Telling Historic Preservation Time
 Using Illusion with Care to Reveal the Past

A Viewpoint by Kay Weeks
 Historic Preservation Clock Illustrations
  by E. Blaine Cliver

The Real Clock. Time--the life-giver and destroyer--is represented here as a simple mechanism with an alarm.

A real clock tells "real time." The clock is not time itself, of course, but a representation of time. Without discussion or debate, scientists, historians, and poets would agree that time is the continuum of change, that a clock's rotating hands are synonymous with movement forward in time, and that, since the clock only represents time, if a clock stops, real time does not stop.

Real time is simple. It always moves one way, forward.

The process and consequences are always the same: for humans, birth to old age and death; building materials from new usefulness through degeneration and disappearance; plant materials, from bud to maturity--and perhaps regeneration--but certainly change and often loss and even extinction.

Independence Hall clock, 1972-73 reconstruction. Photo: NPS files.

Although stopping or reversing time is not a realistic endeavor, much human enterprise is based on this goal. Cosmetic surgery or treatments applied to faces or bodies may seem to slow the effects of time, but they cannot permanently reverse them. Similarly, treatments performed on the built environment--buildings, structures, sites, and objects--attempt to defy the physical and visual effects of time. Materials are maintained and repaired, but the advancement of time is absolutely equivalent to change, deterioration, decay, and, ultimately, loss or death. The real clock says that the built environment as we know it today will be the domain of archeology, in time.

Historic preservation clocks don't move in quite the same way that the normal one does. What's different about these "interpretive" and seemingly arbitrary clocks is that they can be temporarily stopped in Preservation; moved forward in Rehabilitation; moved backward in Restoration; or re-started Reconstruction. It is these ideas about time that constitute the philosophical framework for historic preservation treatments.

It is true that people control the movement of all clocks, but, with historic preservation clocks, there are ongoing disagreements about how and when to move them and what that movement means.

How Time is Manipulated

In brief, historic preservation treatments manipulate "real time" in order to create interpretive contexts in which human behavior may be revealed or explained. The goal is to provide truthful and understandable explanations of the past. Even in the absence of written, graphic, or spoken explanation, what we choose to repair, replace or demolish ultimately shapes how the property's history exists in time and is perceived by today's and tomorrow's viewers.

If the real clock usually results in a property's decay over time through natural processes, then invoking one of the historic preservation clocks in order to "save it" is decidedly more complex.

Observatory named after scientist Percival Lowell. Photo: NPS files.

At the heart of historic preservation are several notions. First, there is the idea that nothing is intrinsically significant. People ascribe significance to certain places or things from the past. It might be a design, an example of craftsmanship, a way of life or culture, a scientific finding, an association with someone who said or did something, or a place where something happened. These places are chosen based on popular and scholarly judgment and opinion. People tend to disagree about societal values, that is, what should be chosen to represent America's collective past. People may also disagree about who does the choosing. The highest ethics must be employed in designating historic places so that consensus is achieved on what we mean by historical significance prior to treatment.

Often the same people who designate places "historic"--on the local, state, or national level--are not the same ones who decide how these places will be treated. Historians, citizens, and administrators may decide what is historic; owners, planners, architects, and developers may decide how they are treated. As a result, places are not always treated to save what the historians judged to be significant. And always, people who pay for the treatment of historic properties tend to control the work and, thus, the meaning of the work. Economics and the ethics of preservation are seldom equal partners.

Since real time--the accumulation of things, change, loss, and layering of events--tends to be cluttered, it does not usually constitute a logical or beautiful picture. The desire to depict a sanitized, but more inviting, past is a common one. No one can dispute what seems to be a compelling human need to reproduce the symbols perceived to represent a more harmonious past in order to soften the impact of contemporary life. Without historical documentation, these non-contextual features always create historical anachronisms; some of them will no doubt be taken more seriously than others by subsequent interpreters.

Interpreting all aspects of an event. Photo: NPS files.

