I’ve been eagerly awaiting the assignment to read Andrew Hurley’s Beyond Preservation. My patience was rewarded.
Hurley’s that rare bird, an academic who knows the difference between CDCs[1] and CDBGs[2]. His how-to guide to employing oral history and archaeology in the service of rebuilding distressed urban neighborhoods without exorcising those who already live there gives hope to those of us who have been unwitting accomplices to forms of historic preservation that result mostly in costly restoration of gingerbread cottages and festival marketplaces for the affluent.
Hurley cites Cathy Stanton’s book on the restoration of the textile mills in Lowell, Massachusetts. I suspect the two works form a natural pairing, and hope to write more when we get to Stanton.
In the meantime, in a wild bit of synchronicity, a colleague sent me a link to a wonderful blog, “Ecology of Absence.” The post “Where Stolen Bricks Go” chronicles the theft and resale of bricks from buildings in a north St. Louis neighborhood described in Hurley’s book. Lack of funds, iffy real estate markets and community dissention aren’t the only forces impeding historic preservation in inner cities.
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