panel at the National Trust conference in Indianapolis that included Ray Rast, quoted above.
Rast provided one of the first “Eureka” moments in our efforts to modernize the National Register when he suggested a sliding scale for Integrity. Charged with finding historic sites associated with Cesar Chavez, he was frustrated that State Historic Preservation Offices kept saying that the buildings had no integrity, like the example above where Chavez first organized workers. It has lost historic integrity but can it still tell the story? It happened in this building, in this place, even if windows and walls have been altered.
I have written blogs and a book chapter about this subject many times, including here in 2016. At that time Donna Graves and Shayne Watson provided the next “Eureka” moment by proposing that Integrity – in the context of LGBTQ history in San Francisco – focus on only four of the seven aspects of integrity. In the last year, an eighth aspect of Integrity – Use – has appeared. Eureka!
Alazan-Apache Courts (Los Courts) San Antonio. Many alterations since 1940 but USE is unchanged and they made the 2021 National Trust list of 11 Most Endangered Properties.
All of these efforts derived more from the INPUT side of the National Register – how do we get landmarks of most people listed when the standards are designed for fancy folk and their fancy architecture? But the focus of the Advisory Council right now is on the OUTPUT side – how do we judge and approve treatments for historic properties? Is it all about wood windows? (HINT: No. Here’s my take)
Tell me what the angels are made of.
More importantly, the effort is driven not simply by the ancient nature of the existing standards, but by the great variety of interpretations of those standards by State and Tribal Preservation Offices, the National Park Service, and local landmark commissions. Part of this variety is generational. For some Boomers it IS all about wood windows. When I first proposed revisions to Integrity, the old guard (literally – they are called the “Keeper of the National Register”) were furious.
It’s not always about architecture. Malt House, San Antonio (demolished)
The National Register falls under the Department of the Interior, and new guidances are slowly opening the doors to new types of landmarks and new types of treatments. Take one example that we are very comfortable with in San Antonio – Trex replacement floorboards for porches. We have approved these for landmark grant projects. The Office of Historic Preservation also has, although they will approve them UNLESS they have a faux-grain finish that makes them look like wood. That is a bit too precious for me. (HINT: Skeumorphs)
But I know where it comes from, and this is probably the biggest issue in the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards – internal conflicts. Back in 2006 the National Trust commissioned me to assess a particular situation where interpretations of Standards #3 and #9 came into conflict.
Standard #3 says “Changes that create a false sense of historical development, such as adding conjectural features or elements from other historic properties, will not be undertaken.” while Standard #9 says “new work will be differentiated from the old and will be compatible with the historic materials, features, size, scale and proportion, and massing” So new work should look new but also it should fit in. If it fits in too well, Standard #9 defeats Standard #3. Or it whacks it on the head, as in the case above. And the historical fact is that right about the time the Standards were rewritten in 1990, people started creating all sorts of new buildings indistinguishable from the old.
1903 and 1993. Joliet, Illinois
But the real problem is not one of architectural style. The real problem is that architecture and real estate development have their own rules and interactions that don’t really apply when you are dealing with sites that are important because of their history and associations. How do they convey those histories and associations? By architecture, yes, but more by place. And by intentionally conveying that information.
Underground railroad site at a McDonald’s, Maywood, Illinois
Here is where OUTPUT returns to INPUT, because while many organizations like my own are working to nominate more diverse historic sites to the National Register, one of the biggest drivers of nominations (INPUT) are developers who are trying to get tax credits (OUTPUT) and of course their goal is to keep it as simple as possible. If you just focus on architecture, historic preservation is as easy as zoning! No inherent or unique qualities to worry about! It’s just a commodity like all others!
Woot!
