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September 2007— Discovering Our Heritage
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Perhaps no more than a dozen buildings in the
world have achieved iconic status. Instantly recognizable
symbols of cities and nations, travel advertising makes intensive
use of them to suggest the allure of distant places: the Taj
Mahal for India, the Eiffel Tower for Paris, the Houses of
Parliament for London. One of the best-known is the Parthenon
of Athens. The temple of the virgin goddess Athene rises over
her city on the highest point of its citadel. Even half in
ruins, its image brings to mind not only Athens or even Greece,
but the whole intellectual and artistic achievement of the
classical world.
The Parthenon is so beautiful that it seems almost sacrilegious
to suggest that it owes some of its fame to its prominent
location in a large city. Even more is due to the no-expense-spared
policy followed by its builders. Except for the roof beams
and the iron clamps holding the stones together, the temple
is built wholly of marble - lustrous and long-wearing (until
modern air pollution came along), but arduously shaped by
hand to the perfect alignments and invisible curves that give
this most subtle of buildings its vitality. The Parthenon
was also decorated with an unusually large quantity of sculpture,
all of a quality that has never been surpassed. The cost -
much of it paid by the subject allies of Athens - was enormous.
Religious feeling and civic pride fused to build a triumphant
monument to the wealth and power of the Athenian democracy.
On the East Coast of Canada, and also in New England, there
are many houses of the shape traditionally called "saltbox",
with two stories in front and one behind, so that seen from
the sides the rearward slope of the gabled roofs is much longer
than the forward. Often highly attractive in its functional
elegance, timber-framed and clad, private not public, secular
not sacred, devoid of ornament, utterly unpretentious, a saltbox
house is about as unlike the Parthenon as any two buildings
could be.
Nonetheless, the two have something significant in common.
Both have been designated by authority as part of the architectural
heritage of their societies, and therefore worthy of preservation.They
are not alone. From scattered beginnings in the nineteenth
century, the movement to conserve the architecture of the
past gained momentum in the twentieth century. Often the destruction
of a major building such as Pennsylvania Station in New York
was instrumental in arousing public opinion. In recent decades,
conserving the national heritage has become official policy
in virtually all countries, though the policy's effectiveness
in practice varies greatly. Conservation is now a major factor
in the allocation of urban and rural space for human purposes.
Government departments, semi-autonomous official agencies,
and voluntary associations all prescribe rules and procedures,
publish guidebooks and practical suggestions, and above all,
prepare lists of buildings, sites and landscapes that cannot
be destroyed or altered without the sanction of authority,
if at all. The numbers so listed are astonishing. The National
Register of Historic Sites in the United States, although
founded only in 1966, now includes over 87,000 sites and grows
steadily.
As it does everywhere, this growth owes much to the expansion
in the concept of "heritage" itself. Once limited
to major public buildings, preferably several centuries old,
heritage now includes archaeological sites, significant landscapes,
industrial buildings, and anything that speaks of a distinctive
way of life or a particular historical period, even one within
living memory. It has even come to include wilderness areas
- although they are testimony to what people have spared rather
than what they have created - and cultural activities, if
considered sufficiently representative of a tradition. This
elasticity is why saltboxes have joined the Parthenon, along
with cave houses on the Loess Plateau of Northern China, Iron
Age rock carvings in Sweden, Easter Island statues, the palaces
of Russia's czars and the Alaska Steam Laundry in Juneau as
part of humanity's acknowledged heritage.
Merely reading the published lists is at once enlightening,
bewildering, and a chastening reminder of how much we all
have still to learn. Few if any readers can have heard of
all 821 places classified as World Heritage Sites by UNESCO,
but this super-list does give a good idea of the scope the
concept of heritage has achieved in our time. Inevitably,
UNESCO's coverage is uneven, influenced by the level of a
member nation's commitment to its heritage and also by contemporary
politics. Thus Iraq, the oldest civilized country in the world,
has only three places on the list. Two of them have been listed
since 2003 and the sites of Babylon, Nineveh and Ur are not
included, although they are a significant part of the world's
heritage by any conceivable standard. But UNESCO makes a praiseworthy
attempt to be comprehensive while maintaining standards, and
sooner or later time will fill the gaps.
