• About

Citiography

~ Cities: How They Work, or Don't

Citiography

Category Archives: historic preservation

Abandonment, Authenticity, and Transgressive Placemaking

30 Thursday May 2013

Posted by Kelly Bennett in cities, historic preservation, incremental change

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Abandoned, Authenticity, Night Heron, Placemaking, Preservation, Riff, Transgressive Placemaking

Image

Photo by Yoni Brook via The Night Heron

When people talk about how a city is “real,” they’re talking about the parts that make it a little dangerous. Places that have been abandoned, whether by rules or by people. Times Square before Disney. West Chelsea before the High Line. Hell, the High Line before the High Line. Authenticity is at the center of conversations within historic preservation, urban development, and placemaking. We want our places real, but not too real. Especially not if we have to live there. But if we don’t use a place — really live in it — we get ruins at best and lost history at worst. Is that enough? Do we need abandonment for authenticity?

A city’s lifecycle includes a certain amount of abandonment. A building outlives its usefulness, a factory closes, a tenant moves out. Abandonment may not be so deliberate as it is a disconnect between timing and value. It doesn’t make sense at this particular point in time, for this particular cost, to use this building. Even Ellis Island was abandoned.

Abandoned Ellis

NPS Photos – Ellis Island Before and After Restoration.

EllisgreathalltodayNPSphoto

The Tenement Museum, in New York City, sits between restoration and abandonment. The detail I remember best is the portrait of FDR on the wall of one of the apartments. It hung there through the Great Depression and for another 50 years after its owners moved out. With too many fires destroying buildings’ only route of escape, New York City updated its codes to outlaw wooden staircases. The landlord couldn’t afford to put in metal stairs, so the building sat empty until it was rediscovered, now a time capsule. The museum has since restored several of the apartments, telling the personal stories of the families who lived there. They’ve also kept some apartments as stabilized ruins, just as they were when the museum founders discovered the mothballed building. Bare wood, cracked plaster, peeling wallpaper, closer to authentic. Closer to abandoned.

Our experience and perception of public space, history, and abandonment has been changed by photography and the internet. There are Facebook pages dedicated to old photos of places past their prime. Urban spelunking photography is now its own genre, museum exhibits and all. You can even take tours of abandoned places, some more dangerous than others. It’s turned into its own industry in some places. We can see the process of decay and we must really like it. By sharing images of abandoned places, are we making them public again? Taking ownership of them? 

At the intersection of abandonment, urban spelunking, and public art, is the Wanderlust School of Transgressive Placemaking. Their most recent project was a complete reimagining of public space — a speakeasy inside a water tower atop an abandoned building in Manhattan. There was a band. There were drinks. The bar, tables, and chandelier were made of piano parts. Your ticket was a pocket watch that only a friend who had been their previously could give you. Just read Dan Glass’s story about it in The Atlantic Cities. A closely related group, Wanderlust Projects, led an exploration of Brooklyn’s abandoned Domino Sugar factory and held a jazz show in an abandoned Pennsylvania honeymoon resort. Now they’re starting a series of talks on urban exploring and remaking invisible places. Is this the next wave of public art? Adaptive reuse? Temporary preservation? Whatever it is, I want more.

Photo by Yoni Brook via The Night Heron

Photo by Yoni Brook via The Night Heron

 

Advertisement

Thirty Years Later, Nostalgia for Caldor

20 Monday May 2013

Posted by Kelly Bennett in cities, historic preservation

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

history, nostalgia, photography, snapshots

Image

Photos by richie 59 via Flickr

I’m not sure who took these snapshots, but I’m glad they did. They’re scenes from around the town I grew up, Kingston, NY, around the time I grew up, the late ’70s and early ’80s.