In my writings on this subject, I suggested new standards for sites that met Criterion A or B, namely sites that had historic rather than architectural significance. Rather than meet high architectural standards, the treatment for these sites should focus on an interpretive plan. In some ways, my extensive experience with World Heritage sites with their management plans informed this suggestion. If World Heritage sites have management plans, couldn’t National Register sites that are important for who they are associated with or what happened there have interpretive plans? Heck, you could even make the tax credits dependent on effective interpretive plans.
The other aspect of World Heritage that is useful is the Burra Charter, which is my north star for the whole heritage conservation field. The Burra Charter basically requires community input from the moment of inception to the final treatment – a contrast to the old world where the landmarks get picked by the professionals alone. The basic idea is again, the opposite of zoning. Every site has a unique history and form that cannot be commodified. Its treatments – how we fix it up – have no analogues. They are determined by the site itself, its history and cultural continuity, and by the community that wants it in their future. No two sites are treated the same because no two are identical.
I can’t remember if it is in the fridge or the basement…
Heritage conservation is PROCESS, not FORM. The process is IDENTIFY – EVALUATE – REGISTER – TREAT. That four-step process is defined in the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, and Section 106 basically follows the same four steps for reviewing federal undertakings. The Burra Charter essentially defines the same PROCESS but insists that the community be involved at every step. Those who wrote the NHPA is ’66 or the Standards in the 70s and 80s likely envisioned professionals doing that work. Professionals are needed of course, but they cannot do it without community, since community are the ultimate stewards of whatever structure, site, landscape or traditional practice is being conserved.
Matachines at Mission Concepcion, 2017.
Naturally, developers and public officials dealing with historic buildings want a simple form-based checklist of what they need to do, not a process. The Secretary of the Interior’s Standards are broad principles, and while the National Park Service publishes detailed Guidelines for the use of the Standards. The “checklist” so to speak is not really prescriptive – it is categorized in terms of “Recommended” and “Not Recommended”. The process should yield a different formal result for each site.
At the end of the day, the issue is more the INTERPRETATION of the Standards than the Standards themselves. During my forty years in this field, I have always been aware of how certain State Historic Preservation Offices or certain local landmark commissions had their own tendencies in review of historic projects. Developers using the tax credits want consistency and predictability, but is that reasonable? Are ground soils consistent and predictable? Are building contractors? Are zoning variations? Are interest rates? Climate? Market conditions?
- “A Matter of Alignment: Methods to Match the Goals of the Preservation Movement,” forum journal, Spring 2014, p. 13. See also Michael, Vincent L, “Addressing the Diversity Deficit: Reform the National Register of Historic Places” in Creating Historic Preservation in the 21st Century, Wagner and Tiller, Eds. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018
San Antonio Update June 2023
I would always tell my students that you don’t save buildings once. You have to do it again and again. Back in the 1980s and 90s when I worked for Landmarks Illinois (it had a longer name then) we helped save the Hotel St. Benedict Flats (James Egan, 1882) four times in six years – with a National Register nomination, appeals to zoning changes, and finally a landmark designation followed by a phone call from a developer who ended up buying and restoring it using the historic tax credits and an easement donation.
Last year here at the Conservation Society of San Antonio, we lobbied San Antonio College and the Archdiocese – then the owner – to offer the building for sale. We collaborated with the Tobin Hill neighborhood group and even with this blog, which led to two persons purchasing the building for rehabilitation as a wine bar. You can see my blogs on it here and here. Now, a year later, it needs to be saved again as the owners have put it up for sale following a little rehab and some damage from intruders.
I actually discovered that people had broken in back in February when I was taking Advisory Council on Historic Preservation Chair Sarah Bronin on whirlwind tour of San Antonio preservation. I immediately alerted one of the owners, but some damage had been done and now there is a protective fence and several boarded up windows.
Damage does not always mean the end of an historic landmark, and at least the Hughes House was officially landmarked by the City Council in the interim. It also got a zoning change for the wine bar, no mean feat given its location near schools and houses of worship. Still, the process starts again, the building is a bit banged up and the future is uncertain….
