SPEECH: President's Report
Opening Plenary, National Preservation Conference Twin Cities
Posted August 5, 2009 | Contact pr@nthp.org or 202-588-6141
By Richard Moe | October 3, 2007
An address by Richard Moe, President, National Trust for Historic Preservation, presented on October 3, 2007 at the National Preservation Conference, Twin Cities, Minnesota
Good afternoon, and welcome.
I want to echo Jonathan's words of appreciation for those here in the Twin Cities who helped make this meeting happen – especially our principal planning partner, Minnesota Landmarks; our principal sponsor, The St. Paul Foundation; our cosponsors, our marvelous co-chairs, and the many others whose generosity, insights and advice have played key roles in the success of this gathering.
The National Preservation Conference is always a highlight of the preservation calendar, and I always look forward to it and enjoy it, as I know you do. But this year's conference is really special for me, because we're meeting – for the first time ever – in my home state, and in the cities where I spent a major part of my life. I regret that it's taken 15 years for me to get us here, but it's great to be back in the Twin Cities, especially because there's a new preservation spirit here.
Preservation was a bit late in taking root here. To be sure, there were some important early success stories: Citizens rallied to prevent the demolition of St. Paul's historic courthouse and turned it into Landmark Center, the site of this evening's Opening Reception; and pioneering efforts led by Weiming Lu transformed the area known as Lowertown from an enclave of shabby warehouses into a vibrant inner-city village. But these were bright spots in an otherwise dark picture. Humorist Ogden Nash could have been thinking of the Twin Cities when he wrote, "Progress may have been a good thing at one time, but it went on a little too long." Misguided notions of what constitutes "progress" robbed Minneapolis and St. Paul of many historic buildings, and time and weather and neglect destroyed many others over the years.
Happily, those "bad old days" are gone. Today, the Twin Cities are honoring their past in a way that also serves their future. Preservation is improving the livability and economic vitality of older residential and commercial areas. Vigorous smart-growth initiatives are fighting sprawl and encouraging reinvestment in older areas. Historic buildings are being given innovative new uses – like the Grain Belt Brewhouse, a former brewery that now houses offices, and Midtown Exchange, a former Sears warehouse transformed into a huge residential/retail/office complex; both projects have received awards from the National Trust.
In the most dramatic turn-around of all, the long-neglected riverfront has been rediscovered. When I left Minnesota 35 years ago, it was virtually impossible to access the river or even catch a glimpse of the St. Anthony Falls, which powered the mills that made Minneapolis the flour-milling capital of the world. Today, a riverfront park provides a close-up look at the falls, the remains of the mills and the canals and tailraces that made the whole complex work. A 2-mile-long heritage trail winds through the park, crossing the Mississippi on the restored Stone Arch Bridge built in 1882. The area known as St. Anthony Main has already become a lively entertainment destination, and the ongoing renovation of historic buildings in the area, coupled with new construction, is sparking the emergence of a real riverfront neighborhood. Centerpiece of the rebirth is the dramatic Mill City Museum, housed in the shell of the building that was once the home of Betty Crocker. It's another National Trust award-winner, and it's the site of Saturday evening's Closing Party.
Preservation in the Twin Cities still faces some challenges, of course. Teardowns are a problem in several older residential neighborhoods. Buildings on the Upper Post of historic Fort Snelling are so dilapidated that we put the site on our 11 Most Endangered list in 2006. The rebirth of the riverfront is a great thing, but it brings the threat of overdevelopment that could destroy the historic character that makes the neighborhood so appealing; in other words, the riverfront area is endangered by its own success.
Still, even with these big challenges, the good news is that Minneapolis and St. Paul are preserving and celebrating their heritage in ways that are creative, useful and even inspiring. I've always been proud to claim Minnesota as my home. Now, the new preservation spirit here in the Twin Cities – and in other communities across the state – gives me new reason to be proud. As you explore the area over the next few days, I believe you'll come to feel the same way.
What's happening here in the Twin Cities is mirrored in other communities from coast to coast. As you'll hear from our conference speakers, and as you'll see dramatically at tomorrow's awards presentation, people everywhere are recognizing that, as our conference theme states, "Preservation Matters!" Our job – our challenge – is to help more people realize it, to move preservation fully and permanently into the mainstream of American life and culture. For the next few minutes, I want to describe for you a major effort that will help us move toward that goal.
