Memorializing without change? Hurricane Sandy at the World Trade Center

Posted on November 12, 2012 by cathy

Michael Arad’s “Reflecting Absence” fountain in the footprint of the North Tower at Ground Zero, New York. Photo: Kai Brinker (http://www.flickr.com/photos/kbrinker/6156711439/in/photostream/)

Was I the only one who noticed this? There was an eerie similarity between Michael Arad’s “Reflecting Absence” memorial in the footprint of the Twin Towers and the virally-circulating AP photo of seawater rushing into the foundations of new skyscrapers at the World Trade Center construction site during Hurricane Sandy’s storm surge last week. “Something powerful about this image,” one tweet noted. “Zeitgeist moment.”

John Minchillo’s photo for AP circulated virally during the height of the storm.

To my eye, the picture’s resonance came from the troubling layers of meaning and memory within the World Trade Center complex. The site reflects both the broadest extensions of American economic and technological power and the ways that that power has been spectacularly rebuked in recent years, both by those who have pushed back against the U.S.’s political and military presence in so many other parts of the world and–increasingly–by a planetary ecology saturated with the by-products of two hundred years of industrialism.

And yet we continue to build and rebuild, extending our reach outward and upward even as we’re also creating spectacular memorials to some of the most striking costs of our own power. Those parallel processes–commemorating without any real intention of changing direction–are what I see when I look at these two images together, and it makes me wonder, not for the first time, about how memorials can close off thought and memory as well as provoking them. Last week, it almost seemed to me that the hurricane itself was trying to underscore that point.

~ Cathy Stanton

“Don’t frack our history!” Using the past for environmental activism in northeastern Pennsylvania

Posted on September 28, 2012 by Jeff Robinson

Natural gas drilling in Dimock, Pennsylvania, near the author’s home

“I am from a small agrarian town in northeastern Pennsylvania – just south of Binghamton, New York and north of Scranton, Pennsylvania,” is what I told people in Boston when I first moved to New England to start graduate school in 2008. After all, with the exception of a few folks I serendipitously encountered from the area, Montrose, Pennsylvania remained a little dot on the map; a place completely off the periphery of the Massachusetts intelligentsia…or so I thought.

Montrose, the town where my family and many friends still reside, has begun to come up frequently in conversations about the burgeoning natural gas industry as debates over “fracking” (hydraulic fracturing, a controversial method of extracting natural gas by introducing pressurized fluids into rock layers) have intensified. The northern tier of Pennsylvania sits upon the Marcellus Shale, a rock formation that contains the rich natural gas reserves that many claim are needed for American energy development. Historians and social activists in my circle were not interested in the poor farmers that became millionaires with the flick of a pen; rather, they were intrigued with the dissenters and how these locals forged communities to fight powerful corporations in saving their land and their history. I looked no further than the New York Times to see various articles on people I knew personally filing lawsuits, “occupying the wells,” and also–in ways that are interesting to me as a public historian–using the past to challenge systems of exploitation and power. Continue reading →

Would you like a side of history with that? Toward a more holistic public history practice

Posted on September 12, 2012 by kate p

Removing invasive garlic mustard at the Ashley House, Sheffield, Massachusetts

Around the time that I took on my current position with The Trustees of Reservations, the organization made an internal change: our historic resources department became the cultural landscapes department, our historic resources staff the cultural resources staff. Why was this significant? Because unlike the previous title, which focused on properties with historic structures, any one of our 107 properties can now be looked at and interpreted as a cultural landscape and the scope of work is broadened tenfold.

The idea behind the change was consistent with what I had come to hold close to my heart: there is no firm line dividing human history and the natural history of the earth we live on. Landscapes that we view as “natural” or “ecological” are just as rich with a legacy of human intervention, meaning, and memory as those for which the buildings and artifacts remain as a more tangible reminder. Our “historical” properties often have ecological or environmental stories to share along with the human ones. The change in terminology acknowledged that identifying some properties as specifically historic created an unfortunate “silo-ing” effect between departments and may have hindered innovation.<!–more–>

After three years of holding this lens to our properties, I’m happy to stand back and see the difference it has made for our region’s programming. It has been exciting to see history bleeding into programs that previously would not have contained it.