Perhaps more impressive than any list is the universal support
for the idea of heritage. It has acquired the enviable status
colloquially called "motherhood". Like peace and
democracy, no-one is against the preservation of the human
heritage in principle, however much they may object to specific
instances of it. This is a radical change. Heritage conservation
is one of the revolutions shaping the modern world. For most
of history, the idea that buildings should be preserved simply
because they stood for something significant in the human
past would have seemed bizarre. Buildings were often for use,
sometimes for status, but were not seen as witnesses to the
past. They preserved themselves if they were preserved at
all. Substantial structures of stone or brick survived a long
time, often for centuries, but they usually did so because
it was much easier to adapt them to new uses than to replace
them from the ground up. A small minority might survive a
very long time because their function or their historic associations
gave them a sacred quality. Even then, a successful ruler
might easily decide that a deity would be happier or a saint
more honoured with a bigger and better temple, tomb or church.
Threats to the survival even of strongly built structures
of course existed. Often the danger was not redevelopment
but recycling. Before the coming of railways, the cost of
transporting stone from quarry to building site might be as
much as a third or even a half of the total cost. This is
why Greek temples and medieval castles have become sheepfolds
and field walls. The Coliseum in Rome is partly ruined today,
not because of the Goths or the Vandals but because successive
popes used it as a highly convenient quarry. The major reasons
for new building, however, were fires, along with warfare,
natural disasters and sheer decrepitude from the passage of
time. These were not frequent enough to generate any sense
that the past was vanishing, and the new buildings usually
looked much like the old ones in any case.
So striking a change in human attitudes toward the past raises
questions, especially when, paradoxically, the new orthodoxy
is concerned with preserving the past itself. What does "heritage"
mean? How is the concept evolving? What in practice can or
should we do about it? How much of the past should be preserved?
Is the concept threatened by its own success? In particular,
how far can preservation and the public's right to access
be reconciled? Who should pay the often substantial costs,
especially the opportunity costs? Finally, what has brought
about this revolution in the way we see what the past has
left us?
On one level the meaning of heritage is simple enough. Leaving
unspoiled nature aside for the moment, our heritage is everything
surviving from the labours of past generations: fields and
cities, roads and houses, temples and palaces, and the cultural
inheritance we acquire by teaching and example. However, our
heritage is both more and less than everything the past has
left us. Less, because it is obvious, though seldom said explicitly,
that it is neither possible nor desirable to conserve everything
we have inherited. Apart from the sheer impracticality of
doing so, our generation needs room to make our own contribution
to the human story. It is more, because it is accepted that
we should conserve only things that have a value or a meaning
that makes them especially significant. Deciding what such
values or meanings may be is the indispensable first step
in any coherent conservation program.
Three broad criteria have been used to decide these questions.
They are not mutually exclusive, but they can be distinguished
in principle: aesthetic value; historical documentation; and
group identity. A building, an urban district or a landscape
is worth preserving if it is beautiful or picturesque; if
it documents significant historic events or periods, including
styles of architecture; and if it represents a society's concept
of its own past or national character. All these are subjective
to a greater or lesser degree. Architectural history is perhaps
the least subjective, since architectural historians usually
agree on assigning buildings to a period or style. Aesthetic
qualities, however, are something else again.