We're launching an important initiative to emphasize preservation's role in addressing environmental concerns and in fostering sustainable design and development in America's communities.
Our movement has gone through many phases in its history. In the early years, the emphasis was on historical and cultural values; preservationists saved iconic landmarks – such as Mount Vernon – as patriotic shrines. Later, the focus shifted to preservation's economic aspects; we preached the dollars-and-cents benefits of adaptive reuse, Main Street revitalization and heritage tourism. More recently, we've emphasized social values, emphasizing preservation's value in enhancing community livability, combating the rootlessness of modern society, celebrating the contributions of diverse segments of our population, and strengthening the bonds that unite and identify us as Americans.
Now we're on the threshold of a new phase, as growing numbers of people are concerned about the degradation of the environment and our relentless consumption of irreplaceable energy and natural resources. Preservation certainly isn't the solution to these problems, but it can be – and should be – an important part of the solution.
We all know that preservation offers a "smart growth" alternative to sprawl that consumes land and other resources. By revitalizing a traditional business district, we help reduce the demand for new shopping centers that devour open space and productive farmland. By reinvesting in existing communities, we make wise use of the millions of dollars already spent on streets, utilities and public services instead of abandoning them and duplicating them in sprawling new developments.
Preserving and reusing sound older buildings is what "sustainability" is all about. This isn't a new concept: Decades ago, preservation was often cited as the "ultimate recycling," and many of you may remember the 1980 Preservation Week poster that represented the concept of embodied energy by showing an old building as a gas can. The word "sustainability" didn't appear on that poster, but that's exactly what the message was all about: It takes energy to make bricks and steel and concrete, and more energy to haul the materials to a building site, and still more to dig a foundation and construct a building – and all of that embodied energy gets wasted when the building is demolished.
Here's another important point: Contrary to what many people believe, older buildings can "go green." Many older buildings already incorporate environmentally-friendly systems – like big, operable windows that provide natural light and ventilation, for example – and these features still work, and still make sense. The marketplace now offers a wide range of products that can help make older buildings more energy-efficient without compromising the historic character that makes them unique and appealing. And there's a large and growing number of rehab/reuse projects that offer good models of sustainable design and construction.
With these facts in mind, making preservation a key component of the nation's sustainability agenda is the sensible thing to do – but it won't happen unless we insist on it. We need changes in policy at the federal, state and local levels. We need incentives to encourage architects, developers and property owners to recognize the principle of embodied energy and to incorporate green technology in their rehab projects.
To get those things, we need facts and figures to back up our contention that the greenest building is one that's already built – and gathering that kind of data will be a big part of our Sustainability Initiative. Here's an example of what I mean: We'll pull together reliable sources of information and develop formulas that we'll use to calculate the embodied energy in an old building and compare that figure with the amount of energy required to demolish it and put up a new building in its place. This will allow us to provide a direct comparison of the energy costs of rehab vs. building new – and should also provide new insight into the real cost of teardowns that replace older, smaller houses with McMansions that are more costly to construct and maintain.
Some of you have probably seen a TV show called "Mythbusters," in which some commonly-held, so-called "truths" are shown to have little or no basis in fact. As part of our Sustainability Initiative, we're going to do some mythbusting of our own. Take the notion that old windows are less energy-efficient than new ones, for example. Most of us believe it – but according to a study conducted by the National Center for Preservation Training and Technology, it isn't always true. We want to replace myth with fact, because we believe the facts are on our side.
Our Sustainability Initiative aims to demonstrate that preservation is relevant, that it really does matter. It will show that preservation makes sense – not just for the soul, but also for the pocketbook and the environment. You'll be hearing more about this effort in the coming months, and I believe you'll agree with me that it's one of the most important things the National Trust is doing today.
While our Sustainability Initiative is getting underway, we'll keep working on some issues that have already kept us busy for some time – issues such as teardowns and the threat to historic structures and cultural resources on public lands, for example.
We'll also continue to insist on the importance of preserving landmarks of Modernism.
In 2002, just 39 years after it opened, the innovative Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis appeared on our "11 Most Endangered" list. When preservationists were fighting to save the Guthrie – a fight that we ultimately lost, by the way – one of the comments we kept hearing was, "That theatre isn't historic, it's modern. And it isn't old enough for preservationists to be concerned with."
