So Cool!

"Nearly 20 years ago, historian Dolores Hayden published her renowned book The Power of Place, in which she argued that preservationists were neglecting sites and buildings associated with women and minority history, social unrest and the lives of the working class. Hayden expressly called for historic preservationists to take seriously “ordinary buildings”—worker’s houses, factories, warehouses and other buildings whose significance is probably not architectural. As long as preservationists take the National Register as a veritable gospel, we are blinding ourselves to all aspects of historic places. Places that matter to people don’t always matter because of the way they look—they matter because of what they mean." (Written by Michael R. Allen, founder and director of the Preservation Research Office and a lecturer in American Culture Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. This is an tiny excerpt from his article entitled "Is the National Register of Historic Places Helping or Hindering Legacy City Preservation?" as published in the Preservation Leadership Forum Blog.)