Deborah Edge Abele & Grady Gammage, Jr.
Adjunct Faculty, Arizona State University
2000

Introduction
While the popular perception is that “Hysterical Preservationists” decide that buildings are important only to stop them from being torn down, those involved in the professional practice of the field know this is far from true. Over the past century, one of the greatest accomplishments of the preservation movement has been a refinement of the process to evaluate the significance of cultural resources. To preservationists, “significance” is the critical term of art – the filter through which we exercise professional judgment; the touchstone to justify our battles; the framework for every discussion, every evaluation. Utilizing a prescribed rationale that is based upon consistent criteria and methods to determine what to preserve has given the preservation movement credibility. A deliberate process of determining significance has given preservation decisions a language and substance that has moved it beyond threat-based hysteria. And ultimately, since the formalization of a public preservation program, many battles have been won – giving our nation an expansive collection of resources that tell the story of our historic development patterns.

As the huge number of Post-World War II properties reach the age when we think about their historic importance, it is worth pausing to revisit how significance has been gauged in the past, and how the concept may need to be adapted. The existing evaluative framework is based upon an underlying value system. In seeking to preserve the “rare,” the “last,” the “special,” the “best,” it has been a resource’s uniqueness that traditionally has been considered the most important signpost of its significance. For postwar America, this value system may be a less appropriate filter than in the past. After World War II, we learned to produce buildings as commodities. These production efficiencies, teamed with changing economic and social forces of American life, created building types and communities of markedly different forms: sprawling suburbs of production houses, shopping centers and garden offices. The influences these building types represent are often denounced for the destruction they caused to earlier patterns of our history. Further, their sheer numbers challenge the methods that previously have been used to focus our preservation efforts. With hundreds of thousands of extant, seeming similar, buildings reaching the threshold level of fifty years old – how can we decide which ones warrant our attention? Do we need to rethink how we apply the measures of significance when we begin dealing with the recent past?

The Evolving Concept of Significance
It is important to remember that what has been considered important to preserve – and why – has evolved over time. Initially, preservation efforts in this country were part of the establishment of a nation in the New World. The resources preserved were important because of their relationship to ideas and events that were an inspiration to the early settlers. In many ways, these activities were a continuation of the preservation practices undertaken by King Louis Philippe and his advisors in France. To unite the French people after the devastation wrought by the French Revolution, the government established a system of inventory and protection for the monuments of France. The purpose of this effort was to recreate pride and unity among the class-torn society by focusing attention on those things that the nation held in common, such as the buildings that symbolized its accomplishments and the grandeur of the French civilization.

Early American preservation activities were similar with their focus on resources associated with the creation of a nation. The earliest documented example of an organized preservation effort centered upon the “Indian House.” Located in Deerfield, Massachusetts, a relic of a 1704 French and Indian massacre of an English settlement, the home’s preservation was urged as a memorial to “times when it really tried men’s soul to live.” The importance of recognizing the hardship endured by early pioneers and the acts of courage and leadership that gave birth to American democracy was widely accepted. The significance of the properties associated with these people and events was not debated; properties, like Mount Vernon, associated with the national identity of the republic were clearly significant. The challenge instead, at that time in our history, was actually finding a way to appropriately preserve these testimonies to our past.

The advent of the 20th century saw the broadening of the scope of what was subject to organized preservation efforts, who was involved in preservation and why it was being done. An important development was the growing acceptance of the notion that the physical qualities of a building could be as important as its associative qualities. Advanced by noted antiquarian, William Sumner Appleton, as well as other collectors and related professionals, this work essentially sought to preserve buildings as artifacts, important because they represented distinctive building periods, stylistic treatments or the work of masters. Given the affinity for antiques by this group of preservationists, it is not surprising that a highly prized quality was the age of a structure. The c.1670 Swett-Isley House in Newbury, Massachusetts was the first building to be purchased by Appleton’s Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (SPNEA) after it was incorporated in 1910. Many other acquisitions by the SPNEA followed, such as the Boardman House, which was added to the Society’s holdings simply because it was “a magnificent specimen of our early architecture which has come down to us practically unchanged.” Further, Appleton proposed that much of the building’s significance was related to the fact that it had retained so many of its original features, which he described. His description closely corresponds with the components, which are considered today in the assessment of “integrity,” a concept of critical importance in our evaluative framework.

Appleton and the antiquarians broadened the concept of significance. To them, preservation was not just about the nationalist fervor embodied in where Washington had lived or a Revolutionary War battle had been fought, it also was about telling the story of building techniques and technologies. Examples of craftsmanship in buildings were worth preserving and collecting. As other groups also turned their attention to the preservation of architectural resources during this time, the recognition of what elements of design and construction merited preservation continued to expand. The focus of this work ranged from individual buildings with unique designs, as with the American Institute of Architect’s work to preservation the Octagon House in Washington, D.C., to regional efforts involving specific building types. Campaigns conducted throughout the West by various public, religious and secular groups to save and restore Spanish missions are a good example of the more broad-based efforts to rescue distinctive architectural treasures.

