April, 1997

HEADLINE: Don't Touch That Style!;
Historic preservationists hate the modern church.

BYLINE: James Bovard. ;
James Bovard is this year's Warren Brookes Fellow at the Competitive
Enterprise Institute.

BODY:

The historic preservation movement did much a few decades ago to educate the
public about the value of historic buildings. It has since been replaced by what
might be termed hysterical preservationism. Preservationists have progressed
from targeting specific buildings to targeting neighborhoods, even entire
valleys and states, for strict, government-enforced controls. In recent years
historic preservation boards have seized control over places as diverse as pet
cemeteries and real-estate advertisement concrete elephants. In Annapolis,
Maryland, preservation police are fighting a crime wave of hanging flowerpots
alleged to be defacing the historic district.

Seattle, the paradise of coffee pretension, is flush with preservation fever.
A 1995 Wall Street Journal article noted, "Just about anything more than 25
years old can qualify as an historical landmark here. City rules require only
that a structure meet certain broad criteria, such as 'prominence of spatial
location.' Or it must be 'an easily identifiable visual feature of a
neighborhood.'" A jogging path received landmark status, as did a ship that sank
several years ago. The Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board even forced a
biotech company to spend half a million dollars to add fake smokestacks to an
old power plant that it had converted to a research laboratory.

The New York Landmarks Commission banned residents of Manhattan's Soho
neighborhood from planting trees -- simply because Soho did not have trees when
it was a grimy industrial neighborhood in the late 1800's. The same bureaucrats
imposed landmark status and seized control over the 1958 interior of the Four
Seasons restaurant, prohibiting the owner from removing two hanging sculptures,
changing the draperies, or modifying the restaurant's bar. Craig Anderson, a
movie producer and the founder of the Hudson Guild Theater, abandoned efforts to
resurrect a run-down concert hall in Manhattan after the Commission slapped a
historic designation on the building; Anderson complained that "we couldn't
change the mildewed carpets or the broken seats without petitioning them."

Some preservationists seem paranoid about any change. The D.C. Preservation
League issued its own "Most Endangered Properties List" last year -- and among
the group's demands was that Pierre L'Enfant's original 1791 plan for the city
of Washington be given historic status -- thus locking the nation's capital into
a 200-year old strait-jacket to comply with the Frenchman's fancies.

It is almost impossible to exaggerate the overreaching of some preservation
advocates. The National Trust for Historic Preservation, the federally
chartered, Washington-based preservationist organization that's assumed a
leadership role for preservationists nationwide, puts out a press-grabbing list
each year of the "11 Most Endangered Historic Landmarks." In 1993, the Trust
placed the entire state of Vermont on the list; the following year, it listed
all of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The Trust also slapped the "most endangered"
label on a huge area in rural Virginia where the Disney Company wanted to build
a historic theme park.

Government preservation police have seized control over the exteriors -- and
often the interiors -- of perhaps a half million homes and businesses. Anything
old is, in many areas across the nation, being treated as sacred. As Chicago
alderman Bernard Stone, a member of the City Council committee on historical and
architectural landmarks, says, the credo of the preservation movement is,
"Anything that doesn't move, landmark it." Ronald Lee Fleming, president of the
Townscape Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, puts it differently: "We seem
to be suffering from a new kind of artifact worship -- not of the houses of
'great white men' but of the ugly and ordinary at the expense of enhancing the
larger environment."

When not paranoid, preservationists can be positively schizophrenic about
modernity. One of their favorites, urban planner James Kunstler, denounced fast
-food commercialism last year: "The price we're paying for a Big Mac is a
complete degradation of our civilization, the complete degradation of our public
life. I would say that's a bad deal." Yet the National Trust in 1994 placed the
oldest surviving McDonald's restaurant (in Downey, California) on its "most
endangered" list. A Trust press release declared that the 1953 restaurant is a
cultural landmark that "symbolizes America's love affair with the automobile and
the eye-catching vigor of roadside architecture" and labeled the boarded-up,
out-of-date (no takeout window!) restaurant as "an authentic icon of
contemporary American life."