Setting the historic preservation clock at several different times within a single project to selectively restore those areas of history we find attractive or to selectively eliminate those areas we find unattractive or painful, creates "freaks of time" for our grandchildren and archeological puzzles for those who will live in future centuries. Most important, this type of random work neither reveals nor explains truths about our past; by omission, it can feed into our deepest and ugliest prejudices and fears.

The preservation of our physical past, when handled openly and truthfully, can convey powerful lessons. We can't ever, really, turn back the clock, but we can approximate, as best we can, what we know of the past. For example, if a wing of an early 19th plantation house were being reconstructed in order to interpret a property's pre-Civil War significance, then the vanished slave quarters should also be reconstructed because they were an integral part of the history--perhaps, in truth, the focus of it.

Dealing with the past is essentially like dealing with the present. We make choices about the way we relate to other people. We can lie, cheat, steal, ravage, and falsify. (It's easier doing it in historic preservation because the people historic places symbolize are all dead.) Because our predecessors can't speak for themselves, we become their voices whenever we take on a preservation project. We can silence the voices or we can listen and try to understand the complex circumstances that comprise the history, then choose to accept that as reality, even as we respectfully add to it with our own lives. Or we can choose to approach the past in varying degrees of ignorance and perhaps, while not willfully changing or destroying it, simply disregard its power. All the choices are there.

Finally, and perhaps most important, historic preservation time is emotional time. Remember, these are real places we're talking about--with form, and features, and detailing. They may be in varying stages of deterioration, but they are still physically discernible; they have their historical integrity. At the same time they represent ideas or memories of former lives--our ghosts.

People often disagree about the stories that are told about these real places that represent people who are gone. And who decides whether an ancestor will endure on the interpretive time line, or simply disappear?

Making Consistent Treatment Decisions

An ethical framework for making treatment decisions is thus critical. By subjecting ourselves to consistent "rules of the clock" we acknowledge the idea that historic preservation has more to do with social responsibility than subjective beautification. In addition to factoring in the property's proposed use and the available budget, choosing a treatment for a property requires decisions about its historical value, what remains to convey its value, and how that value is to be expressed in the work itself.

In the Secretary of the Interior's Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties , the National Park Service has stipulated four ways that a historic property may be treated within consistent frameworks:

Preservation
Rehabilitation
Restoration
Reconstruction
Even without explanation, the names convey something of the principles they contain. Whatever names are given to various approaches to project work--and there are many--it is the difference in the way a property is made to exist in time that separates the focus of one treatment from another.

Preservation focuses on the maintenance and repair of existing historic materials and retention of a property's form as it has evolved over time. (Protection and Stabilization have now been consolidated under this treatment.)

Rehabilitation acknowledges the need to alter or add to a historic property to meet continuing or changing uses while retaining the property's historic character as it has evolved over time.

Restoration depicts a property at a particular period of time in its history, while removing evidence of other periods.

Reconstruction re-creates vanished or non-surviving portions of a property for interpretive purposes.

Now, consider the essential differences between the four treatment options in terms of the clocks:

The Preservation Clock        

The Preservation Clock
Time is asleep for
record-keeping purposes...

 

Drayton Hall was built in 1767-71 and is maintained and stabilized as evolved over time. Photo: NPS files.

Preservation calls for the existing form, materials, features, and detailing of a property to be retained and preserved. This may include preliminary measures to protect and stabilize it prior to undertaking other work--or protection and stabilization may be an end in itself, for example, in an archeological project.

Extensive alterations and additions for a current use are not undertaken; neither are features removed to reveal an earlier time. Repairs are made with the same materials and are documented so that old and new may be discerned. In the work and for interpretive purposes, an illusion is created that time has simply stopped, yet real time is continuously taking its toll on fragile historic materials.

In the example of Preservation, above, Drayton Hall (near Charleston, South Carolina) was built in 1767-71, and is maintained and stabilized, "as is," to provide a record of an evolved 18th century plantation house and landscape.

The Rehabilitation Clock

The Rehabilitation Clock
Time is "plugged-in" to current needs

Rehabilitation is closer to the agreed-upon movement of a clock than the other treatments. That's because its definition says that a property, as evolved over time, may be altered or added to at this moment in a contemporary design, to meet continuing or new uses.

