Decent article on historic preservation in the March issue of Washingtonian

I forgot to mention this article, "Tear It Down! Save It!" It's worth reading if a bit odd (i.e., no direct quotes) and it doesn't cover everything the way I would have preferred--i.e., the story would have been stronger had it described the difference a bit better between preservation of buildings vs. preservation of place. It is the latter that provides the justification for the creation of residentially-focused historic districts, about what I call preserving the nexus of place, architecture, and history (people).

The print copy has a lot of good photographs.

The article tries to cover preservation throughout the region. This means that preservation in the suburbs gets short shrift, and those of us in DC might have wanted a bit more too. Truly, the topic is deserving of separate articles, but it is a nice overview. While APVA (the Association for the Preservation of Virginian Antiquities) and DC Preservation League gets mentioned, Preservation Maryland did not. BTW, Preservation Maryland's annual meeting is coming up (May 28th and 29th in Baltimore).

Interestingly enough, and not really covered in the article, is the property rights backlash in Montgomery County over historic preservation, which has been getting some coverage in the Gazette (this news story from January about some preservation-related controversies, "Preserving the past, building for the future," this op-ed by the vice chair of the County's historic preservation commission, "Historic preservation: Who's to decide?" and this letter to the editor in response "Historic preservation: Let the courts decide").

By the way, Montgomery County has published a new historic preservation design guidelines handbook and it is very good. It adds a broad section on the history of MoCo, putting preservation decisionmaking in context with the County's history, as well as a chapter of 2 page descriptions of each of the county's historic districts, with a short brief on the historic context for each.

Speaking of the property rights backlash and adequately dealing, maybe one of the better books on the subjects is The Politics of Historic Districts: A Primer for for Grassroots Preservation by Bill Schmickle, who chairs the historic commission in Annapolis.


There are a couple other books I'd like to read on preservation, but I haven't gotten to them yet: Managing Built Heritage and The Heritage-scape: UNESCO, World Heritage and Tourism.