Barthel - Historic Preservation

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Historic Preservation: A Comparative AnalysesAuthor(s): Diane BarthelSource: Sociological Forum, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Mar., 1989), pp. 87-105Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/684437

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Sociological Forum, Vol. 4, No. 1, 1989

Historic Preservation: A Comparative AnalysesDiane BarthelIHistoric preservation has, to date, received relatively little attention fromsociologists, usually meriting only brief mention under topics of urbangen-trification or community organization. But within the context of its historyand its significance in modern society, preservation emerges as a multilevelresponse to industrialization and related processes of social change: whatgets preserved and how it is symbolically interpreteddepends upon the classstructure of society and the related social mapping of time and place. Thefollowing comparativeanalysis of preservationin GreatBritain and the UnitedStates demonstratesthe importance of thesefactors.KEY WORDS: restoration;historical preservation;comparativeanalysis; Great Britain;UnitedStates; National Trust; historical societies; social mapping.

INTRODUCTIONPopular movements for historic preservationrepresentdiscontent withindustrialization-its dislocations and transformations (Lears, 1981; Mac-Carthy, 1981). Those who verbalize and act upon their discontent are thosewho most clearly perceive impending loss and who take actions to prevent

it or, at least, to contain the damage (Maris, 1974). Preservationist cam-paigns have consequences for society at large, as new challengesemergebasedon the relative successes of this social response that is part social movement,part organization, part generalized malaise.While sharing certain traits traceable to the process of industrializa-tion itself, historic preservation takes different forms in different societies.Two critical factors that determine its form are social structure, particularlysocial classes and competing status groups (Wolff, 1983; Bourdieu, 1984;

'Department of Sociology, State University of New York, Stony Brook, New York 11794-4356.87

0884-8971/89/0300-0087$06.00/0 ( 1989 Plenum Publishing Corporation


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Historic Preservation 89Since the analysis is comparative, it is worth considering to what ex-tent one society influenced the other. We find some evidence of British in-fluence within the parks movement: Americans were affected by Ruskin'swritings on landscape and earlier theories of the beautiful and the sublime.Even here, however, Americans consciously steered away from the Britishmodel, which they viewed as elitist for its assumptionthat the laboringclasseswere incapable of aesthetic appreciation (MacEwen and MacEwen, 1982).There was some sharing of generalphilosophic interestin culture nd civili-zation on both sides of the Atlantic (Williams, 1983; Taylor, 1976). Beyondthis, however, while there seems awareness of each other's activities, thereappears very little direct influence, at least until the 1940s. Indicative of thisfact, British artist C. R. Ashbee came to America in 1901 with a view toseeing whether a National Trust, similar to that recentlyfounded in England,might also be established here. What he found was such varied, energetic,local activity that he concluded America would find its own way to preser-vation, and that adoption of the British model would not be appropriate tothis different social structure and setting (Hosmer, 1981; v. 2:810). Whilea National Trust was officially founded almost 50 years later, its organiza-tion and concerns differ from those of the British in ways that reflect great-er social and cultural differences.

PRESERVATION IN BRITAINThe origins of preservation in Great Britainwere primarily intellectualand artistic. Williams (1983) suggested that thinkers as different as EdmundBurke and William Cobbett shared a common revulsion at many of the phys-ical and social changes industrialization was producing across Britain. In hisRural Rides (1830), Cobbett described the beauty of the English country-side, a beauty formed not just of physical landscape but of the traditionalway of life attached to it: the customs and social understandings that wereas much responsiblefor its shape and aspect as any naturalfeature, any standof treesor rockypromontory. Writersand artists, particularly hose associatedwith the Romantic Movement, not only found beauty in nature; they alsoperceived truth and nobility in an earlier social age -the Medieval period -that they then contrasted to the social disorder of their own times. Accord-ing to historian Charles Dellheim, they saw in the Middle Ages a sourceof values that represented alternatives to the emergent industrial capitalist

social order. In Gothic architecture they saw the highest expression of thehuman quest for the infinite and delightin the finite. The MiddleAges provid-ed them with an exemplar of spiritual certainty and religious piety that was


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90 Barthelprofoundly appealing to those who craved both but often possessed neither(Dellheim, 1982:4).

