The Economy of Preservation

We spent a nice day in Lewisburg, West Virginia last weekend.  One reason for choosing Lewisburg for a day trip was that it is close to our home in Southwest Virginia, but beyond that, even though we didn't consciously make the decision based on historic preservation, all of the reasons are inextricably tied to it:

• Lewisburg has a sense of place.  The minute you enter town, you know you are somewhere special and not in Anytown, USA.  History is evident from the old buildings and the tree-lined streets.  The business district has character and draws you in.  This is a place you want to stop.
  
• Lewisburg is pedestrian friendly.  Though several main roads connect in town, all of the roads are 2 lanes with parallel parking.  The parked cars and street trees help to provide a barrier between pedestrians and traffic while also slowing the cars driving through.  Why are the roads narrow?  Because the buildings are historic and were built at a time when pedestrians and horses were the norm or few people owned those new-fangled automobile things.
  
• Lewisburg is compact, yet expansive.  What do I mean by that?  The area that comprises downtown Lewisburg is just a few blocks, creating a compact area to walk around.  No sprawl here.  But it is expansive enough that you can spend an entire afternoon here eating lunch (and maybe dinner too) at a local restaurant; browsing the galleries of locally-made and high-quality arts and crafts, antique stores, and specialty shops; and taking the historic walking tour.  You can expand your trip to the evening too by taking in a show at Carnegie Hall and spend the night at a local B&B.
  
• Money spent in Lewisburg stays local.  The majority of businesses are locally owned and not owned by a faceless conglomerate in another state who doesn't really even know where Lewisburg is.  That means that money you spend in Lewisburg most likely returns to business owners and employees who live locally.  If they, in turn, spend the money they earned from you locally, then the returns to the local economy snowball.

I don't know the logistics of how Lewisburg became the community it is today, but I do know that many small towns have used federal and state historic preservation funding and tax credits to help them revitalize and reinvent themselves after experiencing extended economic downturns due to lost industries and changes in the way people shop.  What does federal and state preservation funding accomplish for these towns?  It creates jobs.  It creates jobs for the people who restore and rehabilitate the historic buildings to be used by restaurants, galleries, specialty shops, grocery and hardware stores, office space, apartments, and a myriad of other uses.  It creates jobs for the business owners and their staff that occupy the historic buildings.  It creates jobs for tourism-related businesses such as restaurants, lodging, and gas that are needed so visitors can spend the day, spend the night, spend the week.  These may not be the large-scale industrial park-type industries our politicians are thinking of when they chant the "more jobs" mantra, but these small local businesses are important for rural economies, small town residents, and the American way of life.  And funding to help with these preservation projects is vital to our economy.  That might not be so obvious if you live in Anytown, USA.

A Preservation Success Story - Pulaski Depot

Photo from The Southwest Times

 

Back in November 2008, we were all heart-broken to hear of the fire in the historic Pulaski, Virginia train station.  A beautiful stone passenger depot built in the late 1800s, it housed the town's museum and Chamber of Commerce.  The fire was electrical, starting in the ceiling of the museum and probably smoldering for quite some time before breaking into flames during the night.  There wasn't a fire alarm system in the building, but a passerby saw smoke pouring from the roof and called 911.  The volunteer fire department went far above and beyond the call of duty pulling museum items out of the structurally unsound building in the heat of the moment, saving far more than one would have imagined given the intensity of the fire.  

Photo from WSLS

Despite the depot's stone walls and slate roof, the building did not fair well in the fire.  The roof collapsed, taking parts of the upper walls with it and interior features were incinerated.  Even given the best efforts of the fire fighters, the fire was too far advanced when they were called to have had a better outcome.  With current budget constraints and the state of the depot, many municipalities would have decided to give up and demolish the building.  The Town of Pulaski is resilient.  They've been through town fires, the closing of their furniture factories, flooding, two fires in their historic courthouse, and, since the depot fire, a tornado.  The Town decided to use the insurance money they received from the fire to reconstruct the train depot and restore many of the depot's original features.

Last Saturday, June 11, 2011 was the grand reopening of Pulaski's depot.  It was exhilarating to see how many people gathered for the celebration.  The exterior of the building has been restored to its appearance prior to the fire.  The slate roof with its distinctive cupolas has been reconstructed along with the upper sections of the stone exterior walls that were lost to the fire.  The interior has been returned to its original appearance with fireplaces at the ends of the main rooms and beadboard covering the walls. Some changes were made to reflect the new functionality of the building.  A new museum will be built across the street, so the depot will become a meeting space for local groups and those looking for retreat space.  New restrooms and a ramp were added.  Probably the most important new feature added to the building?  An alarm and fire suppression system.

Buildings Aren't Consumables

When did Americans become so reactive instead of proactive?  Why do we wait until something reaches a critical point before we fix it rather than treating it early, before it gets to the critical point?  Why do we throw money at the effects rather than the causes?  Why do we discard rather than repair?  When did we become such a consumer society? 