As the 20th century progressed, another important influence on the conceptual evolution of significance was the input of scholars and professionals from a wide range of academic fields. Williamsburg provided an important impetus to this facet of the development of preservation practices. Through the philanthropy of John D. Rockefeller, a well-financed multi-disciplinary team was assembled to develop and implement a philosophical approach to guide preservation and restoration activities in Williamsburg. Their direction was based on exhaustive research of archival sources and the site itself, as well as the input from architects, historians, landscape architects, archaeologists and other academic fields. Collaborative efforts like this continued during the Depression as hundreds of unemployed professionals, in the aforementioned fields, became involved in the survey and inventory work provided for by the 1935 Historic Sites Act. As the nation’s landmarks were identified and documented, a body of knowledge was compiled on those characteristics that set them apart and enriched the communities in which they stood. This effort was about history in the broader sense of telling the story of how people lived and worked in everyday lives. But judgements were highly selective as to which examples of the past were to be saving.

One of the first efforts of the National Trust for Historic Preservation after it was chartered in 1947 was the establishment of a “Committee on Standards and Survey.” The committee was charged with developing criteria for evaluating historic sites and buildings to determine what should be protected. Building upon the principles, which had been developed by the National Park Service as part of the Historic Site Survey work, the group developed a set of criteria that was ultimately codified with the establishment of the National Register of Historic Places in 1966.

The involvement of many professionals, and a wide range of preservation groups with differing goals, has been of great benefit to the practice of preservation. The current criteria have developed as a result of lengthy debate and broad application. Through the contributions of many different disciplines, we recognize that a wide range of resource types warrant preservation. With the refinement of context-based preservation planning principles, we have learned that many influences and themes contribute to the evolution of our communities. Further, our methods ensure that decisions about what is important are not made in isolation, but reflect some broader social consensus about what is or may become important to society. The formal evaluation process also provides consistency in decision-making, even though resources and their related circumstances are diverse. Our traditional approach to determining what is important to preserve has served us well. But is it up to the challenges that confront us in evaluating the resources of Post-WWII America?

Evaluating the Significance of Post World War II Resources
As we now begin the process of evaluating the postwar resources of the United States through our preservation filters, there are several special considerations that should be incorporated into our thinking, given the circumstances of building that occurred during in the last half of this century. These relate to the number, age and the attitude that many have about postwar resources.

The first consideration that we must recognize is the special challenge presented by the magnitude of building and development that occurred in the decades following WWII. As the construction techniques and management practices that developed during the War met the repressed demand for housing and the support of federally backed construction financing, a building boom - unlike any which preceded it - resulted. In communities across the nation, huge developments were rapidly built. Utilizing mass-production techniques, developers, like Levitt and Sons, constructed dozens of houses in a single day. In the authors’ city, Phoenix hundreds of thousands of suburban ranch houses were built as the city expanded from its pre-war size of 9.6 square miles to 187 square miles by 1960.

The large number of resources that still exist from this period, as well as the physical qualities that make up its character-defining features, have interesting implications for the classic evaluative framework of preservation. In the past, we have prized that which is unique, rare, and unusual. We look for that which is special in its history or design. If these are the attributes that make a resource significant, then how do we judge that which is ubiquitous, uniform and composed of inter-changeable parts? One can understand the need to preserve buildings constructed of distinctive materials or hand-wrought detailing, but is plate glass, panes that can not be distinguished one from another, a true character-defining feature? A pre-hung door may have been a technological innovation that speeded the ability to assemble houses, but is it significant when there exist literally tens of millions of them? Which leads us to another question: if there are vast examples of a resource type, how do we choose which ones should be preserved?

These are questions that need to be discussed and answered, just as we have refined the approaches and methods used in the past to decide significance. Understanding what truly distinguishes the building and development that occurred in postwar America should be systematically studied. There is a tremendous need for communities to undertake the survey and inventory of the resources of this period. Instead of being daunted by the numbers that these resources represent, we should look at the opportunity it affords us. The fact that there are so many resources will enable us to be selective on which ones we focus our efforts. We will be able to make good, rational choices of what should be preserved, as a result of careful study, evaluation and documentation of their nature and extent. We have learned from the past that when the marketplace decides what will remain, the most desirable locations and buildings within a city are often the ones at most risk. By being proactive in our study of this resource group, we might be able to retain that which is most worthy of preservation, not just that which was left behind.