One major result of theirwritingsand expressedconcern was the found-ing, by John Ruskin, John Stuart Mill, William Morris, and others, of theCommons Preservation Society in 1865. The purpose of this society was tohelp protect the remaining communally held lands against enclosure, withcampaigns launched to defend such notable lands as Hampstead Heath andWimbledon Commons (Matheson, 1945). A second major effort resultedin the founding of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (1877).This group protested the careless restoration and alteration of historic build-ings and monuments.For Ruskin, the chief justification for conservationwas contained with-in the idea of age itself: the quasisacred character of that which has enduredthrough generations of inhabitants and successions of historical events(Ruskin, 1906). Other members of this artistic-intellectualcoterie went furtherthan Ruskin. Morris in particular saw preservation as part of a battle againstan increasingly commercialized and despiritualized world. Is it absolutelynecessary, he wrote to Commonweal on August 6, 1887, that every scrapof space in the City should be devoted to money-making and are religion,sacredmemories,recollections of the great dead, memorialsof the past, worksof England's greatest architects to be banished from this wealthy city?(Thompson, 1967:59).The widening of interest from the Medieval period to the ancient perse was accompanied by a widening of support from artists and intellectualsto a broader base in local communities. During the Victorian period, localorganizations sprang up throughout England, many of them combining aninterest in historic monuments with interests in natural history, antiques, orarcheology: for example, the Dorset Natural History and Antiquarian FieldClub (1875), the Derbyshire Archaeological and Natural History Society(1878), and the Hampstead Antiquarian and Historical Society (1897) (Dell-heim, 1982:46).This spreadinginterest in the past laid the groundwork for the founda-tion of the National Trust in 1895. Three individuals provided the specificcatalyst. Robert Hunter, a solicitor active in the Commons Preservation So-ciety, suggested in a speech in Birmingham made to the National Associa-tion for the Promotion of Social Science that a land company might beformed with a view to the protection of public interests in the open spacesof the country (Fedden, 1968:3). This suggestion was quickly seconded byOctaviaHill, a philanthropistactive in improving housing for the urbanpoor.She suggestedto Hunter that the term company be changed to trust, com-menting, Youwill do better... to bring forward its benevolent than its com-mercial character.People don't like unsuccessfulbusiness, but do like Charity


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Historic Preservation 91where a little money goes a long way because of good management Fedden,1968:3). The third main actor, Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley, had helpeddefend the scenic Lake District against a railway bill, but had initially ap-peared uninterested in the Trust. In 1893, however, when certain Lake Dis-trict propertiesof scenic value came on the market, he recognized that a needexisted for an agency that could buy, manage, and protect such scenic andhistoric sites. He then joined with Hill and Hunter to protect the Lake Dis-trict. This, then, became the first important symbol of British preservation,as the call to Save the Lake District drew support from the many who hadvacationed there and who perceived this mountainous area as a land of ex-ceptional national beauty with an almost spiritual dimension.The fight was to preserve this preindustrial landscape from the forcesof industrialization, a challenge the leadership had already faced in the ef-fort to preserve common land. To be effective in this battle, however, theyrealized they must adopt a new form of social organization. In industrialsociety, the sporadic resistance of concerned individuals would not suffice.Thus in January 1895, the National Trust was incorporated as a public, non-profit company (Matheson, 1945:122).In 1900, Trust membership stood at approximately 250 members; by1928 it had grown to over 1000, and by 1935 the figure was over 8000. Thebiggest growth, however, occurred after World War II. In 1950membershipwas 23,000; in 1960, 97,000; and by 1965, 158,000 (Fedden, 1968:139). Asis typical in a crusade, some old-timers regrettedthe very successof the move-ment, in terms of numbers attracted, and wondered whether quantity wastaking over from quality.In the early years, the small but dedicated membership was very suc-cessful in acquiring scenic lands and grand historic buildings. By 1900, theyhad acquired 180 properties, including the Farne Islands, large stretches ofthe Lake District, Bodiam and Tatteshall castles, Chedworth Roman villa,and Barrington Court, among others. Along with such successes, preserva-tionists faced continued challenges from industrialization, commercializa-tion, and new leisure activities. Trust committee minutes record threats tothe landscape due to motor rallies on the South Downs, hydroplanes on lakeWindermere, pylons, advertising, new highways, and pollution attackingmany sites of natural beauty and historic significance (Fedden, 1968:25).Initiallythe Trustappearedeager to accept any propertyof historic meritor scenic beauty, but eventually it was forced to become more selective, em-phasizing that properties would have to be of national, rather than merelylocal, significance. Most notably, they undertook, in the years surroundingWorld War II, what is known as the Country House Scheme. The largecountry estates, which had symbolized the leisured good life for the upperclasses, had become increasinglydifficult to maintain in the post-World War


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92 BarthelI years, as the number of servantsdeclined and as death duties were imposedon the estates. For many threatened with having to give up family estates,the Trustcame to the rescue. Through this procedure, descendentscan main-tain ownership of their impressive properties, receiving Trust financial sup-port in exchange for opening parts of their homes to tourists during limitedseasonal hours. These country homes have become symbolic of the Trustand figure importantlyin its holdings. They provide a three-dimensionalpic-ture of a gracious and harmonious social order, a world we have lost.Thus despite the foundation of other preservationistorganizations thatdeal specifically with 20th-century structures, such as the Thirties Society,much of preservation in Britain wears a preindustrial face. British preserva-tionists must respond to the lode of structuressurviving from a documentedhistory extending many centuries before industrialization. While the BritishNational Trust has in recent decades preserved select industrial structures,these are few compared to its legacy of historic homes and landscapes. Themajor houses, gardens, and historic ruins also attract the largest number ofvisitors. The image overall, then, is the traditional one of a green andpleasantisle.

