Comments on: Save the Giblets

By: Erik

Erik — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 21:10:09 +0000

Sure other places could the shot in the arm. But the government has limited resources to make that happen, although the National Park Service does what they can. I’m not saying all the choices are rationally better than many others people could choose. But they are all defensible.

And Americans have no shortage of ways of making use of the land around us. We do that all the time–through urban sprawl primarily but also through tearing things down and putting up other structures, often in regrettable ways such as in the bad old days of urban renewal. I don’t think Americans are restricted in most any way in reusing the land. I think we are far more restricted in actually preserving anything. And I think lists like these provide a tiny drop in the bucket for preserving something about the past; without them would any other organization or group of people step up in the name of preservation? It seems unlikely to me.

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 18:03:58 +0000

The problem is that the hangar in question is far away from other potential sites of relevance. So while a big site is appealing, it still has to be in one place.

No doubt Yankton could use a shot in the arm. But couldn’t almost anywhere use one (even if we weren’t in a crisis)? And doesn’t almost anywhere have buildings or landmarks which are of some historical meaning or importance? There’s a park not far from me where there are some remnants of old mill-dams whose vintage I’d loosely guess to be late 19th Century. I think you could do something very interesting around those fragmentary ruins to teach people how different the environmental and human landscape of only 100-150 years past in this region was. But there’s a lot of remnants and ruins like that–it’s hard to know where to stop and where to start, and in the meantime, there are other ways we live on and make use of the land around us.

By: Erik

Erik — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 16:46:34 +0000

I worked for Los Alamos National Laboratory for 3 years doing historic preservation. I really think that saving the buildings central to the dropping of the bomb is really important. There’s nothing to the buildings themselves to be sure. But they are also excellent chances at interpretation. As you mention, documents don’t speak for themselves and neither do buildings. But having those buildings provide templates for useful historical interpretation. I know that for several years the National Park Service and the relevant national laboratories have been in talks about creating a National Historic Site that would include these old buildings and be open on occasion for guided tours to the public. Without those buildings such interpretation would be nearly impossible.

More broadly, this nation saves so little that even if the motives behind saving certain buildings are on shaky ground, I don’t really care. It’s good to save what we can. But we should also integrate those saved buildings into economic development plans so that they are given some kind of interpretation and become tourist sites that pump some money into the local economy. The South Dakota insane asylum in Yankton for instance–Yankton could probably really use an economic shot in the arm.

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 11:49:56 +0000

Unity Temple is a no-brainer, absolutely. I think Miami Marine Stadium is similarly a pretty sound target for preservation, though that’s a case where it’s necessary to find some contemporaneous use for it.

By: Doug

Doug — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 09:50:07 +0000

You’re gonna save Giblets and not the Medium Lobster? Man, Faf’s gonna be pissed.

By: topometropolis

topometropolis — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 04:58:11 +0000

I agree that some of the Trust’s choices are a bit odd, especially, as you say, the hanger where they kept the Enola Gay. I mean, as a society we’re preserving the Enola Gay itself (it’s at the Smithsonian’s branch out by Dulles) and something as tangential as its old hanger hardly seems worth keeping, especially given the ambiguity, to say the least, of the Enola Gay itself. Me, I’d raise the hanger and try to forget…

On the other hand, one of their other choices is Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unity Temple in Oak Park, which seems like a fantastic building well worth keeping under your criteria 1 and 2.