Word: preservationism
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Trendiness goes only so far. Money talks. The mania for preservation has been propelled for the past decade by federal tax laws. Developers who rehabilitate historic buildings can get back 20% of their renovation costs in the form of income tax credits, as long as they put the buildings to...
Preservation has its indirect costs as well. The owners of protected landmark structures, prohibited from tearing down their buildings, are deprived of the potential profit of building something bigger or more commercially successful. Thus Preservationist Fitch suggests that governments subsidize owners "who are unfortunate enough to own properties of significance...
Preservation can set up a self-destructive cycle. When a historic neighborhood is restored, it becomes desirable and prices go up, and when prices go up sufficiently, developers think dollars per square foot, high- rise, wrecking ball. They wind up selling the view of a historic district from a condominium...
Not every old building can be saved. Not every old building should be saved. Except for set pieces like fussy little Colonial Williamsburg or the elegant Upper East Side of Manhattan, cities should not remain stuck in time. As Charlestonians have learned, vitality depends on at least modest infusions of...
Yet the reflexive impulse to preserve everything, even the relatively new and banal, occasionally shows signs of getting out of hand. "People are just beginning to talk about ' '50s classics' now, which is a term that embraces some really appalling ticky-tack," says the British-born architectural historian Reyner Banham...