PRESERVATION IN THE UNITED STATESIn America, the motive behind the earliest preservation effort wasneither artistic nor intellectual: it was patriotic. The first major effort wasthe successful crusade, launched by South Carolinean Ann Pamela Cunnin-gham in 1853, to save Mount Vernon. Her purpose was to inspire in futuregenerations the patriotism and noble characterof the founding fathers (Na-tional Trust for Historic Preservation, 1976:21). To some extent, her MountVernon Ladies Association formed the prototype for other early organiza-tions such as the Daughters of the American Revolution and the ColonialDames, who usually limited their preservation efforts to one building foreach chapter, usually used as the local headquarters. Other early sites ofpreservation with a clearly patriotic symbolism assigned to them includedAndrew Jackson's home, The Hermitage (saved in 1856); Carpenter'sHall,site of the First Continental Congress (also 1856); Washington's headquart-ers in Morristown, New Jersey (1873); and Valley Forge (1878) (Hosmer,1981). Local historical societies were formed throughout the latter nineteenthand early twentieth centuries, many of them specifically to honor the placewhere Washington rested his head, or where some native son of later promi-

nence had passed his early years.While patriotism was the major motive behind many 19th-centurypreservationist efforts, it was soon joined by a second, which also reflected


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Historic Preservation 93the extent to which preservation must be seen as a culturally specific responseto industrialization. If the first motive was political, the second assumed amore economic cast. The most forceful proponents of this second, 20th-century message were the major industrialists, among them John D. Rock-efeller and Henry Ford. Greenfield Village, founded by Ford in 1929, wasa pastiche of historic buildings, through which Ford meant to teach the les-sons history books missed or muddled. As preservationist historian CharlesHosmer quotes Ford, I'm going to start up a museum and give people atrue picture of the development of the country.... We're going to build amuseum that's going to show the industrial history, and it won't be bunk(1981:80). One New York Times editorial writer wondered what possessedFord to collect these totems of preindustrialAmerica. Has any competentpsychologist tried to analyze Henry Ford's passion for American antiques?The unparalleled Dearborn collection of spinning wheels, dutch ovens, co-vered bridges and other relics of an early American past is the work of aman whose life mission has been to take us away from that past as quicklyas might be. The creator of the assembly-belt civilization is in love with theold handicraft civilization. Henry Ford adores the horse-and-buggy. It is asif Stalin went in for collecting old ledgers and stocktickers (Hosmer,1981:94).

Ford's passion was shared by other men, not all as well known, butsuccessful businessmen in their own right. Among them was Albert Wells,head of American Optical Company in Southbridge, Massachusetts, andfounder of Old Sturbridge Village. As his father had been a farmer, he felthimself rooted to New England even as his own work formed part of its in-dustrial transformation. Wells had a particular appreciation for old tools;duringthe Depressionfamilies would come from miles to sell him their junk.His son, who had studied John Dewey at school, advised his father on theimportanceof learning by doing and suggestedthat Wells's collection of toolsmight be best displayed in a small village, where visitors could observe thereplicated activities of 19th-century armersand craftsmen (Karp, 1982). Theend goal: To preservethe ever-good things of New England's past in a man-ner that will teach their usefulness to the people of the present and the fu-ture ... above all, how virtues and ideals expressed in them can be appliedto life and work today (Hosmer, 1981:114).But perhaps the best known effort, and the most significant in termsof its impact, was the restoration of Colonial Williamsburg.In 1926, WilliamA. R. Goodwin, head of the Department of Bible Literature and ReligiousEducation at the College of William and Mary and also rector of BrutonParish Church (which he had helped restore), succeeded in his aim of in-fluencing John D. Rockfeller to back Williamsburg'srestoration. Williams-burg then became the model both for other restorations, such as Litchfield,