One of the greatest challenges currently facing us is persuading others that post-war architecture and landscapes do have historic significance and therefore are worth saving. It's not a new problem: Many 19th-century Parisians thought the Eiffel Tower was an eyesore, and it hasn't been long since Victorian buildings were considered ugly and Art Deco wasn't worth noticing, much less preserving. It takes time for people to fully appreciate historic significance and artistic merit – but while art, music and literature can simply wait for their day to come, unappreciated buildings tend to disappear.
Now, the National Trust is spearheading a new initiative to focus on the Recent Past and Modernism. The initiative aims, among other things, to produce a resource guide for recognizing and preserving the recent past, and establish a network of communities and organizations with an interest in preserving Modernism. Earlier this year, we celebrated the public opening of Philip Johnson's Glass House, the latest addition to our collection of Historic Sites and an icon of Modernism. In New Canaan, Conn., where the Glass House is located, the staff at the site and in our Northeast Office have launched a survey that will document 90+ architect-designed Modern homes and landscapes as a model for similar surveys in other communities.
Joni Mitchell sang it years ago, and it's painfully true: "You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone." We can't let that song become a dirge for our legacy from the recent past.
Finally, we'll continue our recovery work on the Gulf Coast.
It's been a little over two years since Hurricane Katrina devastated communities in Mississippi and the city of New Orleans. I'm enormously proud of the National Trust's quick response to the disaster and of what we're doing to ensure that the region's heritage, culture and distinctive sense of place don't get lost in the recovery process.
Our field office staff, working closely with our local partners and assisted by a small army of volunteers, has done an amazing job of coordinating our work on the ground – and you can see some results of that work in these pictures from Mississippi. Our advocacy efforts helped persuade Congress to provide $50 million in grants for historic structures and to expand existing tax credits to provide incentives for rebuilding and revitalization. Our inspection teams have helped prevent the needless demolition of salvageable structures. Our grants and technical assistance have helped a number of families make their homes livable again – and their work has inspired others to rebuild.
Recovery is moving at an achingly slow pace, admittedly, but it is happening. Plenty of brave people are rehabbing their homes and businesses, demonstrating a determination to put their communities and their lives back together – but they still face an uphill struggle. Recently, in a misguided attempt to "step up" the comeback process, the City of New Orleans announced plans to demolish as many as 10,000 structures over the next year – including some buildings that have already been rehabbed. As you can imagine, we've been working hard to alert unsuspecting homeowners and convince officials that you can't save a city by destroying it.
I look forward to the day when there won't be a need for another annual report on our recovery work on the Gulf Coast. I believe that day is coming, but it isn't here yet – and I want to reiterate what I said two years ago: The National Trust is committed to ensuring preservation-based recovery on the Gulf Coast, and we'll be there for as long as it takes.
One more very important preview of things to come. Earlier this year, our Board of Trustees unanimously voted to conduct the second comprehensive fundraising campaign in the history of this organization. It will be a three-year effort, with a goal that will be considerably larger than the $135 million we raised in our first campaign, which took 5 years. Its aim is to bring new and expanded resources to the field of preservation – to strengthen field services, to expand the capabilities of our partner organizations, to create new sources of funding – all to help you do the work of preservation better in your community. I can sum it up in four words: This one's for you.
In that connection, I have some good news: Thanks to a generous initial pledge from Henry and Virginia Sweatt of Wayzata and matching gifts from others, we have established the Sweatt Preservation Fund for Minnesota, which will award grants across the state to make preservation work. This is exactly the kind of thing we want to achieve through our campaign: to provide the support you need – including information and capacity-building as well as money – to make preservation work in your community. You've been marvelously generous in the past, and I know we can count on you to support us in this exciting new effort.
Everyone who works in preservation knows that our job is never done. We win victories – happily, we're winning more and more of them these days – but there's always a new challenge to face, a new opportunity to embrace.
A moment ago I spoke of the changes in the preservation movement over the years. These changes show that ours is a dynamic movement. It remains rooted in a profound respect for history – but we're not just hanging on to yesterday; we're building tomorrow. With your support, we'll keep working to help everyone in the country recognize the truth of our conference theme: Preservation matters! – and it can make a real difference in the appearance and livability of communities all over America.
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.
