Today's Artisans and the Early Advocates

Every time I meet with artisans and others who might end up working on the Gold Miner I first have to explain the philosophy inherent in preservation. These philosophies are operationalized in the Secretary of the Interior's Standards that we can look at later but essentially they flow from the Venice Charter. They are characterized by the concepts of Preservation, Rehabilitation, Restoration, and Reconstruction. More on that to come. The basic goal is to let the Gold Miner present itself today just as it did in the spring of 1898 when it was new.  Building codes, building methods and techniques, building common practices, building materials all may have changed. Some of the parts of the structure may have worn out to the point that they can not continue to remain in service.  Some elements such as electricity or indoor plumbing which were not present initially are essential to a functioning structure today.

People used to working on newer structures may not first understand the primary goal but some of them will come to appreciate the basic concept of original presentation. Some of the more skilled will figure out how to meld together current requirements with original design. People who can make these elements work together are the valuable ones and it is those people that you have to encourage and retain.

This tension between the original and the current day is not a new concept.  Advocacy for historic preservation began not on a national policy basis but with a series of indivduals each interested in a single property.  Come to think of it, that is how we began our work on the Gold Miner. Often cited is the work of the Mount Vernon Ladies Association, begun about 1858, which preserves, restores, maintains, and makes available to the public the home of George Washington.  From disrepair and near ruin by the end of the 1850s Mt. Vernon today is the beneficiary of more than $13 million in annual private donations with yearly visits by more than 1 million.  Still any federal policy for historic preservation was focused on federally owned property for the next 100 years. That brought us the U. S. National Park Service and those Depression era works projects mentioned above but it did not bring a national historic policy.

The Athens Charter philosophy, the success of individuals and groups such as the Mt. Vernon Ladies, and the Depression era efforts were in the minds of many but until the chartering of the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 1949 there was no national organization with a mission of providing "leadership, education and advocacy to save America's diverse historic places and revitalize our communities." The combination of the 1964 Venice Charter philosophy and the leadership of the National Trust lead in 1966 to the National Historic Preservation Act but it had taken the Interstate Highway System to finally force the marriage between policy and action.

The Venice Charter

The Ahwahnee Hotel 

Prime turning points in a discipline, a profession, or a movement are often named after the place where an ad hoc group comes together and some how develops the core principles that guide the group, its followers, and essentially controls its future.  Two that I always liked are the Ahwahnee Principles which guide the activities of "Livable Communities" and the Dublin Core which prescribes the metadata semantics for web based resources.  The Ahwahnee Hotel is the perfect meeting site at Yosemite National Park and Dublin, Ohio is the location of OCLC, a prime influencer in information cataloging.  In Historic Preservation it is the Venice Charter.

To understand the mores of Preservationists we really need to understand some of the profession's drivers and how they came to be codified.  At first I was going to begin with the Secretary of the Interior's Standards for Historic Preservation but we really need to go back a step first. Please note that my goal here is to put historic preservation in context not to write the definiitve history of an international movement.

So, where to begin? The 1930s with its economic disruption saw an increased value in the built environment as the funding for new structures became difficult to acquire.  In this country the federal government in an attempt to employ millions created programs which were suited to many professions.  Researchers and librarians benefited from the American Imprints Inventory.  Murals were created for post office walls. The Civilian Conservation Corps worked on infastructure that benefited outdoor recreation. The Historic Buildings Survey provided extensive photographic documentation. These and other programs provided base line information that was to become essential to preservationists later.

In 1931 on board ship cruising from Marseilles to Athens the participants of the 1st International Congress of Architects and Technicians of Historic Monuments drafted the Athens Charter setting forth principles for work on historic structures. World War II ended this focus on the current built environment.  The destruction caused by the War and the post-war emphasis on replacing old with new changed the value of the historic.  In 1964 the 2nd International Congress (this time meeting in Venice) drafted the Venice Charter detailing the principles for conservation, restoration, historic sites, excavation, and publications. With the assistance of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and with the increasing desire to stop the wholesale destruction of the historic environment Congress passed the National Historic Preservation Act in 1966.  This Act had several outcomes including the Secretary of the Interior's Standards, the creation of the National Register of Histoic Places, and the protection of historic properties from actions by federal agencies.  Each needs to be understood, at least a little, if you are going to be an effective preservationist.  All of this puts actions that we take to work on historic buildings in a context that makes our actions finally seem reasonable.