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  • The Evolving Definition of “Historic Preservation”:More Complex, More Inclusive
  • Susan West Montgomery (bio)

With some 50 years of federal preservation law and policy in place and decades more of individual and collective action to save places, you’d think we’d have a clearer definition of what we mean when we say “historic preservation.” Instead, it is as though the more time that goes by the more complex the meaning becomes, the more diverse the motivations that lead us to it, and the more wide ranging the actions we take in its name. The effort to find a clear and common definition is also muddied by how others define the concept for us. As we look to the future of preservation, we should understand and own this complexity and be deliberate in pointing out preservation everywhere we see it.

One way to look at the discipline known as historic preservation is as a continuum that flows from the micro to the macro and back again. When I spackle mortar on brick to repoint a wall, or hammer a nail to repair a joist, I am engaging in historic preservation. When I survey and document a set of resources and nominate them to the National Register of Historic Places I am engaging in historic preservation. When I acquire a vacant manufacturing building, save some of its original fabric, but adaptively reuse it as a hotel and retail space I am engaging in historic preservation. When I work to enact a design review ordinance in a historic district I am engaging in historic preservation. When I develop a comprehensive marketing plan and recruit new businesses to open on Main Street in rehabbed older buildings I am engaging in historic preservation.

What all these examples have in common is they revolve around a building or buildings, but historic preservation can also be the act of saving a landscape. We might preserve a farmstead, for example, with its particular arrangement of fences, fields, trees, hedgerows and ruins; or a Native American trail, still discernible after decades of disuse. Even a stretch of riverbank with its telltale [End Page 34] scars and manmade topographical features can reveal an industrial past and be worthy of preservation.


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Supporting traditional cultural activities is also an aspect of historic preservation, especially when that helps to promote continued use of places where those activities are best experienced. Traditional dances of the Chamorro people were featured at a celebration of Pågat, one of the last ancient village sites still publicly accessible on Guam.

PHOTO BY BRIAN TURNER

Moving even further away from physical fabric, we may find ourselves preventing new building on a site even when there are few or no historic remnants on the property. Even places that seem empty and unused can be inextricably tied to a people or an event that is best experienced and interpreted in that open space. We have also learned that historic preservation can be the act of uncovering the names, experiences and actions of individuals even where no tangible history remains, as is the case with the narratives of so many enslaved and working-class people. Our work to protect sacred and cultural traditions—dance, sport, music, language, food ways—is also historic preservation when it recognizes, honors and encourages the continued use of the traditional cultural places where such activities occur.

Historic preservation then is essentially rooted in the concept of “saving” something, whether a building, place or landscape; or, in its wider applications, a story, cultural practice or tradition associated with a place. We generally consider something saved when a place, story, practice or tradition is able to continue to exist for some time to come. In a way, it is the antithesis of consumption, when a building, place, landscape or other resource is used up or used in such a way that it loses its value over time. Preservation is all about retaining value, even enhancing it. Every action we take that adds value—including continued use, continued practice, [End Page 35] revival, restoration, rehabilitation, reuse, interpretation—can in its own way fall under the rubric of historic preservation.

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