Reading the mandates or mission statements of conservation
agencies today, it is noteworthy that aesthetic values, which
would have seemed paramount to many founders of the heritage
movement, are usually only one item on a list, if they are
included at all. This is wise. Almost everyone agrees that
some buildings are beautiful and some are not, but assigning
any one building to these categories is subject both to individual
taste - witness the sharply varying reactions to the angular
glass-clad museums of the 21st century - and to violent reversals
in fashion. A hundred and fifty years ago the English art
historian John Ruskin, enormously influential in his time,
could pronounce that the "Early English" form of
Gothic was not only aesthetically but morally superior to
its Decorated and Perpendicular successors. Churches in the
Early English style duly rose all over the English-speaking
world, only to find themselves, along with the whole range
of "Victorian" styles, as thoroughly out of fashion
as they could possibly be. Anyone with any claim to sophistication
in the 1920s thought Victorian buildings derivative at best
and hideously ugly at worst. The classical restraint of Georgian
buildings or the audacious minimalism of the "Modern"
style reigned supreme.
Again, a reaction followed. A new generation discovered that
Victorian styles were vigorous, creative, exuberant and a
host of other good things. Such masterpieces as Victoria Terminus
in Bombay or Keble College in Oxford suddenly stopped being
eyesores and were admired for the undeniable gusto of their
architecture and the craftsmanship of their decoration. Decoration
began to creep back in new building, along with echoes of
Classical, Gothic and Baroque, as people noticed that the
Modern style had made cities everywhere look remarkably alike.
Nor is architecture alone in these upheavals. Even styles
in landscapes change. Mountain ranges were considered barren
wastelands in the 18th century (the poet Thomas Gray pulled
down the blinds of his carriage so that he would not have
to see the Alps). A century later, the same mountains inspired
thoughts of aspiration, heroism and even divinity. Today,
travellers are simply grateful for a landscape without hydro
lines or a housing development that looks exactly like where
they live themselves.
In a word, aesthetic values have proven to be the most shifting
of shifting sands. The idea that one architectural style is
inherently superior to any other now seems indefensible. This
may help us to enjoy more buildings but is little use in deciding
which buildings posterity will thank us for preserving. History
and identity appear to offer firmer ground, but they too are
subject to change and worse, to conflict. To the 19th-century
pioneers of architectural conservation, it seemed self-evident
that cathedrals and palaces were worth conserving but barns
and cottages were not. This was consistent with the writing
of history at the time, still largely devoted to kings and
battles. As the concept of history broadened to include social,
economic, and cultural change, and ultimately the daily lives
of "ordinary people", the buildings in which such
people had lived and worked took on new meaning. This was
especially true in countries newly settled by Europeans, where
cathedrals and palaces were often nothing like their 'old-country'
predecessors. This shift has contributed to the expansion
of the heritage concept already mentioned, enormously increasing
the range of potentially conservation-worthy buildings.
Of the three criteria, identity heritage is for good or ill,
by far the most emotionally charged. During World War II the
British Government actively promoted an image of England consisting
of picturesque villages, complete with church, manor house,
village green and meadows full of sheep. This image had only
minimal relation to reality. Not one English person in twenty
lived in a village, picturesque or otherwise. It did not matter.
The image gave the English an idea of what they were fighting
for, in sharp contrast to the repellent vision of an urban
and industrialized Germany, full of poisonous fumes, clanging
machines and jackbooted police.
This was a highly successful use of heritage for the creation
of identity. It has had many imitators. In some countries
governments use the image of historic buildings to reinforce
a fragile sense of national identity. In democratic countries
it has long been realized that heritage creates identity and
that identity can sway both voters and shoppers. Politicians
are photographed in front of buildings that suggest a simpler,
quieter life. Travel brochures, if not simply selling sun
and sand, create a world with few cities and no suburbs, consisting
of picturesque buildings, attractive landscapes and the occasional
cathedral or palace. Trouble, of course, begins when the same
building or landscape suggests different things to different
groups, but here too times can change. The Georgian mansions
and pseudo-medieval castles of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy
were symbols of oppression in the newly independent Irish
Republic. Many were torched in the troubles of the early 1920s
and many more subsequently fell into decay. As the memory
of subjection became less acute, the elegance of the Irish
Georgian design style came to be seen as a valuable part of
the national heritage. The nineteenth-century "castles"
have been pressed into service by Ireland's flourishing tourist
industry, their past tactfully forgotten. A similar change
of heart has led to the restoration of the walled mansions
of China's scholar-gentry, once threatened with obliteration
by the Cultural Revolution.