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94 BarthelConnecticut (Butler, 1985), and for new housing, includingboth exteriorandinterior design.Thus the financial backing for American preservation'smost publicizedshowcases came from wealthy individuals who wanted to communicate inthis very visual way their image of American society, past and present. Upthrough 1930there was little thought of a national organization. The 6 statesof New England were already joined together in the Society for the Preser-vation of New England Antiquities (SPNEA), founded in 1910. Under thedirection of William Sumner Appleton, an architectural historian and full-time preservationist, he SPNEA shifted the focus from patriotismto architec-ture in its campaigns (Hosmer, 1981). Elsewhere, specific cities and townsbecame centers of preservation. Not surprisingly, these were most notablyplaces with a definite sense of identity shared either by a local upper classor by a new status group of recent arrivals.An example of the first instance is Charleston, where the decline fol-lowing the Civil War had left fine old antebellum buildings threatened withdemolition by the early 20th century. Following the example set by AnnPamela Cunningham, Susan Pringle Frost, a real estate broker, began a cru-sade to save these buildings. But, unlike Cunningham, she began by restor-ing them and selling them, often at a loss. Her interest in preserving homeswith the stability and nobility of characterand taste, which a modern com-mericial age can ill afford to dispense with, soon spreadto other influentialCharlestonians, as Hosmer is at pains to point out- evenly divided betweenmen and women, with professionals from many important fields -whoshared a belief that something was sacred about the city (1981:273).While each local crusade had its specific symbols and goals based inlarge measure on its historic legacy, the crusadersdid seem drawn from thesame pool. Douglas (1977) has argued that as status groups in search of anew social role, women and ministers progressively defined culture as theirspecial concern in 19th-centuryAmerica. Ministers were notable among thepreservation leadership-Williamsburg's Godwin, the Lake District's Can-on Rawnsley and women werealso well represented.Once the professionals,in those decades almost by definition men, became involved, the proportionof women involved declined. As in Britain, artists and teachers were alsoamong the first to recognize the potential in neglected byways of history.In San Antonio, a small group of women artists founded the San AntonioConservation Society. Other notable centers of early preservationistactivismincluded Natchez, where women's garden clubs organized annual pil-grimages o historichomes Where he Old South Still Lives ;St. Augustine;New Orleans;Monterey;Annapolis; Newport; and old Westernminingtownssuch as Tombstone, Arizona (Hosmer, 1981).In these varied efforts, we see how early preservationists mounted cru-sades against the forces of industrial transformation threatening their com-munities, chief among them urban redevelopment and new transportation


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Historic Preservation 95construction (highways, parking garages, service stations). Like the Britishmovement, however, American preservation would not long remain in thehands of a few dedicatedcrusaders: t too would undergo a process of profes-'sionalization and bureaucratization, what Burke termed thebureaucratiza-tion of the imaginative, with architects and historians playing increasinglysignificant roles (1984).Up until 1930, federal involvement in preservationwas minimal, aboutevenly split between the War Department, responsible for monuments andbattlefields, and the National Park Service (NPS). In the 1930s, however,the NPS began to assert a greater authority, demonstrated in particular bywinning support for the Historic American Buildings Survey. While provid-ing government work for unemployed architects, this surveydocumented thearchitectural structure and detail of historic buildings, many of which wereat risk. The survey itself provided a pathway for communication among ex-perts, while it alerted the public to preservationpossibilities within their owncommunities. The second major achievement of the NPS was the eventualpassage of the Historic Sites Act (1935). This act set the terms for the acqui-sitions of properties, called for a survey of properties to be repeated at leastevery ten years, and recommended a National Board on Historic Sites to ad-vise the secretary of the interior.Still, the NPS was not an independent agency. When PresidentRoosevelt turned against preservation with America's entry into World WarII, preservationists realized that the full responsibility for existing and fu-ture properties might be better handled by an organization separate fromgovernment that could make preservationits one goal and raison d'etre. Fur-ther, the localism that had characterized American preservation from thebeginning made coordination very difficult. It was for these reasons thatprofessionals and activists in government and in the private sector foundedthe National Trust for Historic Preservation in 1949. Modeled on theBritish Trust, it was to be a private, nonprofit organization dedicated topreserving America's historic legacy and to furthering the preservationistcause.Fifty-five years behind the British Trust, the American Trust has farfewer properties and assets. While for 1984 the British Trust reported assetsof 102 million pounds, the American Trust reported assets of less than 31million dollars, about one-fourth to one-fifth the amount. Further,the Ameri-can Trust operates only 13 historic homes open to the public, ranging fromsouthern plantations to the homes of Woodrow Wilson and Frank LloydWright. Much of its emphasis is on encouraging local groups, offeringtechnical advice, and lobbying for preservationistcauses in state and nationalgovernments. While the National Trust can now be described as Britain'sthirdlargestlandholder, the AmericanTrust owns outrightonly the 13historichouses previously mentioned, although it also is involved as cosponsor withmany local and state groups.


