SPEECH: Europa Nostra Council Meeting
Posted August 5, 2009 | Contact pr@nthp.org or 202-588-6141
By Richard Moe | November 6, 2006
An address by Richard Moe, President, National Trust for Historic Preservation, presented on November 15, 2006 on the occasion of the Europa Nostra Council Meeting in Paris, France.
I am here to learn and to share. I'm not the first American preservationist to arrive in Europe with those two objectives in mind.
In the mid-1960s, concern over the widespread destruction of America's older buildings and neighborhoods led to the formation of a blue-ribbon committee charged with strengthening our government's role in – and commitment to – historic preservation. One of that committee's first acts was to come to Europe to learn how preservation worked here and to see whether your experience might be transplanted to American soil.
Like the members of that committee – whose work ultimately laid the foundation for the federal preservation legislation under which we operate today – I'm here to learn from you. At the same time, I'm here to share some information about the work of the American National Trust that you may find useful.
All of us have much to learn, and each of us has something to share. I'm delighted to participate in this very important dialogue.
I'll begin with a bit of history.
By the end of World War II, the basic structure of today's American preservation movement was in place. Missing, however, was a national private-sector organization that could lead, support and coordinate the work of local preservationists. To meet this need, a group of interested individuals met in 1947 to discuss the formation of a National Trust for the United States. They probably envisioned an American version of the British National Trust, but they wound up creating something quite different and distinctive.
The new US National Trust was chartered by Congress in 1949. Within the span of a few years, the organization acquired its first historic sites, began publishing a magazine, started hosting an annual preservation conference, and opened its first regional office. For many years, our work was supported in part by an annual appropriation of funds from Congress – but in the late 1990s this arrangement was terminated, and I'm proud to report that we are now totally reliant on private funding.
Today's National Trust is a unique, all-purpose organization with a broad and evolving mission. We have approximately 270,000 members, a staff of about 300, and a budget last year of almost $70 million. In addition to our headquarters in Washington, we operate a network of 6 regional offices and a nationwide collection of 28 Historic Sites.
Now, having offered a very quick snapshot of who we are, I'd like to provide some details on what we do. I believe you'll see that many of our programs are similar to the activities supported by Europa Nostra, while others are quite different.
Much of our work can be summarized in a single word: education – the all-important task of helping people appreciate the richness and fragility of our heritage and the importance of preserving it.
- To this end, we sponsor a wide range of conferences, workshops and seminars on preservation-related topics – from a survey of American architectural styles to guidelines for operating an effective local preservation organization. A highlight of our yearly calendar is the National Preservation Conference, the nation's largest gathering of its kind. Earlier this month, our 2006 conference drew some 2,300 attendees to Pittsburgh, Pa., for four full days of lectures, tours, workshops and social events.
- Our major publication is an award-winning bimonthly magazine (called, appropriately enough, Preservation) which offers general-interest articles and is a benefit of National Trust membership. We also publish a journal with articles more specifically targeted to professional preservationists, as well as a wide range of booklets on technical aspects of preservation.
- To focus public attention on cultural treasures in peril, we issue an annual list of "America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places." Since its inception in 1988, this list has proven invaluable as a means of garnering media attention and galvanizing local preservation efforts. Almost 180 sites – from small wooden boats to the entire state of Vermont – have appeared on our list over the years. Despite our best efforts, a couple of them have been lost, and several others are still in jeopardy – but more important, many sites that were once endangered have been saved, often as a direct result of their appearance on our list.
- In a sense, the "other side" of our list of endangered places is our annual presentation of awards in recognition of individuals and projects that represent preservation at its best. At this year's ceremony, we honored – among other things – restoration projects involving a colossal cast-iron statue in Alabama, a 163-year-old adobe church in Texas, and a building that was badly damaged in the 9/11 terrorist attack on New York.
As our founders envisioned, the administration and interpretation of historic sites is a very important part of our mission. To help people appreciate the richness of our heritage and the importance of good stewardship of it, we've assembled a unique coast-to-coast collection of 28 National Trust Historic Sites that spans centuries of American history and architecture, from the nation's oldest synagogue to 3 houses by famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright.
While much of our collection spotlights the high-style designs of the 18th and 19th centuries, we've recently added sites that are more representative of the great diversity of peoples and cultures that have shaped our national life and character. These include: Acoma Pueblo, a complex of adobe and sandstone structures atop a mesa in the desert Southwest that is the oldest continuously-inhabited community in America; a New York tenement building that was home to generations of poor and working-class immigrants in the 19th and early 20th centuries; and two iconic houses of glass and steel that were designed in the mid-20th century by Modernist masters Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson.
