While the movement to preserve historic buildings has widespread support, it also has some sharp critics with well-funded opposition groups springing up in recent years.
Some opponents are linked to the Stand Together Foundation, founded and bankrolled by the Koch family’s conservative philanthropic organization, according to a column in Governing magazine. Many critics see historic preservation as a threat to “precious individual freedoms.”
A Stand Together senior fellow cited some preservation actions to bolster his case: An effort in San Francisco to convert a laundromat into an eight-story apartment building was stalled for eight years while city officials try to determine if the laundromat should be protected. In Denver, preservationists delayed the conversion of a 1960s diner into a new mixed-use retail/residential development.
Other critics, including some academicians, have criticized historic neighborhood preservation as “a stalking horse for gentrification and displacement of impoverished residents,” the column reads. Despite these critiques, the columnist makes a compelling case for preservation.
“Preservation serves the vital purpose of helping people to understand, appreciate and connect with their local history at a time when historical awareness is a missing element in much of America. If preservation has gone too far, it has gone too far in the right direction. We ought to be able to manage it without denigrating the things it has achieved.”
Related Stories
| Feb 14, 2014
Must see: Developer stacks shipping containers atop grain silos to create student housing tower
Mill Junction will house up to 370 students and is supported by 50-year-old grain silos.
| Feb 13, 2014
Extreme Conversion: Nazi bunker transformed into green power plant, war memorial
The bunker, which sat empty for over 60 years after WWII, now uses sustainable technology and will provide power to about 4,000 homes.
| Feb 5, 2014
Extreme conversion: Atlanta turns high-rise office building into high school
Formerly occupied by IBM, the 11-story Lakeside building is the new home for North Atlanta High School.
| Jan 31, 2014
6 considerations for rehabbing student union buildings
Most colleges and universities feel pressure to offer the latest amenities in order to attract and retain the best and brightest students. While hauling in the bulldozer to create modern facilities is attractive in some regards, deciding to renovate can be just as effective and, in some cases, even preferable to new construction.
| Jan 29, 2014
Historic church will be part of new condo building in D.C.
Sorg Architects unveiled a design scheme for 40 condos in a six-story building, which will wrap around an existing historic church, and will itself contain four residential units.
| Jan 29, 2014
Notre Dame to expand football stadium in largest project in school history
The $400 million Campus Crossroads Project will add more than 750,000 sf of academic, student life, and athletic space in three new buildings attached to the school's iconic football stadium.
| Jan 14, 2014
D.C. Navy Yard building, site of mass shooting, will be renovated
A remembrance area and a new visitor's entrance will be among the changes when the Navy rebuilds Building 197 of the Washington Navy Yard, where a gunman killed 12 people and then was killed in a shooting spree in September 2013.
| Jan 6, 2014
Energy-efficiency retrofits can help reduce healthcare costs
Reducing energy consumption through energy-efficiency retrofits represents an underappreciated way to cut healthcare costs, according to the Rocky Mountain Institute.
| Jan 2, 2014
West Hollywood drug den to be remade into boutique hotel
San Vicente Inn, a cluster of century-old historic bungalows, known as a haven for nudists and drug users, in West Hollywood, Calif., will be converted into a boutique hotel.
| Dec 31, 2013
Top 10 blog posts from 2013
BD+C editors and our contributors posted hundreds of blogs in 2013. Here's a recap of the most popular topics. They include valuable lessons from one of the first BIM-related lawsuits and sage advice from AEC legend Arthur Gensler.