For example, I love that we have begun referring to the historical antecedents of our Youth Conservation Corps programs in marketing materials, grants, staff training, and with the youth themselves. “Rooted in the spirit of the Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930s…” is how many of our descriptions of the program now start. We did not change the program into “a history program”– the teens spend most of their time working in parks, on farms and on trails around their communities–but by making the association with another moment in history, the program feels anchored in time and the staff and participants can feel connected through the spirit of service and hard work to those people of the past.

The change also illuminated another period in American history when money was scarce, work was hard to find, and people were struggling to make better lives; all experiences that most of our participants and their families are going through. For the team of youth that I work with in Holyoke, the connection is deepened by the fact that many of their projects takes place on Mt. Tom, a site shaped by a CCC crew in 1933. The Holyoke Youth Conservation Corps is in its seventh year of doing work projects on Mt. Tom but it is only within the last couple of years that we’ve made a direct link between the program and the people who had worked the land before them.

Japanese knotweed is incorporated into the garden plan at Naumkeag in Stockbridge, Massachusetts

The flip side, of course, is that we have begun to integrate other topics into the programming at our traditional historic sites. One example is a series of programs which use both our historic gardens and natural sites to educate visitors on the importance of native pollinators and train people to create landscapes that encourage their abundance. We are also looking into programming that would use our designed landscapes to highlight how some of the choices made by individuals in the past have impacted our ecosystems (for instance the introduction of decorative plants that turned out to be invasive species, like Japanese knotweed which is still cultivated at Naumkeag).

Overall, our efforts have focused on smaller-scale additions and shifts, not major program overhauls. When multiplied across sites, I believe these small infusions will strengthen our endeavors by intertwining heritage and ecology in an organic and meaningful way.

I feel empowered and energized by the breakdown of the invisible lines that denoted which properties and programs were “about history” and which were about other things. To me it is a natural extension of seeing beyond the walls of an historic home and into the surrounding landscape, but I also know that this mixing and mingling is strategic and supportive of the broad mission of The Trustees.

With this in mind, I’d be interested to hear others’ perspectives on interdisciplinary programming at historic sites:

Do you think that ecology programs hosted at historic sites enhance the visitor experience, or do they dilute the story of the place that we’re trying to tell?
When is it appropriate to add breadth and diversity to the subjects being covered at your site, and when does it become “mission-creep”?
At sites where little physical evidence of human intervention remains, how can we interpret the history in ways that are not too conceptual for visitors to engage with?
I work primarily with fusions of ecology, sustainability and cultural history – what other subject areas have made for successful interdisciplinary programming at your historic sites?

During this coming season I will continue to work with my colleagues, partners, and communities to add a little history here and there where I can, and to engage people on a variety of topics at all of our sites. I’m especially looking forward to gathering feedback from our visitors and participants and gauging the success of this new way of working.

~ Kate Preissler, Trustees of Reservations

Additional notes on images:

(1) The Ashley House and Bartholomew’s Cobble, A National Natural Landmark, are adjacent. For years we have provided information on the history of the Ashley House to visitors at the Cobble, but we have not integrated information on the ecological restoration work that we do at both sites, like the invasive garlic mustard removal seen here at the Ashley House.

(2) Our field staff spend countless hours removing invasive plants from our properties. But at Naumkeag, Japanese Knotweed is part of the historic garden plan and is therefore preserved and cultivated. Its presence in the designed historic landscape offers a great opportunity to inform visitors as to how aesthetic choices of the past have impacted our ecosystems today.

