Preservation Conference’s Morning Session: “New Landmarks: Modern, Vernacular and Cultural Sites”
Sometimes we become so used to the art around us that we forget that it is art. Other times, we walk right past a landmark or building with little understanding of its cultural or historical significance.
The Preservation Conference’s March 6 morning session explored the architecture we sometimes take for granted as moderator Francoise Bollack led a spirited discussion featuring Andrew Scott Dolkart, director of the Historic Preservation Program; Mariana Mogilevich, Research Fellow at Place Matters; and John Kriskiewicz, a professor at Parsons School of Design.
The panelists brought up the challenge of preserving vernacular architecture–the ordinary buildings and landmarks we see everyday–and they described how the utility of these buildings sometimes worked against their preservation. At one point, Mogilevich showed a photograph of Jahn’s Ice cream Parlor in Richmond Hill–an ice cream parlor that had operated continuously since the 1930s and still had its original fixtures but closed in 2008–and wondered how it could have been saved.
“How can we landmark lunch, hanging out?” Mogilevich rhetorically asked the audience, after she explained how the closing of a nearby movie theater negatively affected Jahn’s business.
Similarly, Dolkart also discussed the ways that economic concerns sometimes trumped culture ones. Dolkart explained that as he “walked around the Garment District at dusk and stared into people’s windows,” he saw fewer signs of “garment activity”—bolts of cloth and florescent lights. “Garment activity” buildings were disappearing, Dolkart said, because people “can’t afford the rent.”
When Bollack raised the concern that perhaps preservationists “need to find new ways to advocate” for vernacular architecture, Kriskiewicz said that it was time for us to reconsider our ideas of what is valuable.
“We have a bias towards the visual. If it’s beautiful, it’s easy to make the argument that we should preserve it,” Kriskiewicz said. “If it is architectural–not beautiful but interesting–we can still make an argument based on that. The cultural argument is the hardest argument to make, but like any bias, you have to work through it.”
Conference attendees seemed to agree with this idea. Naomi Dickerson, of the Fort Greene Association, said that “We have to think of all of these different values; there are so many different perspectives from which to look at preservation.”
Larry Jackson, an instructor at Marquis Studios added, “It’s about recognizing what’s around you, and seeing what is special about the neighborhood you live in.”