roast this chestnut
It is a reflective time of year and I was reflecting on the oldest, most thoroughly roasted chestnut of all. One of the most frequent anti-preservation arguments, it goes something like this.
“If we had preservation laws back then, X would never have been able to build Y.”
(Where X = Daniel Burnham or Frank Lloyd Wright or Mies van der Rohe or any other resplendent architectural genius; and Y = Reliance Building or Guggenheim Museum or Crown Hall or any other munificent architectural landmark.)
This is an intriguing position, a sort of “dropped from heaven” philosophical argument that works in the brain even though it doesn’t in the world, which is overdetermined, messy and complex now matter how hard you wish.
We have examples that seem to support this position. Mies van der Rohe’s Crown Hall was built on the site of the Mecca Flats, the architectural and historic center of Chicago’s Black Metropolis, and there was even an effort to save it.
Also in Chicago, we have the Field Building, built in 1934 on the site of the first skyscraper, the Home Insurance Building. In fact, they only proved the Home Insurance was the first skyscraper by dismantling it.