They’re nothing special. Strip malls, parking lots, old cars. Seriously though, who would pose for a photo in a mall parking lot? But, the thing is, these are kind of special. I’m pretty sure Caldor doesn’t exist anymore. I know that hair style doesn’t exist anymore. Is that what makes these valuable? Worthy of nostalgia? A friend from high school recently posted these on Facebook and the verdict was resounding: these photos are awesome!

This probably doesn’t mean anything for our cities. I doubt anyone is going to try to save a big box store anytime soon. First of all, they’re not built to last that long and, second, they’re so mass produced and ubiquitous that they couldn’t possibly matter to anyone. Except me and my friends in Kingston. We apparently have a soft spot for the strip malls of our youth.

ImageImageImageImage

Expand the Federal Historic Preservation Tax Credit To Stimulate Jobs

07 Wednesday Sep 2011

Posted by Kelly Bennett in cities, decline, historic preservation, Jobs, taxes

≈ Leave a comment

Michigan Central Station, Detroit, 2011

Thursday night, President Obama is giving his big jobs speech. I doubt we’ll get any new programs or policy changes with the current state of Congress, but I want to float the idea of expanding the federal historic preservation tax credit program as a job creator. I outlined in an earlier post how this type of program helps local economies. This is an idea I’ve been working on since 2009, when I tried to get North Carolina’s historic preservation commissions to work on their representatives and senators to consider this strategy. Senator Richard Burr, a Republican who happens to live in my city of Winston-Salem, was the only one that seemed interested, but nothing got off the ground.

Here’s some background on how the program works: As it stands now,  the Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credit gives a 20% federal tax credit for rehabilitation work on income-producing properties within National Register Historic Districts and landmark properties.  While this sounds like a limited group of buildings and neighborhoods, it is actually quite broad — there are more than 13,600 of these districts in the nation.  My state of North Carolina has 400 national register districts which include thousands of individual buildings.

The tax credit program could be changed in several ways that could stimulate the economy. Here’s a start:

1. Easily the most far-reaching change would be to expand the tax credit from exclusively income-producing properties to also include all residential properties. The vast majority of historic buildings are houses and this could encourage investment in older neighborhoods, particularly the rehabilitation of foreclosed properties. This idea is part of H.R. 2555, which is in committee, but here are some more ideas:

2. The amount of the tax credit could be raised. North Carolina has a state tax credit in addition to the federal program and is very successful. A 40% tax credit on income producing properties and 30% credit for non-income-producing properties, like residences, might inspire a great deal of investment in the rest of the country as it has in North Carolina.

3. The floor for the minimum spent on a project could be lowered. Right now, a person must spend at least $25,000 on a rehabilitation project in order to qualify for the tax credit. Lowering that amount would encourage some smaller renovations by people that can’t afford a wholesale renovation.

4. There is another element of the program that allows a 10% credit to rehabilitation of “older buildings,” currently defined as those built before 1936. If this definition was changed to allow buildings “fifty years old or older,” a number of properties would be included in the program that would not be otherwise.

5. Lastly, it’s difficult for non-profit organizations to take advantage of the tax credit program since they don’t technically have an income. There are a number of non-profit organizations involved in housing issues that would benefit by being included in this program.

Dear Missouri, Please Don’t Cut Your Historic Preservation Tax Credits

07 Wednesday Sep 2011

Posted by Kelly Bennett in cities, historic preservation, Jobs, taxes, urban planning

≈ 3 Comments

Anheuser-Busch Brewery, Saint Louis

Missouri, I know you’ve been walloped by decades of deindustrialization and now the Great Recession. You’re being forced to make some terrible choices when it comes to your state budget. On the chopping block is your historic preservation tax credit. It may seem trite to cry for the potential loss of this program. I mean, shouldn’t you be spending taxpayer money on schools and roads and bridges? Yes, but hold on a second. You need to think this through. Where are your historic structures? In the middle of your cities! For the last 50 years, people have been abandoning your cities for the suburbs. In the meantime, you’ve had to build new roads, install new water and sewer lines, build new schools, and take care of this more spread-out infrastructure. Those buildings in the middle of your cities are worth keeping around. Worth investing in. They’re your history. They don’t make ’em like that anymore and it’s not going to be cheap to fix them. But it’s worth it. Here’s why:

1. Your state tax credit helps bring federal tax credits into Missouri. That’s 20% of the money spent rehabilitating National-Register-listed income-producing buildings and 10% for pre-1936 commercial buildings. That’s a lot of free money for your local economy. And, again, where are those old commercial buildings? Oh, right. In the middle of every city and town in your state. Besides that, your state tax credit can be used for residential buildings, too (federal tax credits are only for commercial buildings).

2. This is the only thing that’s going to put building contractors back to work. How many new subdivisions have you seen going up? Shiny new strip malls? Me, neither. That’s because nobody’s buying. You know what some people are doing, though? They’re picking up old historic houses and commercial buildings for a song and fixing them up. You want to keep that going?

3. Jobs in historic preservation are local. When your average developer rehabs a building (if he doesn’t tear it down to begin with), he uses contemporary products. Let’s take the windows, for example. Do you want the contractor to buy 25 vinyl windows for this historic building? Let’s not even take into consideration how bad that would look, since the windows won’t be the right size for the building and you can never paint them and they’ll only last 10 years. Would you rather have a man in China making those windows, or would you rather hire a craftsman from Missouri to rehang the windows, fix a few broken pains and reglaze them? I’m going with the guy that pays taxes in Missouri.

4. People are buying the neighborhood, not just the house. They want to be able to walk to a corner store, ride their bike, sit on a front porch. They want sidewalks and interesting architecture. They want places where people feel invested in the future. Places they can be proud of. Your historic neighborhoods are all those things. Developers don’t build neighborhoods like this anymore, so you’d better preserve the ones you have.

5. Your cities and town governments like these neighborhoods because they’re cheaper to serve. They don’t have cul de sacs; they have grid street patterns that are cheaper to plow in the winter, they don’t get traffic backups, and they’re close to existing fire houses, police precincts, and schools. Their water and sewer systems are under-capacity since neighborhood population is way off its peak. And since people have been investing in your downtowns for the last decade or so, hopefully these neighborhoods are closer to work for a lot of people, too.

6. Historic buildings are energy efficient. Well, they are when you take into account where they are. Historic buildings, like I said, are in the middle of your towns and cities. They require less driving for the people that live there because they’re closer to downtown and, well, each other. Transit systems serve them easier and people can walk to their destinations easier. And have you ever considered the energy it takes to tear down a building and construct a new one? Stuff them with insulation and fix the windows and they’re as good as anything you can build today.

7. These buildings are your icons. Did I mention these building are in the center of all your cities and towns? They’re what people think of when they talk about Missouri. They’re your past. They’re the reason people send postcards. They’re the reason people come to visit and decide they’ll stay. Don’t mess this up!

Archives

  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • November 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011

Categories

  • big picture
  • casinos
  • cities
  • decline
  • Detroit
  • economics
  • farms
  • gambling
  • geography
  • globalization
  • historic preservation
  • Housing
  • incremental change
  • Jobs
  • local food
  • Mobility
  • New York City
  • oil sands
  • parking lots
  • Photos
  • pollution
  • Renewable Energy
  • ruins
  • schools
  • sprawl
  • streetcars
  • tar sands
  • taxes
  • transit
  • transportation
  • urban planning

Facebook

Facebook

Twitter

  • RT @krassenstein: May 15th, 2018 is the #SinclairStrike. 1) Sinclair Broadcasting Employees call out sick 2) Sinclair viewers boycott the… 4 years ago
  • RT @justkelly_ok: Where are the indictments of individuals at USA Gymnastics and MSU who enabled and covered up this abuse for decades, as… 5 years ago
Follow @Citiography

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • Citiography
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Citiography
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...