History's blueprint

Today, the stories of a building

Recent moves to honor a number of Seattle's buildings with historical designation have drawn out a regressive streak in a city prideful of its progressive, world-class status ["38 properties eyed as historic," Times, Local News, July 12, "Let's not get hysterical about historic preservation," Lynne K. Varner editorial column, July 18, and "The landmark you save belongs to someone else," Bruce Ramsey editorial column, July 25].

Sadly, some have expressed contempt for expanding the city's list of landmark properties, stating that only a rarefied sample of historic buildings should be preserved.

Setting an arbitrary standard for preserving historic buildings is elitist decision-making about what is important and meaningful about our past. It also denies us the opportunity to be fully educated about who and what have imprinted our landscapes. Property ownership is temporary; history is not.

Real history is about complete disclosure, and the past is captured in many formats — high-style, aesthetic buildings being only one.

Modest buildings have stories too, and sometimes those stories are greater than their bricks and mortar. Even esteemed historic places hundreds of years old can be humble.

Examine a piazza in Italy and you begin to see that the individual pieces are often remarkably common. But assembled as a whole, these buildings create remarkable and vibrant envelopes where modern people work and play, and the tourism dollars they draw have built robust economies. Many Americans — and it appears, some in Seattle — lack this ability to coexist with the past.

A mere sprinkling of historic oddities throughout a landscape of transient modern buildings is not historic preservation, nor is it good stewardship of our heritage. Those who would sieve out what they believe to be "lesser" buildings will leave us with a weak and incomplete record of Seattle's rich history.

Future generations deserve more than this selective view of how our cities originated and who contributed to the larger story.

A city that touts diversity, tolerance and environmental sustainability should extend those same principles to its curation of history as reflected in the built environment.

Historic buildings are diverse by nature. Some project high drama and ornate fabric, others tell their stories in modest clothes. Some are ordinary, and the history they embody sometimes unglamorous or unpleasant. But isn't that the point if you want to be honest about your past?

No historic preservationist believes that every older structure can or should be saved, but don't we owe the future a balanced accounting of the past and the forces and ideals that have shaped it?

Lauren McCroskey of Auburn is chair of the King County Landmarks Commission.