Subject: Re: flood damage of historic buildings

From: [email-masked] (Alan Horowitz)
Date: 12 Jul 95 22:53:39 GMT

I thought this was settled with the Tower of Babel. My opinion:  like 
trees, mountains, and everything else,  buildings die of natural causes.
Folks who want to preserve a building for non-economic reasons are 
delusional about what is real and what is fiction. Well, I guess all 
those artsy-fartsies who think that architecture should encompass some 
"values" beyond economics and civil engineering, will turn on the 
flamethrowers. Help yourselves; you cannot convince me that you have 
grown up.

Or maybe don't bother: there is a sufficient supply of customers who have 
more disposeable funds than self-esteem. Please, go help them get their 
names into artsy-fartsy magazines.

Reference:  P.T. Barnum
-- 
Alan Horowitz
[email-masked]

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From: [email-masked] (DRypkema)
Date: 13 Jul 1995 13:39:23 -0400

Alan Horowitz wrote, "I thought this was settled with the Tower of
Babel...buildings die of natural causes. Folks who want to preserve a
building for non-economic reasons are delusional about what is real and
what is fiction. Well, I guess all those artsy-fartsies who think that
architecture should encompass some "values" beyond economics and civil
engineering, will turn on the flamethrowers....there is a sufficient
supply of customers who have more disposeable income than self-esteem.
Please go help them get their names into artsy-fartsy
magazines...Reference: P.T. Barnum"

This is neither a flame nor an attempt to convince Mr.Horowitz of
anything. I suppose it is the fault of preservationists who have not made
the arguments about the economics of historic preservation sufficiently
clear nor sufficiently often so as to preclude preservation as seen as
merely an "artsy-fartsy" endeavor as Mr. Horowity would suggest. There are
plenty of preservation/economics arguments, however, and here are a few:
  1) The rehabilitation of historic preservation is, dollar for dollar,
one of the most effective local job generating activities a community can
undertake - $1,000,000 in building rehabilitation creates 12 more local
jobs than manufacturing $1,000,000 of car in Michigan, 29 more jobs than
pumping $1,000,000 of oil in Oklahoma, 12 more jobs than producing
$1,000,000 of steal in Pennsylvania.
2) A million dollars of rehabilitation will create 5 to 9 more local
construction jobs than $1,000,000 of new construction, increase local
household incomes $107,000 more than $1,000,000 of new construction,
create 5 more jobs elsewhere in the community than $1,000,000 in new
construction.
3) Virtually every successful large city downtown revitalization effort
has had historic preservation as a critical element.
4) By far, the most effective small town revitalization process in the
last 15 years has been the National Trust's Main Street program - a local
economic development program in the context of historic preservation.
5) In city after city, historic preservation has been an effective
counter-cyclical economic activity when new construction is at a
standstill.
6) The "cutting edge" communities in long term economic development
efforts use the historic character of their downtowns and older
neighborhoods as a key recruitment tool for new industry.
7) Because of the affordable rents they provide, older and historic
buildings provide appropriate incubators - formally or informally - for
start-up businesses. And it is new start up and small businesses that are
providing the vast majority of new job growth in the country.
8) Reusing existing buildings in a city's core means the existing
infrastructure - already paid for with previous tax payers' dollars - can
continue to be reused, as opposed to laying more sewer and water lines,
roads, utilities further and further away from the core.
9) Consistantly, properties protected through historic preservation
ordinances maintain their values much better than the community as a
whole, and in many places appreciate at a significantly higher rate.
10) Whenever and where ever there has been a "back to the city" movement,
it hasn't been back to the city in general but back to historic
neighborhoods within cities.

I don't know which of the above could be categorized "artsy-fartsy"
arguments for rehabilitating historic structures. It's just that
preservationists need to be better armed to make the arguments. Unlike
B.T. Barnum, preservationists don't have to have freaks and scams to make
the case - the economic facts of life about historic preservation can
stand on their own.

Donovan D. Rypkema