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well, fwiw, the historic district movement started in Charleston in the early 1920s, and was sparked in part by a response to the incursion of gasoline service stations. And the movement in NYC was a multidecade effort (_Preserving New York_).

There are some good histories on the movement, some from the cultural studies perspective (e.g. the history of APVA, _Preserving the Old Dominion_ and _History of Urban Places_) and are very direct about the selective choosing of history to acknowledge as a way to create an acceptable narrative about culture, society, the upper class. (I haven't read about the history of the movement in Charleston, and I should.)

Yesterday I was reading the article in the NYT Sunday Magazine about the Aleppo codex, and the discussion of how Israel has focused on archeology in part as a way to define and shape the historical narrative of Jewish history, Mideast history, etc. and it's the same kind of imperative.

I have a post on this wrt the Kennedy Theater and I discuss what I call the nexus of architecture, place, and history (people) and how a lot of people have a hard time comprehending neighborhood preservation (discussed in the Hamer book cited above) vs. understanding and accepting the preservation of buildings and sites associated with "great people" and events.

- http://urbanplacesandspaces.blogspot.com/2005/11/who-can-you-turn-to-when-most-active.html

by Richard Layman on Aug 1, 2012 7:18 pm • link • report