In other news, a landmark I drive past every day had a fire recently, again courtesy of the obdachlos, who also tried to block firefighters from responding. Fortunately the firefighters succeeded and only a portion of the rear of the house was damaged. We were interviewed by a tv station about the house, since it is a Texas Historical Landmark and associated with Venustiano Carranza, one of the big four of the Mexican Revolution along with Francisco Madero, Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata. Carranza was President for most of 1915-20 (and actually got rid of Zapata). The house was built by his niece 1913-14. Both Madero and Carranza spent significant time in San Antonio early in the decade, although the houses they visited before 1913 are all demolished now. There is a statue of Madero on the River Walk near King William. So the Carranza house is our only physical connection to this history.
Fortunately the house has been secured, but thanks to the KSAT reporters, we learned that there is another building associated with this important chapter in San Antonio history, and it is right across the street. And it is being rehabbed. Now we have two buildings, whose history is intertwined!
Turns out this simple industrial structure was the publication site of La Prensa, an important Spanish language newspaper in San Antonio for a century. La Prensa was front and center during the Mexican Revolution, and having it right across the street doubles down on the value of this landmark. Here are two buildings that hosted important visitors central to a defining moment in Mexican history. They had discussions and strategized here, and the press put their words into action.
If these walls could talk……. The good news is the building is secured, so perhaps it will not suffer the fate of so many others – perhaps a dozen a year – lost to demolition by neglect.
The issue raises the larger question of why the city can’t do more to prevent the loss of vacant buildings, especially since San Antonio passed a Vacant Building Ordinance nearly a decade ago. According to KSAT News, over 250 vacant historic buildings exist in the city, and we have certainly seen many of them succumb to fire after squatters take up residence. We had the sad story of 503 Urban Loop last year, the Lone Star Brewery before that. Heck, 800 W. Russell in my neighborhood (pictured above) burned twice. Like many of the others, the owners were neither local nor attentive.
Above: Site of 212 W. Dewey owned by an Austin developer who bought like 8 houses in the Tobin Hill area which are all subject to demolition by neglect. This neglect is not a lack of capital or supply chains or anything – it is a business model, one that harms neighborhoods.
So why doesn’t the Vacant Building ordinance solve the problem? Representatives of historic neighborhoods have been asking the city that very question in recent days. If neighborhoods alert the Office of Historic Preservation about a vacant building and get it on the Vacant Building list, shouldn’t Development Services be enforcing code violations? Or, is it because it is on the list that everyone thinks someone else is taking care of it? Stay tuned!
Forty Years
This week marks forty years since I began my career in heritage conservation, a journey over much time and vast space. I am incredibly blessed. Last week I got to take Sarah Bronin, the Chair of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation on a quick tour of preservation challenges and successes in San Antonio at her specific request. I recently visited by Zoom with my 7 roommates from the 2018 Harvard Business School Non Profit Management class and next week I will be in Washington DC lobbying for the Historic Preservation Fund, among other things.
Forty years is a long time, and a fun thought experiment is to take another 40 year chunk – for example the century before, 1883-1923 and see what changed. That period witnessed electrification, automobiles, movies, radio, analgesics, relativity, psychoanalysis and modern architecture. Mine witnessed personal computers, the internet, digital photography, smartphones, microbreweries, quantum entanglement, global warming and email. Both had global pandemics and both ended up with eight planets in the solar system.
The last forty years in heritage conservation/historic preservation have seen the rise of heritage areas in the 1980s, the expansion of historic tax credits in the 1990s, new approaches to intangible heritage and cultural history in the 2000s, to the current focus on affordable housing, climate change, diversity and historic trades. Some things persist, like the importance of public-private partnerships, public relations, and networking, and some things evolve, like architectural history and the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards (we hope).
I am usually struck more by similarity than difference, but there has been some serious evolution in the field, even though you can find preservation initiatives dealing with trades, diversity, affordability and climate all the way back in the 1970s. To me the most significant shift has been the ongoing arc away from museum curation to community activism, and the attendant emphasis on the economic everyday.
