Summary

Winner of the Society of Architectural Historians' 2013 Antionette Forrester Downing Book Award, this provocative analysis of historic preservation's past and future will transform contemporary understanding of the movement.

Buildings, Landscapes, and Memory: Case Studies in Historic Preservation explores historically and critically the historic preservation movement in the United States. Analyzing ten extraordinary places, this provocative analysis of historic preservation's past and future will transform contemporary understanding of the movement, examining assumptions about why history, heritage, and place should matter. It ranges broadly from a discussion of the commemoration of place in the Marquis de Lafayette's triumphal tour of the United States in 1824-25 to speculation about the cultural and political import of interpreting history on EPA Superfund toxic waste sites.

Thinking critically about preservation requires also thinking critically about its opposite: destruction. The book treats the movement to conserve the Hudson River Palisades from destruction at the hands of trap rock quarrymen as well as the effort to save Dutch-American homesteads that stood in the path of development in Brooklyn. It explores the intersection between race, culture, and preservation in the 1940s effort of African Americans to preserve the Mecca Flats in Chicago, an apartment building that was the subject of popular blues music and that was threatened by Mies van der Rohe's designs for the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Focusing on the relationship among tradition, preservation, and modern design, Buildings, Landscapes, and Memory explores the making of Eero Saarinen's Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Arch on the historic Mississippi riverfront in St. Louis as well as the tension between tradition and modern design at Thomas Jefferson's University of Virginia, declared a World Heritage site in 1987. Engaging early efforts to build an economy on preservation and heritage tourism, the book also looks at the creation of Virginia's historic highway marker program in the 1920s.

Choice Review

Despite its importance in shaping culture, landscape, and perceptions of the past, historic preservation has received little detailed historical study. Bluestone (Univ. of Virginia) sets a new standard for such inquiry in this book of ten case studies. The time frame spans nearly two centuries, underscoring how notions that have affected the modern preservation movement have existed nearly as long as the US itself. The scope of material presented is sweeping--from the memorialization developed for the Marquis de Lafayette's return to the US in the mid 1820s to the adaptive use of toxic waste sites in recent years. Bluestone's approach draws from those of cultural historians who have focused on commemoration, identity, and public memory, but he also embraces a spectrum of other concerns from design to environmentalism. He is as much at home analyzing design concerns as he is addressing matters of association. This book underscores not only preservation's longevity in American culture, but also its intricate, multifaceted nature. While students and professionals in the preservation field will particularly appreciate this volume, its compelling narratives, facile prose, and elegant production should appeal to many others with an interest in the American past. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-level undergraduates through professionals/practitioners. R. Longstreth George Washington University