Preservation as guide for the future

Richard Moe, president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, came to campus last fall partly to see the Nott Memorial, partly to deliver an address on "Teaching by Example: The Importance of Campus Preservation."

Here are excerpts from his remarks:

Why is it important that buildings like the Nott Memorial be preserved?

It's important, first of all, because the buildings themselves are important.

To begin with, they're good to look at. If we agree with the old statement that architecture is frozen music, then we surely must agree that too many recent buildings are little more than Muzak. By contrast, this marvelous structure is a huge symphony orchestra playing at full blast-a composition so rich and bold and ingenious that we can only marvel at it.

The Nott Memorial, like historic buildings at many older colleges and universities around the United States, is the legacy of a time when buildings were designed to serve an important symbolic role. Victorian government buildings-courthouses and city halls and the like were intended to symbolize the awesome grandeur and solemn majesty of the law.

In the same spirit, buildings used for educational purposes schools and museums, for example-were meant to embody the nobility of learning. The form and design of the Nott Memorial convey, as the architect intended, the notion that education is an important thing, a weighty thing, a joyous and uplifting experience not to be undertaken lightly.

The fact that the Nott Memorial is well into its second century of service as the centerpiece of the Union campus is legitimate cause for celebration. The very survival of this building is something of a miracle, you see, when you consider that major chunks of the history of America's universities are lost every year. It's a sad fact that colleges and universities are not always the best stewards of the historic buildings they own and the historic communities in which they are located. That's particularly unfortunate-not only for those of us who care about old buildings and the preservation of our heritage, but also for all the students who come to a college in search of lessons about life and how to live it more abundantly.

Back in 1966, a group of people got together in an attempt to chart a new course for preservation in the United States. As some of you may remember, those were the dark days of interstate highway construction and so-called urban renewal, when landmark buildings-and entire neighborhoods, in some cases-were being ruthlessly swept away in our misguided pursuit of "progress." Against that backdrop of wrecking balls and rubble, these visionaries wrote a thoughtful prescription for the future:

"If the preservation movement is to be successful, it must go beyond saving bricks and mortar. It must go beyond saving occasional historic houses and opening museums. It must be more than a cult of antiquarians.

It must do more than revere a few precious national shrines. It must attempt to give a sense of orientation to our society, using structures and objects of the past to establish values of time and place."

[This is] ...one of the major lessons that any college should seek to convey to its students. A college isn't just about calculus and chemistry, elocution and economics. It's about making a meaningful contribution to the community, about maximizing one's potential to make a difference; it's about civilization and life.

And preservation isn't just about bricks and mortar, columns and cobblestones. It's about human values as well, about connections among people and connections between people and their environment.

When President Eliphalet Nott chose this elevated spot for Union's location, he made the college-intentionally or not-a paradigm of the biblical "city on a hill." Like any other landmark so prominently sited, Union College casts a very long shadow. What happens on this campus sends ripples-or convulsions through the commercial and residential neighborhoods that surround it. Stated in its simplest terms, the college's obligation is to be a responsible member of its community, which is particularly important when, as is often the case, the college is one of the biggest members of the community.

That's the sort of thing we should expect from an institution that is, by its very nature, both custodian and disseminator of the fundamental values on which our culture is founded. What else should we expect?

Identification is the first essential-step. If it hasn't already been done, a comprehensive survey needs to be undertaken to identify all college-owned properties that might be eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. Then the process of listing on both the national and state registers should be carried through to completion.

The next step is the development of a plan for protection of the college's historic resources. To be effective, this plan must be based on information gathered through exhaustive inspection of the buildings and grounds that pinpoints significant interior and exterior features and highlights elements in need of attention. Most important, the preservation plan must be integrated with the institution's master plan.

The purpose of this plan is not to "freeze" the college's historic buildings as static artifacts of the past, but rather to identify a means whereby they can continue to function both as dynamic educational facilities and as culturally significant community landmarks. The $2 million endowment for ongoing maintenance of this building is evidence of marvelous foresight on the part of Union College, and an excellent example for others to follow.

In saving old buildings and neighborhoods, we strengthen a partnership which makes for orderly growth and change in our communities: the perpetual partnership among the past, the present, and the future. It's a dynamic partnership. It recognizes that we cannot afford to live in the past, so it encourages each generation to build in its own style, to meet its own needs by taking advantage of the very best of contemporary thought and technology. But it also recognizes that we can't afford to reject the history, the culture, the traditions and values on which our lives and our futures are built.

When that partnership falls apart, when the connections between successive generations of Americans are broken, blank spaces open up in our understanding of the long process that made us who we are. History dissolves into myth, neither believable nor particularly useful, and values are eroded. But when it is allowed to work as it's supposed to, that partnership produces a healthy society with confidence, a sense of continuity, a sense of community.

Day-to-day contact with the past gives us confidence because it helps us know where we came from. It gives us a standard against which to measure ourselves and our accomplishments. And it confronts us with the realization-sometimes exhilarating, sometimes disturbing that we, too, will be held accountable, that future generations will look at our work as the standard by which to measure their own performance.

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