In my dissertation, I traced the evolution of preservation from a museum-focused antiquarian enterprise in the early 20th century to a part of the neighborhood activist’s toolbox in the 1960s and 1970s. Historic districts, which were still a new thing in the 1960s (in the 1960s the Municipal Arts Society imagined there would be no more than three or four historic districts EVER in New York City). The next step came with the invention of Main Street in 1975 by Mary Means, where traditional architectural preservation was only 1/4 of the cocktail, combined with promotion, organization and economic restructuring. I arrived in the field in 1983 as the first heritage area was introduced in Congress, where again traditional preservation was only a 1/4 of the cocktail, combined now with natural area conservation, recreation and economic development.
I was asked in 1990 by Metropolitan Review to write an article about the coming decade of preservation and my answer was couched in terms of expanding audiences and expanding targets for preservation – more modern buildings, more diverse constituencies, and a greater focus on the community issues that had driven districts, Main Streets and heritage areas.
Architectural history had always lagged the community activists who had saved the Jefferson Market Courthouse in 1961 when all the experts hated High Victorian Queen Anne design. By the 1980s and 1990s the pesky public were not only fully on board with Victorian and 1920s bungalows, but they were already going after Mid-Century Modern and dragging the eggheads along reluctantly, as Richard Longstreth pointed out.
Probably the most dramatic fact of 40 years is that we are already trying to save buildings that were built during that period, some of which were decried at the time of construction, like the maligned and then beloved State of Illinois/Thompson Center in Chicago.
Diversity is perhaps the most important, and has been a leitmotif throughout my preservation career, from working for landmark designation of North Kenwood 1988-1993 to serving on no less than three diversity committees and task forces for the National Trust in the last 15 years. For the last ten years I have been leading panels and trying to find ways to bring more diversity to the National Register of Historic Places, efforts embraced by many that are starting to bear fruit. I am also very grateful to have been a part of the Coalition for the Woolworth Building here in San Antonio and today a part of the Alamo Museum Planning Civil Rights Exhibit Subcommittee planning that portion of the rehabilitated Woolworth Building. (See our video on the history here.)
Diversity is essential to the private sector for innovation and to the public sector for justice. It is essential to the heritage conservation field because our basic mission is not simply to save historic buildings, sites and places, but to save those places that will continue to have meaning to subsequent generations. After forty years in this fascinating field, I have seen many historic places “saved” more than once.
Since my first day I have understood that a key to heritage conservation is conveying the importance of a preservation ethic. Preservation is a process that a community uses to identify what elements of its past are essential to its future. Demographics have shifted significantly in 40 years, and the communities of today are measurably different than 1983.
Preservation is always a future oriented decision, and the diverse generations of the future are key. How do you insure that the next generation also believes in the importance of saving places? Listen to them and give them power.
Baguettes and Zoom
The ubiquitous French baguette was inscribed as Intangible Cultural Heritage this week, and our reaction must be: Why did it take so long? It has been nearly 30 years since UNESCO adopted the Intangible Cultural Heritage convention and started cataloging music, dance, costume, food, crafts and other elements of cultural heritage from across the globe. One would think the baguette would be high on the list but at least it takes it rightful place next to couscous, Turkish coffee and Belgian beer. Oh! And slivovitz, the plum brandy often central to Passover, just got listed as well.
For the second Fall in a row, I have been teaching a Zoom course to UTSA Architecture students on World Heritage Management. I have had the good fortune to have some great guest speakers – Dr. Paul Ringenbach, who wrote the World Heritage nomination for the San Antonio Missions, Christine Jacobs, Superintendent of the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, and Nada Hosking, my former colleague and Executive Director of the Global Heritage Fund.