Rehabilitation acknowledges that time moves forward and properties change, but some essential character remains. Deteriorated materials are repaired and some missing features may be replaced to try to recapture the overall feeling (some backward movement of the clock is acceptable). Of the four treatments, this is perhaps the most practical and realistic because it considers time present and time future, as well as time past. Contemporary or non-historic materials are used where the same materials would be impractical. Rehabilitation focuses more on how people continue to use and adapt properties according to changing needs than on historical interpretation.

In this example of Rehabilitation, the Stephen Upson House (Athens, Georgia), originally built as a residence in 1847, was rehabilitated in the 1980s for use as a bank, including construction of a drive-in addition in the rear.

 

The Restoration Clock

The Restoration Clock
Time is looking backward to find significance...

Restoration purposely backdates a property to make a point about its historical significance at a particular time. In a dramatic sweep of the hands, the historic preservation clock is purposefully moved backward in its creation of an earlier period. This is "depiction," pure and simple. A problem occurs only if people are led to believe that what seems to be, is, and that a restored building, for example, is actually an earlier building, not just the illusion or depiction of it. So this process is not really simple at all.

In this example of Restoration, below, the Meyer May House was designed and built by Frank Lloyd Wright in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1909. In 1922, May altered Wright's design by adding bedrooms upstairs and downstairs. Later, the house was re-zoned as apartments, and eventually fell into disrepair. The significant interior was largely destroyed. In the 1980s, historians concluded that the original Wright design was more significant than any later change, including May's addition. In restoration, the 1922 addition was removed and both exterior and interior were replicated--based on historical documentation and physical evidence--to simulate the 1909 appearance.

  Left to right: 1909 Wright house. 1970 alterations and disrepair. 1980s restored Wright design.

 

Problems with Backdating in General

Backdating can be an extremely harsh treatment; or, it may be more a matter of revealing earlier craftsmanship that was covered over. Still, the loss of naturally occurring historical layering defines this treatment, and going backward in time is much like salvage archeology. The greater the need for historical focus and "authenticity," the more fabric will be sacrificed in order to get to a purified or simplified abstract ideal, which, in some cases, may not even be true.

Keeping up with repairs. Photo: NPS files.

In fact, the entire issue of dealing with missing historic features is a difficult one from an ethical standpoint, if "telling the truth" is the goal of project work. A feature may be missing due to lack of maintenance, an occupant's whim, gratuitous vandalism, or a host of other reasons. It is much easier to repair existing historic materials and features even if they are extensively deteriorated than to decide what to do if a feature is missing.

If a feature is missing and documentation exists to replace it with all new material, then the Preservation and Restoration Standards say that the new feature needs to match the historic feature and also be dated to assist future research. The end result is admittedly a "depiction" of past reality, but this is fair, since we have already accepted the consequences of arbitrary clocks in historic preservation. In Rehabilitation, the missing feature can either be restored (based on research), or a compatible, contemporary feature fabricated. Rehabilitation is more flexible because of its connections to real time and the need for practical adaptation.

Historic roof needing replacement. Photo: NPS files.

On the other hand, if a feature is missing, and there is little or no information available, ethical issues arise, and, with them, a lot of lively controversy as well as some inappropriate solutions. If real time declares that loss is inevitable, the most obvious solution would be to acknowledge it, leave a blank spot in the work, and simply interpret the loss. This solution doesn't mesh very well with the human need for a clear and visibly "finished" product, however, so is largely unacceptable; thus, where information is sparse or non-existent, the human mind--replete with illusions and expectations--may be more apt to fabricate an idealized picture of what was, than to seek out and document the reality of the past. Leaving voids in projects to interpret loss is also not very practical if a missing piece is functional, such as a roof, door, or stairway.

