When historic preservation—of buildings, neighborhoods, traditions—is just about the past, it can be hard to achieve. When it is part of the life of our own time, informed by the past and enlivened by common memory and emotional connection, there’s no stopping it. One of the dilemmas faced by preservationists is that buildings can be saved from neglect, imminent decay, and destruction, but unless they can be programmed in a meaningful way it is difficult to maintain them. Too many historic theaters, old churches, and other buildings are essentially empty.
There has to be a connection between these icons of the built environment and the life of the community, based on the emotional bonds that tie people to the place. When you manage to understand how a building or a neighborhood lives on or could live on in the character of the place, in the lives people live there now and the feelings that animate their lives every day, preservation makes more sense to everyone.