Faced with these difficulties, governments tend to make choices
through a process with three components. They begin with officially
mandated standards, usually drafted in highly general language,
of which Parks Canada's is a good example:
"Heritage value: the aesthetic, historic, scientific,
cultural, social or spiritual importance or significance [of
a place] for past, present or future generations".
This is nothing if not comprehensive. Aesthetics have reappeared,
and "spiritual" adds a whole new dimension at which
more firmly secular countries might balk. When it is time
to apply such high-level definitions to individual cases,
governments rely on the advice of experts - architects, historians,
scientists and archaeologists - and increasingly, on public
or "community" opinion, marshalled through a consultative
process and intended to include both any individuals directly
affected and volunteer groups active in the field.
This threefold formula of standards, expertise and consultation
is not a perfect solution. Its complexity can make it difficult
to cope with the emergency situations that frequently arise.
Like much of modern government, the process gives perhaps
undue power to pressure groups in the name of community involvement.
And while it dilutes the subjectivity inherent in making value
judgments, neither this nor any imaginable process can eliminate
it. Even experts are human, and all of us in some degree are
prisoners of the values and attitudes of our own time. In
practice the decision is often made by events, when an arguably
significant building or site is threatened with demolition
or development. But it is hard to think of a better method.
The threefold process certainly brings much more historical
fact and informed opinion to bear, and public involvement
does reduce the risk of behind-the-scenes manoeuvres in situations
where large sums of money may be at stake.
So far the words "conservation" and "preservation"
have been used in this letter as if they were synonymous,
but in today's usage, preservation - maintaining the physical
integrity of a building or site - is simply one form of conservation.
Rehabilitation, more ambitious, attempts to make a building
useful while preserving its heritage value - a goal that presents
some tricky problems in practice. More ambitious still is
restoration, returning a building to its appearance at a given
point in the past.
Such a goal poses problems for any building that has been
in use for a considerable period. First, what point of the
building's history is to be chosen for restoration? As has
been seen, we no longer believe in the superiority of "classical"
periods, but all restoration must, to some degree, reflect
the values held at the time the restoration is made. There
is a danger of falsifying the buildings as historical documents
for the sake of what may prove to be a passing fashion or
ideology. As an example, consider the Pantheon in Rome. Built
by the Emperor Hadrian (117-135 CE), it is the oldest intact
monumental building in Europe and one of the most remarkable
of all time. In the 7th century it was converted into a church
and still is one. In the 19th century the kings of Italy,
a little presumptuously, decided to be buried there and their
tombs still remain. Both church and tombs would be a great
surprise to Hadrian, but no one suggests removing them in
the name of "restoration". To do so would be to
rewrite history rather than explain it.
Restoration remains popular all the same, and so does complete
reconstruction, such as was undertaken at the Cape Breton
Fortress of Louisbourg. Both arguably enhance the educational
value of historic places. They certainly increase the value
of sites as tourist attractions, drawing people who would
be baffled by acres of dusty ruins. Some, unwilling to rely
on their visitors' imaginations, even use actors to represent
the people who once lived in them. And in some contexts these
rebuildings may, like heritage in general, serve to strengthen
a sense of group identity rooted in a shared past.
Unfortunately, both restoration and reconstruction can also
serve personal and political agendas. Sir Arthur Evans, excavator
of the Palace of Minos at Knossos, was so proud of his achievement
(and so well off) that he rebuilt much of the palace at his
own expense, probably adding several stories that King Minos
never saw. The Mexican government in the decades after the
Revolution (which ended in 1920) was deeply committed to promoting
Mexico's pre-Columban past as a touchstone of national identity.