Another ethical question generally accompanies Restoration as well as Reconstruction. Some would argue that if a design exists on paper which was never carried out historically--in real time--then it is appropriate to build it "in historic preservation time" for the sake of revealing and interpreting design genius, and thus, completing history (such as a planned, but unbuilt, wing to a building). These tributes to the mind, when carried out, put the viewer in a "might have been" theater, yet the public could easily view such a depiction as something that occurred in real time. So there is a rule that says "if it was never built historically, it can't be newly constructed" because, in essence, that's cheating.

The Reconstruction Clock

The Reconstruction Clock
Time's ghosts re-appear
in an all new package.

The fourth treatment is Reconstruction. Somewhat like magic, it takes a property that has vanished over time, and re-establishes it in time so the clock is figuratively "re-started." When a property has physically disappeared, a fabrication is undertaken to explain the truth about the past. It would seem unnecessary to discuss the reality of this treatment. Because reconstruction brings a vanished property back to life, there is a greater burden to be precise. Accordingly, the National Park Service's Standards for Reconstruction are stringent.

In the example of Reconstruction, below, the well known Governor's Palace (Williamsburg, Virginia) was built between 1706 and 1720 and destroyed by fire in 1781 while serving as a military hospital. The Union Army tore the flankers down in 1863. In the 1930s, the Palace was reconstructed to interpret American Colonial life in the 18th century. Documentation included a copperplate engraving, a floorplan drawn by Thomas Jefferson, and the complete basement of the principal building.

left: Copperplate engraving. right: Reconstructed Palace at Williamsburg, VA.

Conclusions

Reality of the clock. Photo: NPS files.

Moving into the illusory past through Restoration and Reconstruction, even when accurate, is, at the least, entertaining. It is also perhaps somewhat soothing psychologically because a depiction of reality keeps us from confronting real time in the present--if even for awhile--and, in consequence, creates even more distance between the illusion and our own death, i.e., the vast continuum of history. We also have no assurance of whether or how we will be remembered. There is, in reality, little time, and it is less frightening to move backward than forward. This may be one of the reasons some people eschew all things contemporary in favor of trying to recapture the feeling of the past.

Documenting condition of plaster ceiling at Drayton Hall. Photo: NPS files.

The role that science and technology play in saving and replacing historic forms and features within historic preservation time carries its own ethical baggage which the Standards also address. Technology seeks to preserve historic materials on one hand; but on the other to fabricate substitute materials that look old for replacing deteriorated and missing features but are, in fact, new. Treatments undertaken on historic properties today will become the records of tomorrow. The repairs and material replacement of today designed to fend off the effects of time will, in the future, become part of the record and they, too, will move through real time. Part of the ethical framework is making clear what is old and what is new, through documentation or other distinctions, such as simplification in detailing.

Reconstruction and Restoration projects can open the door to human error in decisionmaking.

Rehabilitation, because of its link with new uses and change, has the potential for changing a property's historic character.

Of all the treatments, Preservation is the gentlest because it focuses on the maintenance of existing materials, even while it endeavors to stop the historic preservation clock for interpretive purposes.

What can we call historic preservation time in general? We could call it "art" because it is more manipulative than real. Or we could call it "managed" because that is defined as "altering by manipulation." But we can't and shouldn't call it real: We can't recreate the past nor what has been lost, nor can we stop the present from becoming the future.

What conclusions can be made? Historic preservation is a blend of science and the humanities, a form of art, a task that is manipulative, reflective, interpretive, but, hopefully, not arbitrary and irresponsible. But even within this admittedly "theatrical" framework, our actions as keepers of the collective record need to be as honest and consistent as possible so that our successors can evaluate the overall record, and glean some meaning from it.

Civil War soliders on commemorative terra-cotta frieze. Photo: NPS files.

Responsible historic preservation means, in part, defining the real past--within admittedly artificial time constructs--and accepting our role as stewards rather than revisionist designers. If historic places represent our ancestors--and they do--treatments shouldn't be undertaken at their expense. Real stories about real lives shouldn't be skewed or erased or manipulated to "make a buck" or "simply look pretty." Historic preservation treatments should always be as honest and respectful as possible toward people from the past, the built environment, and time.