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96 BarthelAs one example, the American Trust sponsors the Main Streets pro-gram, which is designed to help revive small towns' and cities' business dis-

trictssuffering from competitionwith suburbanmalls. The 1984annual reportlisted Main Streets programs in 128 towns in 12 states spreadgeographicallyfrom Massachusetts to Texas to Oregon. This program draws on the impor-tance of the small town as a symbol of all that is good, strong, and truein American life (Varenne, 1977; Vidich and Bensman, 1968). It also appealsto American practicality in that it is good for business. It also, finally, ap-pealed to PresidentReagan, who addresseda national video conference, withan audience of more than 20,000 from approximately2900 communities. Un-derliningthe Main Streetsstrategyof preservationand self-help, Reagan said,Ourtax credits have made the preservation of our older buildings not onlya matter of respect for beauty and history, but of economic good sense.A second major program reflecting the same mix of professional Trustknow-how and local enthusiasm is the Inner City Ventures, which initi-ates revitalization of low- and moderate-income neighborhoods in urbanhistoric districts. In 1984, the Trust provided $565,552 towardthese ventures,generating total investments of over $5 million for 8 projects in 4 states. Inone case, Hispanic youths in a rundown Chicago neighborhoodlearned con-struction skills while transforming an 1882 tenement into low-cost housingand office space.In its publications, the Trust emphasizes both local participation andeconomic and political sophistication. While the early crusade generatedprofessional organizations and graduate programs, today's preservationistsstress the continued importance of the dedicated amateur. Today's move-ment thus manages to coordinate, however loosely, the efforts of amateurand professional, homeowner and bureaucrat,architecturalhistorian and realestate developer. Above all, it manages to preservethe facade of small-townAmerica by drawingon the technology and economic and political organiza-tional forms characteristic of mass society (Vidich and Bensman, 1968).DISCUSSION

Social StructureHistoric preservationreflects the new class alignments that resultedfromindustrialization. In Britain, the social role of preservation activists wastwofold, an intrinsically contradictory response to the new status disjunc-

tions. On the one hand, the depth of class consciousness gave rise to effortsto create new bases of communal harmony and of national identification.On the other, these same efforts may, as Dellheim suggests, have reinforced


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Historic Preservation 97the hegemony of local elites, who assumed the roles of proprietors of thepast as well as masters of the present (1982:58).When a preexisting traditional order is undermined by the forces ofindustrialization, new forms of social organization such as clubs and volun-tary associations move into the void to create a new basis for communityactivity and identification (Shils, 1975). Perhaps, in their interest in preser-vation, archaeology, antiquities, and natural history, these Victorians weresearching for a new base for social relations in communities where the earli-er order had been undermined by industrialization and the new class struc-ture. But preservation was not simply a case of rich poor, upper class vs.new working class. Instead, interest in preservation was demonstrated bothby social elites looking back to the past to legitimate their present power andto maintain it in this new context, and by culturally progressive forces, anidentifiable status group of artists and intellectuals, who saw in it an alter-native to the human and natural costs of industrialization. Each opposedthe new industrial bourgeoisie, whose enterprises were destroying both thetraditional countryside (MacEwen and MacEwen, 1982) and the traditionalsocial hierarchy. Thus the past can be made to serve a range of political pur-poses (Calhoun, 1983; Hobsbawm and Ranger, 1983; Rochberg-Halton,1986), even as it gives rise to identifiable taste cultures (Gans, 1974).The very idea of the National Trust reflects a tutorial relationshipestablished between preservationists and the populace, a relationship of un-equals, as betweenteacher and student(Donzelot, 1979).Through the authori-ty of the Trust, preservationistswere self-appointed custodians of a nationallegacy until such time as all others shared their particular appreciation ofBritain'spast. As Fedden writes, Ina Utopia where a perfect sense of valuesprevailed there would be no place for a National Trust (1968:53). In con-trast, Patrick Wright sees their activities as part of the anxious aristocraticalignment, which perceives history not as progress but as betrayal. In thisalignment, says Wright, 'We,'like the monks of Lindisfarneduringthe DarkAges, are the 'trustees' or custodians of the past (1985:148). Wright sur-rounds the we with quotation marks because he repeatedly questions whois preservingwhat for whom: does the British nation in the motto OnTrustfor the Nation include Asians, punks, the unemployed, the working class?In the United States, preservation became one means of social integra-tion: not just of classes but, equally important, of the increasingly diverseracial and ethnic populations. The homes of local heroes, revolutionarylead-ers, and of presidentsweremeant to teach civic obedienceboth to new genera-tions and to new immigrants arriving throughout the 19th and early 20thcenturies. They helped construct civic identities. Taylor has described howthe idea of the American was early layered with distinctive regional color-ings (1976). At the same time, however, patriotic icons, chief among them


