Photo by Stop Climate Chaos Coalition on Flickr.

The church anti-preservation bill, first introduced and withdrawn by Jack Evans and then reintroduced by Marion Barry, will not be considered this year. Chairman Gray has decided not to proceed with the bill, designed primarily to get rid of Third Church, until after the Mayor’s Agent hearing now scheduled for November 25th.

After the hearing, the church will either win and get permission to tear down their building, or lose and have to keep it. If they win, then there will be no political reason to re-introduce the bill, and the church will drop their civil rights lawsuit. Both the bill and the lawsuit threaten to set bad precedent that could let other, more widely agreed-upon historic houses of worship tear down important historic buildings, even to create ugly surface parking lots.

If there’s ever an example of winning the battle and losing the war, this church fight is it. Winning the Mayor’s Agent hearing could be the worst thing to happen to preservation in a generation. I admire the strict preservationists’ fortitude in standing up for what they believe, but preservationists need to realize an important fact: preservation is a political movement.

For all the talk about how preservation retains even buildings that are unpopular (since tastes change), preservation got started saving buildings that were popular. Masses rose up unsuccessfully to save the old Penn Station, still New York City’s most deeply-felt loss. In historic neighborhoods like Cleveland Park and Dupont Circle, neighbors banded together to stop undesirable change. Our historic preservation laws came from the political force of many citizens dismayed at the changes happening around them.

Since then, the political climate has changed. Preservation’s zeal to protect the very same buildings that, when constructed, prompted preservation in the first place, doesn’t help. In Chevy Chase DC, two historic district opponents defeated pro-historic district candidates, one an incumbent. If I were a leader in the historic preservation movement, I’d be very worried that the movement is heading down the same route as the Virginia Republican Party: toward irrelevance in pursuit of ideological purity.

A political movement’s success depends on finding issues where undecided people agree with their side, and playing up those issues. Democrats want to talk about health care and education, where they know most Americans are on their side. Preservationists need to play up the areas where they enjoy broad support. And they’re working on education, organizing events to teach people about modernism, which is a good strategy.

In the case of the defeated Chevy Chase historic district, the loss seems part PR, part ideology. Neighbors who worried preservation might threaten their front-porch rocking horses didn’t help, and proponents could have done more to illustrate the damage from teardowns. And, as I’ve written, we should explore compromises involving an intermediate level of protection. Much as progressives might want universal single-payer health care, there’s wisdom in leaders’ approach to bite off one politically viable piece of the problem at a time.

Finally, the preservation movement needs to steer the headlines away from the controversial cases damaging to preservation’s reputation. When an individual unfamiliar with the nuances of preservation, as I was earlier this year, reads an article like Marc Fisher’s criticism of the church, they may not only conclude that this building should be torn down, but that the historic preservation movement is a bad idea altogether. Politicians are introducing overly broad legislation that will cause collateral damage in an effort to remove the church, and a court could very well issue a ruling against preservation that goes far beyond this little concrete box in a city with many concrete boxes.

Republican corruption and xenophobia has turned a generation of young people, minorities, and educated suburbanites toward the Democratic party, creating what could be a lasting coalition. Preservation had its coalition in the 1970s and 80s. With the failure in Chevy Chase, it’s clear that coalition is gone. I don’t want to see new residents similarly set their minds against preservation in all forms for a generation, simply for the sake of a few, widely reviled modern buildings.

David Alpert created Greater Greater Washington in 2008 and was its executive director until 2020. He formerly worked in tech and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco Bay, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He lives with his wife and two children in Dupont Circle.