Large sums were spent restoring temples and pyramids, possibly
not always accurately but with great benefit to Mexico's tourist
industry as well as its national pride. More dubiously, the
late Saddam Hussein not only began to restore Babylon itself,
but did so with bricks stamped "Saddam son of Nebuchadnezzar"
as if he were a Babylonian king. In case anyone missed the
point, visitors to the site were greeted with an enormous
billboard showing Saddam and Nebuchadnezzar side by side.
Another danger of restoration, perhaps especially in North
America, is a creeping Disneyfication, making the past seem
a much cleaner, tidier, and healthier place than it really
was. Such sanitized versions are one of the many issues created
by the link between conservation and tourism. Tourism has
certainly been a potent factor in making heritage conservation
popular and feasible, especially in the eyes of the official
bodies that have to foot its costs. It is also hard to criticize
in principle. Why preserve humanity's heritage if none of
humanity is to see it? But there are inescapable conflicts.
Few buildings smaller than a cathedral have room for hundreds
or even thousands of visitors at once. Many were not designed
for visitors at all. Busloads of tourists were the last thing
the architects of Egypt's tombs had in mind. Even in less
extreme cases the best-behaved tourists still cause wear and
tear. The famous painted caves at Lascaux in France had to
be closed because visitors were damaging them simply by breathing.
Nor are all tourists well-behaved. Stately homes have to be
cleared of anything portable or pocketable before being opened,
which gives them the "feel" of a museum rather than
a place where people have lived and often, are still living.
Most fundamental, and insoluble, is simple lack of space.
The historic section of Venice is a city of 70,000 people.
Built on islands, it can grow neither upwards nor outwards.
It also receives more than seven million visitors a year.
Not surprisingly, those not engaged in the tourist industry
- cooks, waiters, museum guides and the surviving gondoliers
- or in government and education have tended to move away.
In effect, the city is becoming a gorgeous cross between a
museum and a theme park. Even so, it is appallingly crowded
in high seasons of spring and fall, with litter and pollution
to match. Prices have risen with demand, as anyone ordering
a cup of coffee in Saint Mark's Square soon discovers. Hotel
charges are so high most visitors stay on the mainland or
come only for a day. Such a trend is fundamentally undemocratic.
Why should only the well-heeled be able to enjoy one of the
world's most magical sights? But the only possible alternative
is some form of rationing entrance. Many other famous sites
such as Stratford-upon-Avon in England, have the same problem,
where mass tourism is in danger of defeating its own purpose.
Whatever the answer may be, it is easy to foresee a time when
deciding who sees our heritage will be an even thornier question
than what our heritage is in the first place.
All the same, tourism has one overwhelmingly positive result.
It helps pay the bills. This is particularly true in Europe,
where countries typically find themselves with large numbers
of buildings, archaeological sites and landscapes that are
of indisputable heritage value but also expensive to protect,
maintain, and staff. That towering Gothic cathedrals are still
intact after eight hundred years or more is a tribute to their
builders, but many of them would not be standing without constant
maintenance by highly skilled workmen. Tourist spending and
contributions, along with often generous state funding, help
foot the massive bills, as well as helping hard-pressed aristocrats
to keep up their ancestral homes and cities to provide facilities
for the annual hordes. A possible partial answer to the problem
of overcrowding is the imposition of a "congestion charge"
like that recently created for central London traffic. Having
all comers pay equally, with the usual reductions for students
and senior citizens, could combine the principle of open access
with the need to pay for maintenance and to preserve the quality
of the visitors' experience.
Difficult though this question may be, it seems soluble when
placed beside the issue of opportunity costs. A building or
landscape which must remain substantially unaltered is not
available for other purposes. In particular, it cannot be
"developed" in the sense of intensifying the site's
use and increasing the income or capital value it provides.
If the site is in private ownership, this restriction often
means a substantial loss of potential wealth for the owner.