It has been fun to teach again after a decade-long break, and I am impressed by how well the Zoom interface works. Of course, it began due to COVID but it continued because now I can teach from anywhere. I taught a course at UIC in Chicago in the Spring, and I taught two of my UTSA courses this Fall while I was on my Fulbright Specialist trip to Bogotá.
It also allows me to relive many sites I visited and worked at around the world, collecting and reflecting on how heritage conservation happens and what it means for a community’s growth and health. We focus mostly on the cultural World Heritage sites, although several students have done papers on the Natural World Heritage Sites and we did cover Intangible Cultural Heritage as well.
I am impressed with how attentive the students have been and how effective the medium actually is for a class like mine which is essentially a lecture class with a lot of powerpoints – the students presented their own powerpoints on three occasions. I try to keep it interesting and connected with some basic themes, like my bottom line: Heritage conservation is a process that a community used to determine what elements of its past it wants in its future. And how.
The semester comes to an end next week, and I have learned a lot as well as – I hope – shared a lot. You learn by teaching, seeing the connections and themes that emerge even from projects and examples that you worked on long ago. From new questions and old questions (gentrification?) asked again in a new year. The added Fulbright Specialist tour (see previous blogs) added more students and insights to the mix.
Revisiting the Past
While in Bogotá I saw a news article about the Smithsonian Institute returning looted artifacts to Benin in West Africa, part of a growing trend to repatriate historic arts and crafts to the regions they were crafted in. This was of great interest to my students at Ean University, who asked me point blank what I thought about the repatriation of historic artifacts in museums. I said repatriate them. In a world of digital reproduction, museums can easily go back to the plaster casts from whence they came. Location is a key aspect of authenticity.
This reminded me of James Cuno’s book of a little over a decade ago, perhaps the last piece defending the ideal of the encyclopedic museum by arguing that antiquities belong to everyone, not a particular contemporary nation state. Cuno left the Getty this year and now I see that the Getty is hosting a symposium on “The Multiple Reinventions of the Americas in Context,” a critical look at how the “New World” has been conceived and reconceived over the last 500 years. Turns out, I could see much of that reinvention right in Bogotá.
Bogotá has some wonderful historic museums, but what really struck me was their interpretation, which is state of the art. My first visit was to the Museo Nacional, in a former panopticon prison. They have undertaken a reimagining of the museum by abandoning traditional chronology for juxtaposition, putting pre-Columbian artifacts next to telephones under the theme of communication, for example. Objects come alive as you see them simultaneously from the perspective of the colonizer, the colonized, the curator and the curious.
Colombia is a vast and diverse country in both people and geography. Like the U.S. it has Atlantic and Pacific coasts, a wide range of natural and mineral resources, a variety of indigenous groups, a history of African enslavement and a surprisingly long commitment to democracy. All of these themes were explored in the museum, with some clever interpolations by contemporary artists.
There was an exhibit on the history of the building, described as a 19C panopticon prison, and while it was not a true circular panopticon, the suggestion of Foucault and French structuralism was reinforced by the tiny gold exhibit in a literal safe across the way, which had this unexpected text on the wall.
Whoa! I have not seen McLuhan quoted in a museum before, but it makes perfect sense. Where is the medium the message more than in a museum? You are even invited to put your own self and your own culture in the museum.
MUSA, the Archaeological museum, was another example of interpretative elán, sited in one of the oldest surviving houses in Bogotá, from 1738. The collection is primarily ceramics from the many indigenous cultures that inhabited the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts, the three ranges of Andes Mountains, the Amazon and various other regions.
Interpretive text asked us not to see these ceramics as the work of the Other but as human creations that contained foods and sounds. The text asked us further to empathize with each object, reimagining our relationship to our own foods and dolls and musical instruments. The text on the wall urged us yet further to imagine their uses for ourselves without the intervention of the archaeologist or curator. The text was not printed but projected, because the museum is not eternal but fugitive, an incomplete record of an incomplete conversation. The interpretation did not dictate but prodded us to think openly about what we take from the objects presented and how their makers may have experienced them.