A more problematic consideration of preserving postwar resources deals with the issue of age. Historically, the antiquity of a resource has been a rally cry for its preservation. But if we wait for many post war resources to become “antiques”, they likely will not still be around. Presently, many of these resources meet the fifty-year criteria, which is the threshold utilized by the National Register of Historic Places and most local programs for consideration as historic, and many more are about to cross that line. However, even though the fifty-year rule is professionally accepted, it is not what is commonly thought of as historic by the larger community. Many people are unwilling to acknowledge that anything, which happened in their lifetime could be historic. Efforts to preserve something that community leaders “can remember being built” are easily dismissed as frivolous or misdirected. Given these circumstances, it is critically important to develop more sophisticated ways to communicate the importance of these resources, as many people will not equate them with the historic resources with which they are familiar.

Ironically, not only will the age of the postwar buildings not help with their preservation; it may actually hasten their demise. The reality is that as a building ages, before it becomes “charmingly historic,” it usually is just considered old and outdated. Worn and often shabby, these buildings and their collections are targets for demolition and replacement. Redevelopment pressure is high today in many urban areas—and increasing, in part, due to the demands by preservationists and other advocates for establishment of limits to growth and sprawl on the periphery of communities. As building is intensified within established areas, this poses a threat to many postwar resources.

Fifty years of age has been a very useful filter in the past. If a resource did not make it to that threshold, it probably had genuine physical limitations to its preservation, was not threatened, or was something not enough people cared about to save. Today, however, change occurs at an ever-increasing rate. We cycle through building types, urban form, architectural styles and trends at an accelerating speed. With the technological capacity to build quickly and at greater scale, the process of demolition and rebuilding threatens larger groups of resources, even before the fifty-year age is approached. This has been notably demonstrated already. The signature architecture of the sixties has been almost erased from most communities. A number of specific building types have all but disappeared: early gas stations, drive-in movies, space-age style coffee shops and the first generation of Las Vegas casinos. All gone - without a chance to pick the best or, even, in some instances, the last.

A final issue, which warrants consideration, is the need to separate our evaluation of the significance of these resources and the themes they represent from our emotional reaction to their perceived consequences. Many preservationists, and even venerable preservation institutions like the National Trust, are strongly prejudiced against post war American development. Because suburban sprawl threatened, and continues to threaten earlier highly prized development patterns, it has been labeled as a bad thing. Since it’s bad, it seems presumptively ineligible for the special treatment we accord things, which should be preserved. Yet even those who decry suburban development patterns have a hard time arguing that they are insignificant. A majority of Americans live the suburban lifestyle. The postwar suburbs changed the nature of American life and cannot be ignored.

Whether we like or dislike suburbs is not the point. Preservationists should first and foremost advance the use of the built environment to understand, preserve and interpret all significant trends of our past. Former and current efforts to save railroad related resources have not been stalled in discussions about how the rail lines radically altered America’s cultural landscape - destroyed pristine natural areas - spewed tons of pollutants in the air, or how the location of their facilities often devalued land in nearby neighborhoods. Instead, we talk about the entrepreneurial spirit of the railroad barons and the engineering feats of the rail construction. A similar approach should be used when looking at the historic influences of such things as the impact of the automobile on the shape of cities. The same reasoning should be applied in evaluating the significance of the design and construction methods associated with buildings that developed after World War II.

While modern architecture may have limited appeal to many preservationists, it has a philosophical basis and illustrates the important social, economic and technological forces at work during the mid-20th century, just as well as the more popular historic architectural styles of earlier decades. We also must realize that the widespread adoption of production assembly techniques to construction is not a new phenomenon but a continuation of the evolution of building practices. Victorian architecture is admired today for its high degree ornamentation and the eclectic combinations of different forms and detailing. This look was made possible by the advent of the lathe, jig saw and the mechanized processes that made mass-produced building parts available nationwide that could be installed by builders. We do not lament the destructive nature that the Victorian era technological advancements had upon the craftsman of that time, or how it how it became more economical than the detailing that previously had been done by hand. As we evaluate the significance of buildings and resources from earlier eras, we do not muddle our assessments with concerns about the change that they wrought. If we recognize that change occurs and has both good and bad consequences on preceding patterns, then this reasoning should be consistently applied to all periods of development. Thus, the significance of the forces at work during the postwar period should not be debated, but accepted and we should turn our attention to the important challenge of evaluating the resources relative to the themes they represent.

Conclusion
Saving elements of the nation’s past often involves an emotional appeal to individual citizens and groups. Emotion plays an important role in energizing support for preservation goals. But the cause of historic preservation has become institutionalized, sustained and advanced primarily because of the creation of objective policies and procedures to determine what to preserve. The greatest success of the preservation movement has been the development of a thoughtful, well-reasoned and systematic way to evaluate a resource’s significance. That system, however, has evolved over time, as a result of serious study and through wide-ranging input from diverse perspectives. This approach must continue to be applied as we begin dealing with our communities’ postwar resources. As we gain a better understanding of what they represent, we will be able to expand our criteria and develop methods appropriate to their study. This - as in the past - will enable us to make the right choices.