This will not trouble everyone. Developers are seldom popular
figures, especially when they are large corporations, and
for committed heritage conservationists they are the enemy
incarnate. But it is hard to see why a citizen should be allowed
to sell his home for development and pocket any capital gain
(free of tax in Canada, if the home is a "primary residence")
while his next-door neighbour cannot do this simply because
authority has classified his home as a heritage site. Arguably,
if society wants the neighbour's home preserved, society should
compensate the neighbour for his loss. The potentially enormous
costs of doing this, however, have so far kept this policy
largely in the realm of theory, although an owner faced with
expensive repairs and nineteenth-century plumbing may receive
tax breaks and sometimes direct grants for maintenance.
This is a complex and evolving area of law and practice.
There is arguably a moral difference between owners who may
have designation thrust upon them, and a developer who buys
a designated property in the hope of overturning the designation.
It is awareness of these issues that has made so many heritage
designations subject to judicial review, and in turn sometimes
- not always - makes judges or arbitrators sympathetic to
owners who in effect have had their property confiscated without
due process of law. Often the most important effect of the
heritage designation is to alert the public to a possible
heritage loss. Sometimes public opinion can induce developers
to propose compromise solutions, such as preserving a single
building or placing a nineteenth-century classical façade
on a twenty-first century building. But there is no clear-cut
solution in this policy area, certainly no cheap one, and
the present system - a kind of muddling through - is likely
to endure if only because more logical alternatives are politically
unviable.
In conclusion, what lies behind all this activity? Why have
so many people all over the world become deeply concerned
about the preservation of the legacies of the past?
Two motives have already been suggested. Firstly, that heritage
is a potent source of individual and group identity in a steadily
more homogeneous world. Like all symbols, heritage buildings,
cities and landscapes stand for something beyond themselves.
They sum up better than the most eloquent words what it is
to be an American, a Russian or a Mexican. They are a link
with the past in times of unsettlingly rapid change. In almost
every country, some have achieved an untouchable, even sacred
status. No-one is going to redevelop the site of St. Paul's
Cathedral in London or that of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo,
although their potential value would be colossal. More, such
is the human need for a sense of identity that often buildings
are rescued from oblivion and neglect because they can stand
for a glorious period or a cherished national trait.
The second is more practical. Heritage is big business. The
designation, conservation, operation and study of sites large
and small employs many highly skilled people, funded by government,
voluntary bodies and income from fees and sales. It is joined
at the hip to the travel and tourism industry, reputedly now
the largest industry in the world. Tourism can be a curse
as much as a blessing, but no government can ignore it and
most spend large sums promoting it. Tourists, by definition,
want to see something they cannot see at home, and the conservation
of heritage fits that bill perfectly.
Both these motives owe a great deal to a third, the spread
of education both formal and informal. Schools and universities
make their students aware of the past and of the existence
of distinct societies both past and present. Television reinforces
this with images of the world's wonders, both man-made and
natural. In doing so, they help individuals interpret their
own identity in terms of symbolic buildings and places. They
also arouse their curiosity about the wider world - along
with the need to escape from the daily grind, one of the fundamental
motives behind the mass tourism of our times.
The last motive is perhaps the most obvious, and also the
most fundamental. It is a cliché, but a true one, to
speak of the pace of change in our time. Most of us who are
past forty have had the experience of returning to a once
familiar place and being unable to recognize it. We are aware,
as earlier generations were not, that the past will not preserve
itself. If we value it, we must defend it against the pressures
we have ourselves created. Perhaps at a deeper level we are
also aware that we do not own the heritage of the past, but
are merely its trustees. We have a responsibility to future
generations to leave them as much as we can of the legacy
we have received. This is how we pay our debt to those who
gave us so rich a heritage.
***
Published by RBC Financial Group. All editions from the RBC
Letter collection are available on our web site at www.rbc.com/responsibility/letter.
Our e-mail address is: rbcletter@rbc.com.
Publié aussi en francais.
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