s, experienced without the intervention of much historical knowledge. The conservation of relics serves historical purposes, of course, but, in many cases, those who present a preserved site are perfectly aware of how uninformed much of the audience will be. This raises many questions about preservation. These are not questions about the value of relics to historians or to those who have, or will gather, enough information to place the relic in some broader context. They are questions about what preservation groups, governments, communities, and individuals are saying about the past when they select, conserve, relocate and/or present these relics. And they are questions about who the audience is believed to be and how the actual audience responds to what is preserved.
Winks notes that there are numerous differences between preservation movements in different countries because each of them is "the product of a unique historical world-view" (141). But such subdivision of constituencies continues all the way down to the individual viewer. Many times, for instance, the need for or desirability of preservation rests not on the quality of the individual building itself but on the desire to preserve some sense of the spirit of the historical time in which it was built. The history of a particular locale is often reflected in the order, date, and number of buildings of a particular type. Los Angeles was, for example, one of the last major cities in America to make the transition from "boom town to metropolis" and this had several important effects on its architecture (Clark 7). Despite the claims of "pueblo-centric historians," the development of the city did not follow the usual pattern of spreading out from its initial center (Banham 201). The pueblo district eventually became the transportation center from which the city's all-important transportation network spread, but "its relationship to the other parts of the metropolis n...