What do these questions have to do with historic preservation?  A lot.  Preservationists understand the importance of being proactive with an old or historic building to reduce costs and maintain the life of the building:

• Being proactive will save money over the life of the building.  Buildings fall down or become extremely costly to restore if we wait until the roof leaks or the windows fall out or the termite damage is visible before we fix them.  Inspect the building at least yearly.  Spend money to repair the roof when damage is evident, get out the glazing putty when the windows panes are loose, and spray for bugs yearly. 

• Fixing the cause will save money by fixing the effect. Rather than just fixing the bubbling plaster wall, determine what is causing the plaster to bubble in the first place.  Is it caused by water coming in the wall?  How is the water getting in?  Is the gutter in the wrong place?  Are the window sills holding water instead of shedding it?  If you don't fix the underlying problem, the plaster will keep bubbling and you'll continually need to spend money fixing it.
  
• Repairing saves money and often lasts longer than replacing.  Your old windows are hard to raise and you need to put a stick in the track to hold them up?  Fix them!  You just need to open up the trim and attach new rope to the weights.  Add some weather stripping and new storm windows if they're drafty.  It'll save you more money than you think because you won't have to replace your new vinyl windows yet again in 20 years when they cloud up.
  
• Buildings shouldn't be considered consumables.  A well-maintained old building can last hundreds of years.  The materials and workmanship used to construct old buildings are often not available anymore.  The dimensional lumber, hand-formed bricks, old-growth wood, and other materials are far superior to what is available today and will likely last longer than most buildings constructed today of less robust materials.  Why spend the money to bulldoze a perfectly viable building built of high quality materials for something built from lower quality materials?  Rehabilitate, reuse, don't bulldoze.

Preservationists get it.  Spend a little time or money now, save lots of time and money later.  Now if we can just break the rest of America from reactive and consumptive habits...

We Need More Historic Building Tradespeople!

I may have mentioned before that it is nearly impossible to find anyone in our area that knows how to work on an old house (or new one for that matter, but that's another story).  In addition to working on our own rehabilitation projects, we are both museum directors responsible for historic house museums and their upkeep.  At home, we can take things apart, work on them, put them back together, and learn during the process. At work, it's not our responsibility (thank Heavens!) to fix bubbling plaster or make the windows functional again. But, that means we have to find someone who can.  And not just someone who can, but someone who knows what they are doing.

We may live in Virginia, but we are far from Jamestown, Williamsburg, Richmond, and the historic places where buildings matter.  We are in the mountainous southwestern part of the state that was settled much later than the east.  Our county has just celebrated its bicentennial.  The farther south and west you go, the younger the community.  And, for whatever reason, there isn't a reverence for historic buildings that translates to their upkeep.  People revere the land that their ancestors have owned for generations and will gladly point out their homeplace.  But, more often than not, that homeplace is falling to the ground.

So when it comes to finding someone to do plaster work, properly repoint brick, repair wooden windows, or replicate old woodwork, it's nearly impossible.  The trades consist of vinyl, vinyl, and more vinyl: siding, windows, porch columns...  Replace it don't fix it.  Just another example of our throw away society.  Throw away the old, dependable fixtures.  Throw away money.

Our consumptive Walmart society is one problem.   The American view that all children must go to college to be successful is also problematic.  No matter that a person who is successful at a historic building trade is likely to make more over their lifetime than many college graduates and not spend their life paying back college loans.   There is an unfortunate stigma related to the trades, that can lead high school students who would be far happier working with their hands tackling a new preservation problem to a long, struggle through college classes and an unsatisfying desk job. 

And for those high school students who might want to pursue historic building trades, they probably don't know the opportunity exists.  In our area in particular, it is likely that students don't recognize that historic buildings are different than new construction.  If their school happens to have a technical track, it is likely they will build a new vinyl house with metal studs.  A two-pronged approach requires an understanding of the built environment and different types of construction, as well as the technical skills and critical thinking required to build or repair different types of buildings.  Until we can make the preservation trades a mainstream educational track, it will be difficult to find young people to replace the older generation and it will be come increasingly harder to find someone qualified to fix the amazing features of old and historic houses.  

Note: The Preservation Trades Network preserves and teaches historic building trades and is working to develop education initiatives to keep the trades alive.

Restoration, Rehabilitation, and Insulation

The Secretary of the Interior is pretty clear about the differences between restoration and rehabilitation of historic properties. Restoration "focuses on the retention of materials from the most significant time in a property's history, while permitting the removal of materials from other periods" while Rehabilitation "emphasizes the retention and repair of historic materials, but more latitude is provided for replacement because it is assumed the property is more deteriorated prior to work." In addition, the historical importance, physical condition, proposed use, and code requirements should be taken into consideration when choosing a treatment for the building.

