Preservation in DC

David in Greater Greater Washington has a good essay on historic preservation, "Historic preservation: a blunt instrument for design review" and some of the current issues with regard to preservation law in DC, which is taking it on the chin. Below is my response.

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The first point is your point that some things aren't really historic. This has to do with what I call HP as the nexus of architecture, place, and history. Or a difference between focusing on a building vs. focusing on a place. See this blog entry:

Who can you turn to when the most active, aggressive destroyers of the city's livable places are DC Government agencies?

where this is discussed at (much) greater length.

I think the point that you make about context being ignored as part of designating particular buildings lately is interesting and important. It's a factor that could be used to justify a special merit demolition of a modern building.

This subtlety is something I guess I missed in recent proceedings, and it is pretty important.

The justification for the creation of neighborhood based historic districts of buildings that are worthy of saving en masse although individual buildings don't justify such a designation is _context_, again what I call preservation as the nexus of architecture, place and history, but which I should probably call the nexus of architecture, place, urban design, and history. From the standpoint of the preservation laws, a neighborhood matters as a complete (very vernacular) whole.

Of late, many of the major historic preservation cases are about preserving examples of the architect's art (MLK Library, Church of Christian Science) that are nothing about context. This isn't a surprise, because for the most part modernist buildings ignore context, particularly urban design and the way the building connects to and contributes to active street life.

But when preservation is building-focused rather than "neighborhood historic district" focused, that's what happens.

The third point is something I have been arguing for some time, that we need design review for the entire city, regardless of whether or not an area is designated. This is true if you really believe that design and architecture matter to the city, are at the heart of its competitive advantages.

See, the areas that are designated already are really more about the time and level of organization of the community at a particular moment, as well as how the law worked then (mostly in the 1970s and 1980s). It was easier in a way to designate neighborhoods before. And the city has never put resources into explaining why preservation matters.

I have argued that preservation actually saved the city, kept residents with resources and choices during the long multi-decade period when people for the most part did not want to live in the city.

But the flip side of the creation of a strong neighborhood-based preservation movement was the failure to build a strong citywide preservation movement (DCPL is mostly controlled by developers) and sensibility about what matters overall. Of all the neighborhood groups, only CHRS sort of understands the broader issues, and that is because it is bordered on the east and north by areas worth designating but aren't. (H St. was not allowed to be designated because of the presence of the H St. Urban Renewal Plan.) So it constantly has to deal with seeing resources lost, and the difference between having designation and not.

H Street is just on the cusp of having most of its historic context lost through the various new buildings and projects constructed as part of the urban renewal plan. At the same time it's a legitimate question to ask: "why hasn't the urban renewal plan improved H Street?"

A response could be: "I don't know, but it's fair to infer that a historic preservation-based plan likely would have yielded more positive results."

But we're not grappling with these issues. And it's very hard to change the laws to make them "better", because the developer lobby is strong and is adamantly against the laws that exist already. And they have the money to hire lawyers, money that is nonexistant for the most part on the side of the pro-preservationists. For example, my understanding is that the developer of the Christian Science Church site is planning or has already mounted a serious legal challenge to the preservation law, in that case on Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act grounds.

I think that an RLUIPA challenge is easily winnable, but that depends on the vagaries of the city and its legal operation being willing to meet the challenge head on.

(The problem with popups and the like is that zoning regulations allow for buildings that typically are higher than those most likely to have been constructed during a neighborhood's period of significance, which for most neighborhoods that are eligible to be designated, was before 1925. The zoning regulations need to be consistent with the architectural values of neighborhoods, not oppositional.)

I mentioned Cameron Logan's dissertation (The Constituent Landscape: History, Race, and Real Estate in Washington, D.C., 1950-1990), which isn't yet available from Dissertations Online. He wrote about the development of the "constitutent landscape" where beginning in 1950, for the first time the National Capital Planning Commission acknowledges that there are residents who are impacted by and are consumers and users of planning. A big part of developing a community involved in local planning was the development and implementation of preservation laws and the preservation movement.

Then there is Howard Gillette's book (which I haven't read either), Between Justice and Beauty: Race, Planning, and the Failure of Urban Policy in Washington, D.C. According to one review: "Gillette claims that this bloated and all-too-often ineffective federal presence is a triumph of beauty of justice, and searches for a more effective means to bring help to the city dwellers who need revitalization the most."

Because much of the tradiitional African-American political structure sees preservation as a thing for white people, it makes it difficult to move preservation policy forward. I don't know the history of the creation of the Anacostia historic district vs. the history of the Le Droit Park historic district, but the community preservation movement remained well organized in Le Droit Park (they also likely had more residents with money, despite the often negative presence of Howard University as an owner of many properties that were in serious disrepair). But the value of historic preservation to the neighborhood in Le Droit Park is clear.

I guess one of the other problems faced by the Anacostia Historic District was an urban renewal program and the existence of a CDC, the Anacostia Economic Development Corporation, committed to carrying out an urban renewal program rather than a historic preservation program. Plus, many extremely poor people were directed to Anacostia as part of the displacement wrought by the urban renewal program in Southwest DC. This led to a great deal of dislocation and changes within the community. I don't know why Anacostia has both a historic district and an urban renewal plan. There is no question that in DC, these two types of policies tend to be oppositional not complementary. (Although if you read an urban renewal plan, it also says good things about preservation and includes an inventory of cultural resources.)

In any case, the city's African-American economic and political elite has been committed to a pro-new construction development regime, one that has not valued preservation. You can see the results in Shaw, H Street, and Anacostia, and to some extent in Columbia Heights (which has the benefit of having the program executed in the 21st Century, rather than the 20th Century).

The best discussion of this development regime is in chapter four of Dream City: Race, Power, and the Decline of Washington, D.C., 1964-1994. Read the review in Washington Monthly.

It makes for a very difficult preservation environment.