Preservation Sites

The present is the permanent variable that affects all efforts to recover the past. History is a means of recovering the past but it inevitably contains, selects, organizes, and interprets what it can retrieve of the past in the light of the present. Relics are also a means of recovering the past, but they too are manipulated, repaired, relocated, incomplete, out of context, and, above all, viewed by eyes that never knew the relics' present. Every example of an historic site for which any deliberate preservation effort has been made must inevitably, therefore, say as much about the present as it does about the past. Indeed, when the viewing of sites and artifacts takes place unaided by much knowledge of history, or of the specific relic, they must say more about the present than they do about the past. As historical research grows and the means of accessing the historical past and disseminating information increase, relics become less important as means of recovering the past. Yet, despite their lesser importance in this respect, movements to conserve monuments, sites, and artifacts of the past have increased in the twentieth century. This has occurred, in large part, because only "artifacts are simultaneously past and present" and they lend themselves, therefore, to far more flexible, multiple, and immediate interpretations than the accumulated data of history does (Lowenthal 248).

Any serious historical account must offer a plausible interpretation that gets its f

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ys, and the huge costs of new suburban infrastructures, and increased automotive pollution (Fitch 57). If all these factors are properly considered the "expediency of retrieving and recycling the central city" becomes obvious and the preservation of older structures may, in many instances, be the most logical way to go about this retrieval (Fitch 57). In other instances, of course, the preservation of existing structures may be the most economically sound course and the conservation of a building's historic appearance and features may be aesthetically and historically valuable--allowing the two motivations to work together. But it is also important to consider that "the conservation of the physical fabric" of a district may not be complementary with "the protection of the interests of the population" (Fitch 65). In many instances, of course, the preservation of the city core can be the result of a logical, considered decision that balances aesthetic, historical, economic and other practical considerations. Fitch notes, for example, the French solution to the problem of the Parisian district known as the Marais, which is a center for highly specialized trades and crafts such as jewelers, clock smiths, makers of buttons, lace,

Category: History - P