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98 BarthelGeorge Washington, spanned these regions and signified to Americans that,despite theirdifferences, they reallywere all one nation (Schwartzand Miller,1986).In similar fashion, the historic villages estabished or preserved byRockefeller, Ford, and Wells, among others, were complex gestures com-municating several meanings. On one level, these self-made men were claim-ing seigneurialrights long establishedon the other side of the Atlantic. Thesesuccessful businessmen, not to the manor born, did not hesitate to createboth manor and village, reflectingtheirposition of leadershipand hence theirability to impose symbolic interpretations on the landscape. Their variousinterpretations all presented some form of resolution of the status disjunc-tures and class tensions arisingfrom industrialization.Ford, as we have seen,wanted to present his view of history, a view that, unlike that presented inthe history books, would not be bunk.On the regional level, it is interesting that the society that most resem-bles the English organizations is the SPNEA founded in 1910. The class po-sition of the Boston Brahmins and intellectuals most clearly approximatesthat of their English counterparts. Their assumption of responsibility for thetradition embedded within this region most resembles this particular tradi-tion of service among the early Britishphilanthropists. Other regions deve-loped their own organizations, methods, and goals.This localistic and regional emphasis within American preservationreflects how pluralism is embedded in the social structureas in its ideology.Volunteerismis also part of this ideology. French sociologist Herve Varennehas remarked on how small-town Americans feel they must always beconstructing society anew, in contrast to the more typical French attitudeof suffering the weight of an omnipresent society (1977). Varenne is reiter-ating a point first made by de Tocqueville about the Americanobsession withvolunteerism and participation. Preservation has very much this quality inAmerica and draws upon these strengths.

The Social Mapping of StructuresIt is clear that preservationpresentsdifferent problems in Great Britainthan in the United States. A nation with a mere fraction of the land of thelatter, Britain'sculturallandscapeis far more densely packed with prehistoriclandworks, Roman and Celtic ruins, ancient Saxon churches, medieval andTudor houses and inns, greatcathedrals,palaces, fortresses,Georgianhouses

and townscapes, and so on.The past is a moving point. Recognition of the need to preserveRoman ruins was alreadyvoiced in Elizabethan England (Lowenthal, 1985).When preservation began to attract attention in the 19th century, the first


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Historic Preservation 99targets were the old medieval structures:the Gothic was praised and imitat-ed, the Georgian was reviled. After the turn of the century, spurredby pub-lication of Geoffrey Scott's TheArchitecture of Humanism (1914), the tableswere turned. Now the 18th-centuryGeorgian country homes were valued asarchitectureand as history, preparingthe way for the CountryHouse Schemethat followed. Today, it is the industrial past and the recent past (early tomid-20th century) that are the new targets of preservation.Such new targetsdo not replacethe old; rather, they are added to them.Thus the shape of the past becomes the weight of the past, as preserva-tion requiresan increasingcut of the nation's resources. Within the BritishNational Trust itself, the costs attached to preservation are so great that theTrust will not accept outright gifts of historical and architecturally signifi-cant homes unless they come accompanied with a dowry of upward of amillion pounds.The United States, by contrast, is a relatively new nation. Underliningthis fact, when interest in preserving Indian ruins arose at the turn of thecentury, it was because they were viewed as providing the missing antiquity:parks such as the Mesa Verdewould substitute for Athens and Rome (MacE-wen and MacEwen, 1982). Periods providing much of the historic lode ofBritain - Roman, Saxon, Tudor - were not, in such form, part of Americanhistory. Instead, the Revolution was seen as the glorious beginningof Ameri-can society, and Revolutionary homes and monuments would inculcate po-litical virtues. This point in time extended both backward to the pilgrimsandquickly forward to take in the earliest structures n settlements that stretchedacross the continent. Clearly, what is historic in Los Angeles is relativelycom-monplace in Boston. For this reason, the United States has been more will-ing to plumbthe recentpast, includingthe commercialpast: earlyMcDonald'shamburger stands are seen as structures worth preserving. Thus, while em-phasizing the social-structural and social-psychological elements of preser-vation, we must give proper credit to the evidence of history. This evidence,however, never stands alone, but requiressymbolic interpretation(Csikszent-mihalyi and Rochberg-Halton, 1981).

The Social Mapping of TerritoryIf Britain early achieved a major centralized organization, it is partlybecause local elites were more nearly a unified ruling class than those found

in America, whose influence was more purelylocal or at most regional (Mills,1967). The British were more closely connected, both socially and territori-ally, in an age when modern communication and transportation networkswere not yet fully achieved. This closer connection clearlyfacilitatedthe rapid


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100 Barthelformation of a national organization, whose interests transcended those ofany specific locality.