Throughout its history, the National Trust has always acted decisively to fight threats to historic places and ensure compliance with preservation laws and policies. In the 1970s, for example, we joined our partners to halt the proposed demolition of Grand Central Station in New York; the case ultimately went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where we won a landmark victory that delivered a ringing affirmation of the legality of local preservation ordinances. More recently, we led a protracted fight that persuaded the Walt Disney Corporation to abandon plans for a theme park and related development near Washington that posed a serious threat to numerous Civil War battlefields and other historic sites.
In addition to insisting on compliance with existing laws, we also provide informed, outspoken and persistent advocacy for new preservation-friendly laws and policies at the local, state and national levels. One of our most important achievements was the enactment of legislation that provides federal tax incentives for the rehabilitation of historic commercial buildings. Since they were first enacted in 1976, these incentives have been responsible for the biggest "boom" in preservation we've ever experienced – stimulating more than $36 billion in private investment, spurring the rehabilitation of more than 32,000 historic properties large and small, and renovating or creating more than 300,000 housing units.
The success of the federal program has encouraged many states to adopt their own tax incentives to complement the federal credits. We're working to help other states take advantage of this great preservation tool – and we're seeing results: ten years ago, only 8 states had their own preservation tax incentives in place; today that number has grown to 28.
In recent years, we've placed increasing emphasis on building and strengthening the preservation movement. One of the most important ways we seek to reach this goal is by offering grants and technical assistance to help preservation organizations hire fulltime professional staff. When we started this effort 12 years ago, there were only 17 professionally-staffed statewide preservation organizations in the US; today, there are 45.
Our goal in this endeavor is to create an expansive network of preservation organizations at the state and local levels – each one strong enough to work independently, mature enough to recognize the value of building partnerships with other organizations and agencies, and effective and visionary enough to make preservation an important part of mainstream community life.
Finally, the National Trust works to demonstrate preservation's effectiveness as a tool for economic revitalization – to show, in other words, that preservation is good for the pocketbook as well as the soul.
In the decades after World War II, most American communities – both large and small – saw people and businesses abandoning the town center for the suburban fringe. In a misguided (and rarely successful) attempt to halt this exodus, many communities sought to "modernize" their centers by hiding historic buildings behind new facades that emulated the look of the new suburban shopping center.
To battle this trend, we launched our Main Street program in 1980. This award-winning program offers a comprehensive approach to economic revitalization that emphasizes the preservation of the older buildings that give older commercial areas their distinctive character. The program has been adopted by more than 1,900 communities since 1980. These communities have seen almost 180,000 buildings rehabilitated, more than 72,000 new businesses and 330,000 new jobs created, and more than $31 billion invested in older downtown areas. Our statistics show that every dollar spent by the community to support a local Main Street program generates more than $28 in investment from other sources.
Far beyond merely putting a new face on some old buildings, the Main Street program sparks local pride, encourages tourism, and returns economic vitality to communities devastated by suburban sprawl and disinvestment. I believe this program is, quite simply, one of the best ideas the National Trust has ever had.
In the past year, the full breadth of our experience, expertise, energy and resources has been brought to bear in our ongoing effort to respond effectively to last year's devastating hurricanes in the Gulf Coast region.
It is, of course, an enormous human tragedy – but it also may be the greatest cultural catastrophe the United States has ever suffered.
Very early on, we took the unprecedented step of establishing field offices on the Gulf Coast so that we could monitor developments closely and deliver needed services promptly. To address our concern that damaged buildings might be demolished needlessly, we issued an urgent call for volunteers – and got an amazing response. Since last October we've had a volunteer team on the ground in New Orleans almost every week – an effort that has involved nearly 1,000 people. Those with the necessary technical expertise have worked with government officials to assess the structural condition of damaged buildings; they've found that many of those previously slated for demolition can be saved – and thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of them have been saved. Volunteer architects and engineers have given homeowners advice and a written report prioritizing what needs to be done. Others have helped distribute temporary roof coverings, buckets of cleaning materials, and packets of information on mold remediation and other procedures.
To assure homeowners that recovery is possible, we and our partners launched demonstration programs. In New Orleans, ten families are receiving grants and technical help to make their damaged homes livable again – and, as we hoped, their efforts are encouraging other homeowners. In Mississippi, we've helped replace several privately-owned structures on their foundations and provided targeted assistance to two nationally-significant historic houses.
Our Communications Office has worked tirelessly, especially through our website, to keep the public informed about the challenges involved in hurricane recovery. And our Membership and Development departments have rallied our members and friends to contribute financial support for our efforts; as a result, donations to our Hurricane Recovery Fund from foundations, corporations and individuals will soon total nearly $2 million.