Preservation conversations: Looking for broader partnerships at the National Trust

Posted on August 7, 2012 by Priya Chhaya

There are two sides sides to historic preservation. On one side preservationists work to save places, using community character and history to enhance the quality of living through transportation, smart growth, and sustainability. On the other we are seen as obstructionist, the party of “no,” and a limiting factor to the development and modernization of what a community wants to accomplish.

So how do we change perceptions? As public historians we know the interpretive (and storytelling) technique of showing rather than telling. The more partnerships we build, the more projects that are successful, the more examples we have to sway perception.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation has been working hard to make those leaps and those connections. For example, late last year the Preservation Green Lab published The Greenest Building: Quantifying the Value of Building Reuse. Using models established by the sustainability community, the lab demonstrated that in most cases rehabbing an existing building is much better for the environment than building new.

But this isn’t just work that is happening on the national level. All around the country preservationists are making connections with developers, code enforcers, real estate agents–so the battles that are usually fought at the eleventh hour are addressed well before the demolition balls come anywhere near a historic property.

When I started at the National Trust six years ago, I understood the importance of being a jack-of-all trades. But the more time I spent in the preservation world, the more I saw how seeing both sides of the fight would help lead to a solution that is acceptable to both (or all) parties.

At the end of October the National Trust for Historic Preservation will be holding its annual conference in Spokane, Washington. As for many years, this is one of the opportunities for preservationists across the country to gather, network, and look for new solutions. The program this year attempts to go “Beyond Boundaries” and look at preservation from all angles. For example, at the start of each day is a “Conversation Starter” which links to the broader sessions that occur afterward.

You Say Wilderness, I Say Preservation! Good vs. Good on Public Lands and Beyond

The Wilderness Act passed the US Congress in 1964, the National Historic Preservation Act in 1966, both seeking to protect what is unique and precious to our nation. How could two such inspired and important acts come to be in conflict? How could wilderness protection come at the expense of heritage preservation? We will look at the interpretation and application of these acts from the vantage points of their supporters including examples from recent court cases. Yet, the debate raging here is only one of many that pits historic preservation against other worthwhile endeavors. This session offers an opportunity to begin exploring ways to resolve such conflicts for the good of both sides.

Telling Richer Stories of Place 

Plan to be inspired as stewards of some of our nation’s most complex and challenging sites tell how they are reaching beyond traditional preservation and interpretation practices to tell a more powerful story of heritage and place. We’ll look at Native American cultural sites where preservation is less about site and more about people; Japanese internment camps with difficult stories to tell and few remnants remaining; and sites where interpretation has changed dramatically over time as their managers seek to tell a fuller story. In the twenty-first century, historic sites stewards can no longer rely on traditional management models to sustain their sites and those seeking to protect and interpret diverse sites have few examples to guide them. This session is designed to bring many of those issues to the forefront and begin a dialog about where we go from here.

Beyond LEED: A Candid Conversation about Green Building Standards and Preservation

For years, the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) has overseen an unprecedented drive to make our nation’s buildings more energy efficient and lessen the environmental impacts of their construction and use. Concurrently, the preservation community has been investigating the energy and environmental benefits of historic buildings as well as retrofit strategies that can ensure that the reuse of an historic building is almost always as economically and environmentally advantageous as new construction. This session brings together USGBC officials and preservation specialists to consider how these initiatives might be more effectively aligned to achieve our common sustainability goals. A facilitated dialog will allow representatives of both USGBC and the preservation community to bring to the table their unique perspectives, constructive critiques, and useful proposals.

As you can see, the purpose of each of these sessions is to make connections and start conversations that will lead to solutions not only between often-opposed forces, but also within the preservation community writ large.

So what are some of the ways that we as public historians work to change perception? As preservationists? If you want more information about the National Preservation Conference which will take place October 31-November 3, 2012 in Spokane, WA visit the conference website.

~ Priya Chaya

History@Work

A public history commons sponsored by the National Council on Public History

Tag Archives: environment

Would you like a side of history with that? Toward a more holistic public history practice