War on Property Rights
The preservation activists would merely seem ridiculous if they didn't pose such
a threat to the rights of property owners. In Delray, Florida, last July, the
local preservation board pushed forward with a proposal to designate a number of
lakefront homes as historic landmarks despite the opposition of all the home
owners. In Tempe, Arizona, last year, the Planning and Zoning Commission
endorsed a new policy that would allow the historic district designation process
to formally begin after a petition from a single homeowner. In Holden,
Massachusetts, advocates of imposing preservation controls on 190 homes and
businesses used what an editorial last year in the Worcester, Massachusetts
Telegram & Gazette called a "dubious means: a high-pressure campaign in which
many homeowners may have been left in the dark about the impact of historic
designation on their property rights." The paper concluded that "no one can say
for sure whether homeowners would have agreed to the [Historic Register] listing
had they known all the facts. What is certain, however, is that the bitterness
left by this episode is likely to divide the community and poison civic
discourse for years to come."

Leading the charge against property rights is the National Trust for Historic
Preservation, which has gone from seeking to educate Americans about historic
treasures to clamoring for maximum restrictions on private land use. The Trust
is on the front-line fighting against proposed "Super-stores" in Manhattan --
essentially using its muscle and prestige to insure that local residents
continue paying far more than citizens in neighboring locales for basic
necessities. The Trust is also calling for stricter zoning around the country to
restrict development. Trust President and longtime Democratic Party hack Richard
Moe declared in a speech late last year: "We should demand land-use planning
that exhibits a strong bias in favor of existing communities." There are vast
numbers of ugly, shoddy, shabby buildings in this country -- many of them more
than a few years old -- and it is difficult to understand why government should
use its iron fist to force people to continue living in fourth-rate
architectural heaps. According to the Trust's 1994 annual report, people prefer
places where they "can walk from one destination to another." If this was the
case, why did anyone ever leave the east coast?

The Trust -- which receives $7 million a year from the federal government --
has also helped bankroll political opposition to property rights initiatives.
In October 1995 it tossed in $14,000 and became one of the largest donors to the
"No on Referendum 48" Coalition working to defeat a private property rights
initiative in the state of Washington. (The Trust gave almost as much to that
campaign as the Sierra Club.) Edward Norton, the Trust's vice president for
public policy, justified the contribution at the time by calling Referendum 48
"a stake aimed at the heart of historic-preservation activities." Norton told
TAS via speaker phone that the Trust has also aided efforts to block property
rights legislation in Florida, Michigan, Colorado, Virginia, and Oregon, but
insisted that "no money from the federal appropriation was used directly,
indirectly, or in any way for either lobbying or in any activity in any way"
related to the Trust's fights against such legislation.

The National Trust was a high-profile opponent of the "takings"/private
-property-rights legislation from the GOP's Contract With America. The Trust has
also filed numerous briefs with the Supreme Court urging that the Court deny
property owners any compensation for government actions that nullify or minimize
their right to use their property. Most of the buildings that the Trust and its
devotees insist are historic treasures were created as the result of decisions
by private owners who had control over their own land. But, according to the
Trust, the only way to protect the past achievements of private property is to
strip current property owners of almost all control over their land, businesses,
and homes.

Preservation advocates endlessly repeat that imposition of government
controls over property owners practically guarantees an increase in property
values. But even if there was such an effect at one time, the more such
designations are slapped over the landscape, the less effect they will have.
Once the novelty effect of historic preservation wears off, its positive
economic impact will evaporate -- and all that will be left is the government
controls. A 1994 study in the Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics
concluded that local historic preservation controls in Philadelphia resulted in
a 24 percent reduction in the price of small apartment buildings. The study,
authored by two professors at the Temple School of Business and Management,
concluded that "historic control (as practiced in Philadelphia) is
confiscatory." Preservation bureaucrats in Philadelphia control more than 15,000 buildings.