In the area where we live, economics have never been such that large, showy houses were built.  Because we are relatively isolated, most building occurred in the late 1800s and early 1900s, with a building boom in the 1940s related to growing industry.  Most of the houses here reflect the blue collar nature of the jobs available and are simple, vernacular homes with some bungalows and American four squares thrown in.  Taken together, the houses create an interesting, varied, and historic streetscape, but very few places in the county have been nominated for the National Register.

Our house was built by the town doctor and is one of the more majestic-looking in our town.  Yet despite the exterior, the interior is very simple and plain.  Most, but not all of the trim and doors are oak, but the trim is basic and easily replicable (or findable at the salvage yard).  Our house doesn't have the Craftsman details and built-ins popular in many houses of the time.  There is just one shallow fireplace with a very simple mantle.  The walls are plaster, but not in great shape.  And our house, as were many other larger homes in the area, was broken up into apartments during the building boom of the 1940s.

For us, the lack of Craftsman details and poor plaster is a blessing in disguise.  It means that we don't feel obligated to restore the house back to the time when the details were new.  We can really do what we please inside the house to make it livable without concern for fancy woodwork, because we just don't have it.  That said, we have removed traces of the apartments, found where the original doorways were and generally restored the spaces to what they were when the house was built.  We are fortunate to have most of the original doors and trim and have been able to find replacements where the originals were lost.

Most importantly though, because we aren't restoring the house, but instead are rehabilitating it, we could insulate it without feeling (much) guilt for replacing the plaster exterior walls with sheetrock.  Now we certainly recognize that many of you are frowning at us for doing that.  However, we live in a climate with strong winds and cold winter weather and it makes more sense to reduce our heating bills with insulation than to keep and patch plain 1913 plaster walls.  Were this house older, if it were in a different climate, if the walls were more significant due to plaster details or wainscoting or other trim, or if the exterior were wood so that it could be insulated from outside, we would have considered other alternatives.  But, for our own comfort and the continuing use of this house, this was the right rehabilitation plan for this house.

When Does Restoration Go Too Far?

We've watched American Restoration on the History Channel a few times.  The premise is that someone brings their old rusty treasure to the American Restoration shop and for a (pretty steep) fee, get a bright, shiny restored treasure in return.  Due to my museum and preservation background, I'm on the fence about what I think of this show.  On the one hand, most of the objects brought in are in such a decayed state that they are unlikely to be used or displayed as is.  On the other hand, when the objects are restored, their original finish, details, and parts are often lost.  Are these really the same objects anymore?  Does it matter?

An extreme restoration example is the USS Constitution, also known as Old Ironsides.  This ship was launched in 1797 and has remained commissioned ever since.  Now think about that for a moment.  This wooden-hulled ship has been in the water for 213 years.  Do you think any ship could really stay afloat 213 years without some work being done?  What about the ropes and sails?  Seems like they would rot in the elements, yet the ship sails periodically.  Today it is estimated that through the ship's many repairs and restorations, only 10-15% of the original ship remains.  The rest of the wood, rope, sail, copper, cast iron, and other materials have been replaced.  The ship is still accepted to be the USS Constitution, but if 85-90% of the materials are new, is it still the USS Constitution?  Does it matter?

What about a Ford Model A found in a barn, unused for 40 years.  All of the parts and the paint are as they were from the factory.  Someone comes in, gets the engine running, buys reproduction tires for it, drives it away, and uses it as it was meant to be.  Contrast this with the automobile connoisseur who takes the same Model A to a restorer, gets a shiny new paint job, a factory perfect engine, whitewall tires, loads it in his car carrier, and wins prizes for its perfection, but never, ever drives it.  Or the hotrod fan who takes the same Model A, chops down the frame, replace the engine, brightly paints it with a flame job, and can drive the car on the interstate.  Are these all really the same Model A anymore?  If the vehicle is still being used, rather than rotting away in the barn, does it matter?

In a museum or at auction, an object is usually worth more if it is in it's original state.  Strip down and refinish that Chippendale chest or replace the glass in that Tiffany lamp shade and it loses value both for the museum visitor and the collector.  These aren't the same objects anymore.  And it does matter.

We tend to be more tolerant of changes to buildings or hold them to a different  standard.  Perhaps it's their longevity.  Roofs have to be replaced, plumbing and electricity added or upgraded, and walls and exteriors painted.  We still consider the building to be the same building despite these changes.  Fix a rotted sill, add a portico to the front or a wing to the side, and it is still the same building.  Lost details may be replaced, old paint scraped to make a smooth surface for new paint,  floors sanded and refinished, and reproduction wallpaper added.  Perhaps because a building is more of a living being, it matters less that the original finishes have been lost as long as the building looks the same. 

So what about the objects they restore on American Restoration?  Is that okay?  I'm still not sure.  But maybe it doesn't matter as long as the owners are happy with their newly restored objects.