Building the Past

So many new buildings are rising across the nation that the volume of construction during the present decade will exceed everything built in America since the Revolutionary War. At the same time, more and more Americans are concerned that progress should not destroy America's heritage. From New Hampshire to Hawaii, New Orleans to Kodiak, Alaska, New York City to Ord, Neb., history hawks are fluttering against the wrecker's ball. Often their efforts are too little--but less and less are they too late.

They have found a champion in James Biddle, 38, new president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, whose office receives up to 15 "major" requests for help each week. They come from adversaries of imminent threats, such as a freeway that would desecrate the waterfront of New Orleans' Vieux Carre, and advocates of quixotic quests, such as preserving the Warrensburg, Mo., courthouse, where in 1870 George Graham Vest voiced his Eulogy to the Dog.*

"Everybody in the country has gone crazy about saving something," grins a happy member of Biddle's staff. Two Los Angeles burlesque houses want recognition as cultural monuments. Sheridan, Wyo., has saved Buffalo Bill's favorite saloon. Baltimore is trying to protect Babe Ruth's home. West Virginia would enshrine the father of Mother's Day. In Jackson, Tenn., Engineer Casey Jones's trackside bungalow is a museum. And Hartford, Conn., has a renovated stable proudly boasting: "George Washington's horse slept here."

Sod Reminder. Yet those who call this surge "hysterical preservation" cannot deny the worth of saving Washington's Georgetown, Annapolis' colonial waterfront, Alexander Hamilton's New York City home, Frank Lloyd Wright's Chicago houses, the Spanish architecture of Santa Fe, Seattle's Pioneer Square, Old Salem, N.C., or even the sod hut that was once a post office in Killdeer, N. Dak. From its Washington headquarters in Decatur House, Biddle's National Trust not only acts as catalyst for such projects but also runs nine landmarks of its own.

When Biddle took his newly created post this month, he brought along his expertise as curator of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art's American wing, and a patrician family's heritage. The Philadelphia Biddle clan's family seat--and James Biddle's boyhood home--is "Andalusia," the most celebrated example of Greek Revival architecture in the U.S. Off and flying, Biddle injected the national conscience into a battle over Hawaii's Diamond Head. Financier Chinn Ho's plan to develop apartments on the extinct volcano's seaward slope sparked an eruption of Hawaiian sentiment against the idea. Said Biddle: "There is a place for high-rise development, but must it be on the slopes of your greatest monument?" Now embattled preservationists have begun to sway the Honolulu city council against the rezoning plan.

Problem of Progress. Not only has Biddle's activism infused new ardor into efforts to save historic buildings, but by defending Diamond Head, he also has enlarged his agency's scope to cover natural resources. The Interior Department's Registry of Natural and Historic Landmarks (which can freeze a historic area from further development) and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development also are involved. HUD, often damned as an urban-renewal wrecker, last year channeled $1,500,000 into preserving the nation's heritage.

At least 750 participating groups belong to the National Trust, and Biddle believes that preservation "has come to an important turning point." Now he wants to send teams into communities to help local groups pick what is good and protect it before the wrecker arrives. "The great problem," says Biddle, "is progress, which is equated with concrete and steel. We have to show people that preservation can be good business." Georgetown property owners, French Quarter restaurateurs and even citizens of Sheridan, Wyo., can vouch that preservation pays--in money as well as the pleasure of linking a precarious present with an inspiring past.

* "And when the last scene of all comes, and death takes his master in its embrace, and his body is laid away in the cold ground, no matter if all other friends pursue their way, there by the graveside will the noble dog be found, his head between his paws, his eyes sad, but open in alert watchfulness, faithful and true even in death." The speech supported a suit by an owner seeking $100 in damages for a dog shot to death as a suspected killer of sheep.

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