The Colonial Museum has the largest task in a time of decolonization, and in many ways did it best. This one was busy, with a conference going on, a massive contemporary art display on the courtyard galleries, and school groups being led with laughter through the exhibitions. Again, there were deft insertions of contemporary art interpretations, but only a few, and their style deliberately played on historic forms and tropes. The best example took familiar 17C images defining racial categorizations resulting from the mixing of Europeans, Africans and Indigenous and then crafted modern ones playing on modern subcultures in a mirror of the antique style.
The opening exhibit sticks primarily to religious and art objects brought to the Americas from Europe as part of the conversion of the population to Catholicism, although almost immediately they give you the artist reimagining the retablo.
The arrangement produced an understanding of the massive effort it took to transport huge numbers of paintings and sculpture to reinforce European traditions and religion. The journey to Bogotá, administrative center of the complex Muisca people who likely numbered a million, took many months both on sea and land. That is a lot of work for a collection of religious items, many quite bulky. I suppose it was worth it to the Spanish crown if they ultimately succeeded in establishing control.
It often takes only a single contemporary image playing with the forms of the historic image to open them up. Here a couple, followed by an artistic interpretation that again plays with racial reversal to make a point and open an eye, not unlike the work of Kehinde Wiley.
They even linked the tradition of saints and martyrs to contemporary martyrs due to the various insurgent groups and narcotraficantes of the 20C. Again, juxtaposition of the old and new offered a view into parallel worlds of conflict, colony and conversion.
These museums were refreshing and interesting, because you looked at each piece longer and had a stronger sense of its purpose and intent than you would have 20 or 50 years ago when it was just another item that was supposed to be beautiful or persuasive. Contemporaneity and criticality opened up the items in new ways, exposing not simply the contradictions of colonialism, but the contradictions of cultural inheritance. You can return a piece from the museum, enacting social justice. Or you can recontextualize a piece, engendering understandings that will support the ongoing pursuit of that justice.
Disclaimer: The blog of Dr. Vincent L. Michael, Time Tells, is not an official Department of State site. The views expressed here are entirely those of Dr. Michael and do not represent the views of the U.S. Department of State or its partners.
My Fulbright Specialist work at Ean University, Bogotá
My two week Fulbright Specialist time at Universidad Ean in Bogotá, Colombia is coming to an end in a couple of days. This has been an excellent experience, thanks in large part to Ean faculty member Juan Camilo Chaves and over a dozen excellent students in Cultural Heritage Management. Thanks also go to Fulbright Colombia, celebrating 65 years, and Paola Basto Castro of Ean’s International program, Sergio Sanchez and Laura Hernandez of Fulbright Colombia and Alejandro Torres of Ean.
First off, Ean has a brand new building with an incredible facade-screen passive heating and cooling system, facial recognition technology to enter and exit the building, and a host of other high-tech items, including a nap room, study rooms with color matched to your study style, etc. Even the old (2012!) building has a green roof of the type we were designing with School of the Art Institute of Chicago students in Lima in 2012, complete with hydroponics, beehives and greenhouses.
My weeklong workshop of five lectures was called “Heritage As Process” and included lectures on the long history of heritage conservation in San Antonio; People and the Preservation Process; Conserving World Heritage; History of Historic Districts and of course the amazing story of the Coalition for the Woolworth Building. I was also asked to have a Q & A with a larger group of student last week, and guest lectured on the San Antonio World Heritage Missions for another class. Tomorrow I will do my Fulbright presentation summarizing this.
So what did I learn, aside from what a modern university looks like? First, I am again lucky to live in a city with a long heritage conservation tradition, because Bogotá seems a bit like Houston or Singapore with endless highrises backed up to the mountains and little concern for the few remaining historic buildings. The students are working on cultural districts, but the idea of historic districts or preservation zones seems to have little traction here.