In choosing major sites for preservation, he BritishTrust currently akesinto account its relative distribution across counties. Thus, for example,Wimpole Hall was accepted for preservation not simply because of its evi-dent historic and architecturalsignificance, but also because Cambridgeshiredid not have a major country house on the National Trust list. In the UnitedStates, similarly, the National Trust operates regional offices and regularlyreports on regional activities. As a clearing house, it manages to bind togetherthe once diffuse local efforts through the sharing of information.Physical structure and social structure also come together in fights overturf. Newsom (1983) has detailed how Georgetown, now a major preser-vation enclave, was as late as 1930 a neighborhood with a black populationof greater than 400/o.Repeatedly, it has been the case that when an area isconsidered ripe or preservation, it is also ripe or gentrification and fora major change in residents from working-class minorities to middle- andupper-class whites (Barthel, 1979). In other instances, preservation of oldstructures conflicts with the possibility of new jobs in construction and in-dustry. Trust officers and staff, aware of such divisive conflicts involvingclass and territory, have developed programs such as the Inner City Ven-

turesthat seekto enablethe working class to both restoreand remainin histor-ic neighborhoods. Nonetheless, in many cases, different economic interestsare involved as preservation attempts develop into territorial disputes.

Cultural ConsciousnessSocial mappinginvolves more than the presenceof structuresdistributedover territory. It also involves preservationists' perceptions of their history,its significance, and their own role as its guardians. History, impossible tograsp in its full complexity, is more easily assimilatedas myth (Barthes, 1973;Durand, 1981). Thus the early British preservationists were influenced bythe widely current idea, propagated not just by Burke and Cobbett, but byColeridge, Ruskin, and Scott, among others, that the MiddleAges representeda period of heroic nobility and organic solidarity. They joined others in look-ing back to a preindustrial golden age (Williams, 1973).In this mythology, the Lake District symbolized, as perhaps no otherpiece of British landscape does, a distilled vision of the preindustrial ruralidyll. In this idyll, social relations take their character from the landscape,creating a yeoman sturdiness. Hard work and often cruel weather broughta special beatitude to the farmers and their families not to be found in themore modern world. Thus it appeared both natural and right that when therailroad, the harbingerof the industrialorder, threatened to cut right through


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Historic Preservation 101this sacred vale, social activists joined together in its defense, sparking thefoundation of the National Trust and inspiring other efforts. The golden-age image of preindustrial natural and social harmony is further and morewidely reinforced through the magnificent country homes and their surround-ing parks and landscape. The image provided reinforces that of Britain as agreen and pleasant and, with the past appearinga particularly iceplaceto visit.In the United States, the first wave of preservation contributed to alarger effort at creating an appropriate political mythology for a peoplewithout king or crown. The early emphasis on patriotic sites as inspirationfor preservation must be seen as part of a wider, middle 19th-centuryfasci-nation with the revolutionary era and the nation's founding. Some of thisfervor must be traced to the political convulsions of the pre- and post-CivilWar period, to the effort to recapture the unity of those early days of na-tionhood. Some of it derives from the changing socioeconomic order, as newimmigrants arrived and had to be assimilated. Older arrivals themselves werebeing drawn from ruralvillages and towns to the expandingcities and towardthe frontier, while the quality of life also changed dramaticallyfor those whoremained in the small towns and villages of the Eastern seaboard. For allthese reasons, then, the preservationist crusade in America early assumeda didactic posture more directed toward inculcating political virtue ratherthan, as in GreatBritain, encouraging aesthetic appreciation or moody reflec-tion on nature.The second wave of preservation also reflected underlying structuraldislocations. Historians have described the period surrounding the turn ofthe centuryas a great transition, duringwhich American society moved fromone set of values, associated primarilywith local, rural communities (for ex-ample, religion, kinship, tradition) to those values associated with modern,urban society (business competitiveness, social and geographic mobility, anemphasis on innovation and social change). A transition of such magnitudeneeded to be integrated into the mythic understandings Americans sharedof their history and national purpose. Preservation became partof this myth-making process, as Americans began to construct ritualized presentationsof their preindustrial past. These presentations served to confirm the superi-ority of the present: of capitalism, progress, and the American way of life.Both Ford and Wells were seeking to resolve the tension between themyth of the independent American individualist of the past-the nobleyeoman-and the present they had helped create, which made this fictionan anachronism (Hofstadter, 1955; Smith, 1950). Even today, touristbrochures promise visitors to Sturbridgethat they will see up close how lifein New England used to be, in the days when most families still earned theirlivings from tilling the soil, when picturesque villages were just beginningto dot the landscape, and when strong individuals like Emerson, Thoreau,and Daniel Webster seemed to stand as tall as New England's rugged hills.


