Historic Preservation in Indiana: Essays from the Field

Introduction

3 Nancy R. Hiller Introduction Turkeys are a common sight in the fields surrounding the Monroe County Airport near Bloomington, Indiana. But out of the hundreds I’ve spotted over the years, there is one I will never forget. It was an autumn day in 2008 when this particular turkey caught my eye. Tenfeetofftheasphalt,itlaybreast-upinthecornstubble,cladinawhite plastic wrapper. Damn it, Josh. I told you we were going vegetarian, I could just hear some young wife shouting. I can’t believe you went and bought a turkey. I pictured her slamming on the brakes, running to the back of the car, and heaving the fat round package into the field. Twice a day for several weeks I passed the package on my way to and from work. Perhaps I should have removed it, if only to get the plastic out of the field. But I could not bear the thought of touching it. Instead I watched in horrified fascination as the wrapper slowly inflated. Eventually it burst, and the maggots began their feast. In less than a fortnight there was nothing left but a scrap of mangled packaging. The turkey, unable to fly in life, had finally taken wing. Nature Some may see in this image of the vacuum-packed turkey amid corn stubble a symbol of historic preservation, insofar as it represents an attempt to save an object from damage or even destruction while natural progress continues all around. It’s certainly true that preservation at its 4 Nancy R. Hiller most basic has something in common with the plastic wrapper, aiming , as it does, to stop, or at least slow, decomposition. Let mice nest in a wall, and the organic byproducts of their domestic arrangement will rot your building’s timbers. Ignore the tendrils of a vine peeping out from your roof, and you’ve allowed a pioneer to bushwhack a path for settlers–beetles, molds, and fungi–as surely as eighteenth-century European traders cleared the way for Ma, Pa, and the kids to venture westward in horse-drawn wagons. But does it follow that preservation is somehow antithetical to nature , which is ever changing? Of course not. All life forms engage in preservation, both of themselves –of ourselves –and of the environment on which their life depends. Bark, skin, and shells are the first line of defense against pathogens; cilia in lungs and macrophages in blood work with other mechanisms to handle intruders that breach these bounds. Buildings have their own versions of skin and exoskeleton, along with their own forms of everyday preservation: siding and shingles , stains and paints, aluminum and copper flashing are all barriers against the sun and water that invite house-eating organisms in. When these protections fail, we take on the work of cilium and macrophage, removing intruders, and then repairing any damage they may have done. Still, what we call illness or decay is nature’s way of shuffling the deck to create new life, and it’s a force we are ultimately powerless to resist. All buildings, all bodies, will someday revert to the ground from which they came. Does this impermanence rob history of its significance ? Certainly not at the level of human experience. In fact, it constitutes the very condition for historicity. To be historic is the opposite of standing still, of remaining unchanged over time. It is instead to have a story–a story that extends beyond the present, and even beyond individual memory, to encompass the labor and the materials invested in our bodies, our buildings, and our landscapes by those who came before us. In fact, we exercise a dangerous selectivity when we exclude from our histories the very earth, air, water, and sun of which all is made, as Scott Russell Sanders suggests in his essay “On Loan from the Sea” in this volume. Introduction 5 Romance, and Other Means of Destruction But natural decay is just one of the threats facing old buildings and historic places. The preservation movement was founded in response to more aggressive forces than dry rot and termites: the wrecking ball and bulldozer in the developer’s pay. “Some people think buildings should be preserved just because they’re old,” said a realtor while showing me a house in the mid-1990s. “But houses have lifetimes, just like people, and this one is nearing its end.” That was my first encounter with the vacuum-packed-turkey...