I visited the house museum of Simon Bolivar, the father of South American independence. It is a well interpreted site set in a lush garden. Especially impressive was the dining room, done in a French style – indeed, due to the timing, the whole place has an Empire feel to it.
Of course the classic tourist visit is a ride up the funicular to Monserrate, the hill above the city. The whole city sits smack dab against the mountains, and of course Monserrate is a pilgrimage route as well, with its church featuring a Christ figure descended from the cross.
I am off this morning to report on my Fulbright Specialist experience! Stay tuned for the next blog on the wonderfully challenging approach to interpretation in the museums of Bogotá!
Disclaimer: The blog of Dr. Vincent L. Michael, Time Tells, is not an official Department of State site. The views expressed here are entirely those of Dr. Michael and do not represent the views of the U.S. Department of State or its partners.
The Good, the Bad and the Interesting
A child characterizes the world in broad strokes to make it understandable. There are good guys and bad guys. If we mature, we see more nuance. We see the good and bad in many people, and while some remain largely good or bad actors, most are more interesting than the simple dichotomy because we are able to see them as a bundle of interests. That is more interesting.
Here is the Hughes House on Courtland Avenue, an absolutely beautiful 1912 Prairie Style home here in San Antonio (by a St. Louis architect) that was threatened by demolition last fall. A demolition permit had been applied for by the Archdiocese of San Antonio, which had owned the property for 50 years. The obvious purchaser was San Antonio College, which owned the adjacent parking lots.
A lot of neighborhood activists and the Conservation Society of San Antonio opposed the demolition and asked that it be considered as a landmark. Ricki Kushner of the Tobin Hill Neighborhood Association and Michael Carroll put together a detailed history of the house. In addition to its lovely architecture, it was where Russell Hughes grew up, a famous international dancer who was celebrated for her skills.
So, depending on your point of view, you could say there were good guys (preservationists, or the two institutions) and bad guys (the two institutions, or the preservationists). But that view requires some kind of obliteration of one side or the other. That’s not how you save a building.
You save a building by finding where the various actors’ interests lie, and seeing if there isn’t a way to ally those interests into a solution. So, in this case, the preservation folks asked San Antonio College to NOT purchase the property for demolition since the site was valued by the community. We distributed yard signs saying “SAVE THE HUGHES HOUSE”. San Antonio College agreed not to pursue acquisition of the site because good community relations is in their financial and public relations interest. Then we asked the Archdiocese to consider selling the property on the market, since their interest was to make money off the deal.
They did that and found a buyer who is interested in preservation. Now, everyone gets to be the good guy, because all interests have all been considered and the landmark lives on.
Many thanks the May Chu and Andrew Weissman for teaming up to save this landmark! Look for a new venue that will allow you to see the fabulous interiors – like these fireplaces! The Conservation Society introduced May to our local legendary chef Andrew and the whole community is excited about the possibility!
Things are happening
March 2022 and all of a sudden I am doing tours again – Alamo, Missions, the Conservation Society’s historic house museums (Steves Homestead in King William and the Yturri-Edmunds House and Mill) and sites in between. I did a talk and walk with a Houston arts group, and all-day tour with a Houston boys school and a tour with Preservation Action auction winners this week.
The 186th anniversary of the Alamo battle is in a few days, just as the world watches another hopelessly overmatched people try to repel an invading army, a parallel not lost on the speakers who celebrated the Texas Revolution at the Alamo yesterday.
On March 16 at lunchtime we will be screening our videos on San Antonio’s historic 1960 lunch counter integration at the Instituto Cultural de Mexico in Hemisfair, followed by a panel discussion led by Sarah Zenaida Gould, PhD, of the Mexican American Civil Rights Initiative. Please join us for this free event!
This will be followed the very next night by our biannual Historic Preservation Awards honoring projects and people in and around San Antonio. This paid event has several highlights, including the restoration of City Hall and the incredible dome at Temple Beth-El. Also Texas Preservation Heroes!