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102 BarthelIn restoring Williamsburg, Goodwin's stated motives involved retain-ing more than the buildings: he also hoped the restoration might recapture

the spirit of the past. Rockefeller, however, appears to have been motivat-ed by a more aesthetic vision of a harmonious social whole, one which, ofcourse, excluded the slave cabins and the auction block in the square (Karp,1981). At least one historian has remarked on the irony of Rockfeller money,which, in its corporate guise of Standard Oil Company, helped destroy theold America through the popularization of the automobile and the tearingdown of old structures,now saving Williamsburgfrom these very forces(Greiff, 1971:7).If Great Britain looks back to a golden age that existed before classtensions were a recognized social fact and openly divisive force, the UnitedStates also had a golden age, its own agrarian paradise of equality, socialharmony, and civic order (Jackson, 1980). Colonial, frontier, and ethnic vil-lages provide the stage set for this American saga, the story of men and wom-en in a free society. Through this process, the truly old and the newlyre-created become hopelessly confused in the public imagination. Genuinehistoric villages, such as Iowa's Amana Colonies, have their histories dilut-ed into mythic representations (Barthel, 1984). History is not presented ascomplex and contradictory, but as the nation's blissful childhood, which hasled, necessarily, toward the more developed, if less pleasant, society oftoday.

CONCLUSIONThus, while preservationists today present themselves as guardians ofthe past, they are also involved in shaping the future. Through selectivelycommunicating the past, they in some measure control the present. They

shape the social identity of places and people through the process of socialmapping so integral to their enterprise. When an American Trust officialstates, in a personal interview, that, Inthe end, we all realize it's a questionof values, he recognizes the interpretative quality of preservation and itsfunction within the nation's symbolic order. This examination of preserva-tion in these two societies thus reveals how physical structures do not standsimply as things in themselves, as architecture undemanding of interpreta-tion. Rather, preservation involved from its origins the critical act of sym-bolic interpretation, as structures were valued, by identifiable status groups,for their aesthetic, political, socioeconomic, cultural, and above all didacticsignificance. Both the United States and Great Britain allowed for consider-able participationby citizens, althoughthis participation ook different forms.Further research should reveal significant differences in societies such asFrance, in which the governmentwas involved earlier and controls the preser-


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Historic Preservation 103vation process to a far greaterextent. Case studies should follow, examiningthe role of specific class and status alliances in preservation campaigns. Thecomparative analysis undertaken here demonstrates how preservation sym-bols and goals in each society reflect the interaction of class structure withthe process of social mapping, involving physical structures, territoriality,and cultural consciousness. Such factors must be considered if we are tounderstand how preservation emergedas a societally specific response to thebroader structuralreadjustmentsof industrialization and its significance forcontemporary society.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTSFor comments on an earlier version, I would like to thank DavidBouchier, Nancy Kleniewski, and Ken Plummer. I would also like to thankthe Department of Sociology, Essex University, and the Martin Centre forArchitectural and Urban Studies, CambridgeUniversity, for facilitating thisresearch.

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104 BarthelDellheim, Charles1982 The Face of the Past: The Preservationof the Medieval Inheritance in Victori-an England. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.DiMaggio, Paul1982 Cultural entrepreneurship innineteenth-century Boston: The crea-tion of an organizational base for highculture in America. Media, Cultureand Society 4:33-50.Donzelot, Jacques1979 The Policing of Families. RobertHurley, tr. New York: Pantheon.Douglas, Ann1977 The Feminizationof American Culture.New York: Knopf.Durand, Gilbert1981 Le social et le mythique: Pour une to-pique sociologique. Cahiers interna-tionaux de Sociologie 71:289-307.Fedden, Robin1968 The Continuing Purpose: A History ofthe National Trust, Its Aims and Work.London: Longmans.Fitch, James Marston1982 Historic Preservation: CurationalManagement of the Built World. NewYork: McGraw-Hill.Gans, Herbert1974 Popular Culture and High Culture:AnAnalysis and Evaluation of Taste. NewYork: Basic Books.Granta,Cesar1971 Fact and Symbol: Essays in the Sociol-ogy of Art and Literature. New York:Oxford.Greiff, Constance M., ed.1971 Lost America: From the Atlantic to theMississippi. Princeton, NJ: The PynePress.Hays, Samuel1957 The Response to Industrialism1885-1914. Chicago: University ofChicago Press.Hobsbawm, Eric and Terence Ranger, eds.1983 The Inventionof Tradition.Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.Hofstadter, Richard1955 The Age of Reform. New York: Ran-

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