Stuck with Old Churches
When the Clinton administration sought to whip up national hysteria about the
arson of black churches in the South, the National Trust jumped on the bandwagon
-- announcing that it was putting the black churches allegedly hit by the
attacks on its annual list of "most endangered historic places." Since many
churches are among the oldest buildings in a community, they are often first on
the preservation's target list. Preservationists portray their controls as minor
nuisances. In some cities, however, government bureaucrats have seized control
even over church interiors. (Over 300 local landmark laws allow bureaucrats to
control the interiors as well as exteriors of designated buildings.) In November
1995, one of southern California's largest Armenian congregations -- the St.
Mary's Apostolic Armenian Church -- petitioned the city council to exempt its
church from preservation restrictions. The Los Angeles Times noted:

Supporters of the regulations have cited the church's desire to build a
traditional Eastern-style dome atop the roof as an example of a change that
would impair the building's historical value. But church officials say the dome
is a long-term project and that their immediate needs include moving the church
altar, building a choir loft and enlarging the sanctuary and Sunday school --
all of which require the building to undergo the historical review process under
the current law.

Some old churches have been caught in the crossfire of foolish government
policies. St. Anne's Roman Catholic Church and parochial school in West Palm
Beach is fighting the local government to block the imposition of historic
status on two aging, termite-infested, rotting buildings. The parish offered to
give the supposedly "historic" buildings to the local government, as long as the
buildings were moved off church property -- but the government preferred to
impose historic designation and compel the church and its members to bear the
cost of maintaining the property. As the Palm Beach Post noted, "Both buildings
have racked up numerous code violations. The rectory in particular is in poor
shape, so much so that diocese officials say they worry about the parish
priest's safety." One church official complained: "If you designate it, you will
have tied our hands as a living, viable presence in the community. We will be
stuck with buildings we cannot use." The parish is struggling to survive in

part because of a massive government development project that "saw entire
neighborhoods leveled," according to the Post -- and was a major failure. The
local government first used its eminent domain powers to banish many of the
church's worshippers, and then held a gun to the church's head -- demanding the
church spend whatever is necessary to maintain its buildings to satisfy
government officials.

The Supreme Court is currently considering a case involving the Saint Peter's
Catholic Church in Boerne, Texas, that sought permission to expand and renovate
the side and rear of its building to accommodate its growing number of
worshippers (the church has thousands of parishioners but only 220 seats). Even
though the church was not listed as a landmark, and even though only the front
facade of the church was in the local historic district, the local historic
board still denied permission.

The church sued and won in federal appeals court. The case turns on
interpretation of the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act -- an act the Trust
scorns. It contends that compelling the church to stay in inadequate quarters is
an insignificant burden. The Trust's brief to the Supreme Court argued that,
even if "the City's action has affected the overall level of religious activity
at the Church," it did not infringe on religious freedom, since "no individual
member of the Church is being denied the ability to worship."

The Backlash
It's no wonder that historic preservation efforts are beginning to generate a
backlash. Preservationists were rebuffed last November by overwhelming popular
opposition in their attempt to place an entire 75 square-mile section of an
Ozarks river valley on the National Register of Historic Places. California
Republican Rep. Wally Herger denounced the National Register of Historic Places
last year for "acting with dictatorial powers and complete disregard for local
communities and local people."

The same people who'd scream for the ACLU if the local government dictated
that everyone had to dress in fashions popular in the 1940's avidly support
government dictates that force everyone to "dress" their houses the same way
that they were decked out fifty years ago. Why should governments have a sacred
duty to punish homeowners who deviate from the architectural fashions of earlier
decades? In clashes between preservationists and church congregations, the
preservationists often sound far more pious and righteous than the Christians.
The preservationist theology presumes it's heresy to demolish a building of a
certain age (25 years old in Seattle, 50 years in parts of California). Whatever
is old is holy.

This is where worship of state power comes in handy, as preservationists
impose their will on property owners and override Fifth Amendment guarantees of
"just compensation" for private property "taken for public use." In obstructing
the natural flux of change, preservationists are ultimately preventing the
creation of new structures that, fifty years from now, might themselves be
regarded as national landmarks.