This is followed by a blizzard of galas the final week of the month, including our own Capital Club event on the 22nd, the Brackenridge Park Conservancy Gala on the 23rd, and the Make It Your Mission gala on the 24th. And then it is less than a week to Fiesta!
NIOSA is April 5-8 this year, so order your tickets now!
Alternativeless demolition
This is the 1911 Hughes house at 312 W Courtland Street in San Antonio. It sits on a corner next to a parking lot and across from the epic and massive Koehler House. And it is up for demolition. Which is understandable, unless you look at it.
It’s pretty. It’s intact. It is a solidly built, eminently adaptable house. Indeed, it has been owned by the Archdiocese for over half a century. They used it for a Catholic student center for most of that time, but now apparently it needs work. LIKE EVERY OTHER HOUSE IN HISTORY.
So, we have an owner who feel they can’t rehabilitate a house they themselves have let go. What is the alternative? Are they going to build a new student center? A parking lot? What is the alternative? Nothing. Just like 503 Urban Loop, our brothel-cum-child care center that is up for designation December 2. The owners originally said they were building a residential highrise, not they are on to the NO ALTERNATIVE PLANS plans.
Does anything say “I’M A FLIPPER” more loudly than a request for demolition with no plan for a replacement?
I remember City Council members back in the 1980s in Chicago saying that they might vote against landmarking something if they saw that what it was going to be replaced with was better. That actually makes sense, because a legislative representative has to look at all the factors, whereas a landmarks commissioner focuses on whether the building meets the criteria for designation.
If you aren’t revealing your plan, you probably don’t have one. In fact, you might just be shilling for the eventual owner, who has convinced you to do the dirty work of getting a demolition permit before they will ink the deal. It happens. But the Tobin Hill neighbors who are upset about the Hughes house are right, and the Council Member needs to have an alternative or he will be approving an Alternativeless Demolition.
Despite four non-profit and neighborhood organizations supporting the designation of 503 Urban Loop, it has its detractors because it is not conventionally pretty from all angles. Some might argue that the homeless are getting in and demolition is necessary. Because demolition solves the homeless issue?
312 W. Courtland is a very nice house so it might have even more friends, and fewer social ills in its Tobin Hill/Monte Vista neighborhood.
No, the real issue at 312 W. Courtland is likely that a potential buyer is asking the Archdiocese to demolish it because, under state law, they can do it UNLIKE EVERY OTHER BUILDING OWNER because they are a church.
The building isn’t a church, of course, which is what the first religious exclusion laws in the 80s focused on. It’s a perfectly good house.
Want to know the funny part?
The Archdiocese is likely getting hosed by the buyer – who is obviously making their offer contingent on the Archdiocese getting the demolition.
How many ways are there to be hosed in this situation?
- The property was never listed for sale, so all of those out-of-state transplants buying big lovely houses three blocks away have not had a chance to bid on this. The Archdiocese is leaving money on the table.
- The demolition and disposal cost on this is going to be high. Tile roofs are lovely, but heavy. Brick is also lovely, and you can’t push it over for $20k. Not a cheap demolition by any stretch. If the Archdiocese pays this bill for the under-the-market buyer, they are again….leaving money on the table.
So, what is the alternative? We don’t know.
Tobin Hill neighbors are asking for a Review of Significance, which you can support by contacting the Office of Historic Preservation, City of San Antonio. Again, State law allows the Archdiocese to prevail over landmarks laws, but let’s at least shine a light on it.
WHAT CAN YOU DO!
Visit the Conservation Society page on the Hughes House TODAY!
See the Conservation Society page on 503 Urban Loop now!
JUNE 2022 UPDATE: The HUGHES HOUSE IS SAVED! The Archdiocese found a willing buyer who is interested in repurposing the house! Apparently the sale closed today!