Beyond Preservation: Using Public History to Revitalize Inner Cities (review)

In Beyond Preservation, Andrew Hurley offers a strident critique of the prevailing practice of urban historic preservation—a practice that he argues seeks to maximize the earning potential of aging structures, fixates on the aesthetics of building styles, and promotes gentrification. This model, he maintains, freezes neighborhoods and buildings in time, ignores deviations from an illustrious past, and has little relevance to residents living in the targeted communities. Rightfully fearing dispossession, these residents view preservationists with a wary eye. Hurley contends that collaborative models of public history can offer a viable alternative. Through the cultivation of spaces allowing for critical engagement at the grass roots, public history can serve as a powerful tool for those residents facing the threat of dislocation. By playing an active role in crafting historical narratives, inner city residents can stake an ownership claim to their neighborhoods and shape development initiatives to meet their needs.

Hurley interlaces a wide-ranging overview of the historiography of community-based public history research with concrete discussions of case studies from his work with the Community History Research and Design Services (CHRDS) unit at the University of Missouri, St. Louis. Although all the cases offer important lessons, some are more successful at promoting alternative development models. CHRDS's work in North St. Louis involved extensive collaboration with the Old North St. Louis Restoration Group. Whereas the Restoration Group consisted of some families with deep roots in their community, its membership was largely composed of homeowners who were predominantly white, young urban professionals. Efforts to draw African American tenants and homeowners into the project were less successful. Ultimately, CHRDS did steer the community organization away from an entrepreneurial-driven model of historic preservation; the end result, however, appears to have mitigated the impact rather than contested the gentrification of the area. Hurley argues that successful public history collaborations need to involve established community-based organizations to ensure their longevity. Yet his prescription to work closely with Community Development Corporations (CDCs) ignores the role that these organizations have played over the last thirty years in pushing the very model of historic preservation that he critiques.

In one of CHRDS's most successful projects, its work with the Scott Joplin House State Historic Site, the local CDC failed to participate. As a result, CHRDS had to piece together a committee of independent neighborhood volunteers. After engaging in extensive historical research, the group determined that the site, which had played a pivotal role in fostering the development of past African American artists, could best meet the needs of the community by serving as a cultural incubator. With this case, Hurley addresses a core dilemma of sharing authority—how to navigate the conflicting demands between heritage-based and academic forms of history. Granted final interpretive authority, the local history committee carved out a middle ground between the lure of presenting a celebratory historical narrative with the demands of offering an evidentiary-driven account of the past. Ultimately, the project made the historic site once again relevant to the neighborhood residents.

In another project, the Mary Meachum Freedom Crossing, CHRDS collaborated with the Grace Hill Settlement House, a local social service agency charged with assisting youth, the unemployed, and the homeless on the north side of St. Louis. In presenting this case study, Hurley makes a strong argument for moving beyond the preservation of the built environment. Although many of the structures utilized by the urban poor have been demolished, it remains possible to interpret the remnants of the natural environment that shaped their lives. Oral histories documented extensive past community use of the waterfront for recreation, fishing, and even living. Drawing from this research, residents crafted a proposal to convert the waterfront into a community asset with access to fishing piers, food concessions, and swimming facilities.

Nearly all of CHRDS's collaborative projects have turned to oral history and archeology to engage the community in interpreting the past, to uncover the layers of social...