One of our biggest victories was the successful effort to secure hurricane recovery funding from Congress. We joined forces with public- and private-sector partners – and working together, we secured a congressional appropriation of $40 million in grant funds to help preserve storm-damaged historic properties and a major expansion of tax incentives to encourage rebuilding and revitalization.
I believe I can best summarize our work in hurricane recovery on the Gulf Coast this way: It's like nothing we've ever done before, and yet it's precisely what we were created to do.
I hope this overview provides some perspective on the work of the US National Trust and offers some justification for my great pride in what we've accomplished. Naturally, we still have much to do, since – as we all know – the work of preservation is never "done."
To guide us through our second half-century of work, we're now implementing a recently-developed strategic plan that calls on us – among other things – to: (1) engage a million people in preservation; (2) establish the National Trust as the nation's largest funder of preservation projects and give preservation the reliable, sustainable source of funding that it needs; (3) make the Trust more inclusive in its membership and its programmatic outreach; and (4) redouble our efforts to demonstrate the relevance of preservation to the quality of life in America and make preservation of our cultural heritage a core value of the American people.
Obviously, implementation of this plan will cost money, so we're now investigating the feasibility of a very ambitious fundraising campaign. Our Trustees haven't formally committed to the campaign, and details are still in development, but we expect that the fundraising goal could be well in excess of $135 million, which is the amount we raised in our last campaign. We hope, of course, that our members, partners and friends will respond to this new effort with the same loyalty and generosity they've demonstrated in the past.
As some of you may know, last year we hosted the International Conference of National Trusts in Washington. One result of that meeting was a decision to establish INTO – the International National Trusts Organization. A steering committee is now at work drafting a constitution and a plan for establishing a secretariat, and we hope to have this new organization operational by the time of the next International Conference of National Trusts in India in December of 2007.
Another important aspect of last year's meeting was that it provided a forum for wide-ranging discussions among attendees – discussions that offered valuable insight into the strengths of our preservation colleagues around the globe as well as the challenges they face.
Some attendees pointed out that the cultural map is constantly changing, and that issues such as declining population and new ownership laws can pose serious problems for heritage preservation. Some said their primary concern was simply getting more people to visit historic sites, while others worried about the downside of success, noting that increased visitation can have a negative impact on the structural integrity and maintenance of historic sites.
Attendees also told us how their organizations are trying to meet those challenges. They described innovative fundraising efforts ranging from allocating tax revenues on rum to support preservation in Puerto Rico to the development of product lines – such as beef, coffee and sugar – by several National Trusts. They told us about ways to attract new and bigger audiences – such as by staging rock concerts and other "entertainment" events, for example.
Finally, attendees suggested ways to help one another be more effective by sharing ideas and suggestions on topics such as the relative benefits of different types of organizational structure and specific ways to build better relations with governments and businesses. Above all they emphasized the importance of better information sharing.
What happened at that conference can be a blueprint for improved relations among all of us who work in preservation – the US National Trust, other National Trusts, Europa Nostra, and other organizations with similar goals in countries all over the globe.
We are very different, but we have some important things in common. We share an appreciation for the rich heritage that shapes and identifies us. We share a determination to ensure that this heritage is preserved, so that it can inform and enrich the lives of generations to come. And we share the realization that preserving this heritage is an enormously challenging task.
To meet this challenge, our organizations have developed programs and initiatives that address every aspect of preservation, from fundraising to site interpretation. Some of these efforts have enjoyed smashing success; others have ended in crashing failure. Each of them represents a useful lesson that can inspire – or warn – the rest of us, and possibly make a real difference in the success of our work.
As I said at the beginning of my remarks, each of us has something to share, and all of us have much to learn.
By making our experience and expertise available to one another, we can help ensure the success of our efforts to keep our heritage alive so that we and our children can live with it, learn from it, and be enriched and inspired by it.
Richard Moe is president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation is a non-profit membership organization bringing people together to protect, enhance and enjoy the places that matter to them. By saving the places where great moments from history – and the important moments of everyday life – took place, the National Trust for Historic Preservation helps revitalize neighborhoods and communities, spark economic development and promote environmental sustainability. With headquarters in Washington, DC, nine regional and field offices, 29 historic sites, and partner organizations in all 50 states, the National Trust for Historic Preservation provides leadership, education, advocacy and resources to a national network of people, organizations and local communities committed to saving places, connecting us to our history and collectively shaping the future of America’s stories. For more information visit www.PreservationNation.org.
