Two Takes: Ryan Avent on Historic Preservation
by former DCist Editor Ryan Avent
It’s painful to look through photographs of the beautiful old buildings that used to line the streets of the District before being torn down. Fabulous buildings, many of which resemble some of the city’s most beloved structures, ripped down because they’d become derelict and empty, or because the land was wanted for some other use - a freeway, maybe, or a new office or housing complex. It seems so senseless and absurd that such treasures would be demolished, the more so since their replacements are often loathed by today’s Washingtonians as ugly, concrete behemoths, remnants of a sorry age for the field of architecture.
And so it’s particularly galling to some that these old modernist buildings are being considered for historical preservation. Having ruined the District streetscape for nearly half a century, they now stand to enjoy protections that were denied to the buildings that were razed in order that Modernism might be inflicted upon the capital.
But then, that’s just my opinion. I have no problem declaring that the FBI building is ugly, and bad for the streetscape as well, but there were many in the 1950s that felt the same way about older buildings we’d now kill to have around. Who’s to say that the District’s concrete boxes won’t one day bring tourists into the city just as stately buildings dating to early in the 20th century or before do today.
In this month’s Washingtonian, Larry Van Dyne addresses this very question, with a focus on one of the loci of the preservationist debate -- the Brutalist Third Church of Christ, Scientist at 16th and I streets near the White House. The church wants to raze its building and replace it with a lucrative office development that will include a space for the church to conduct its business. Developers also want this to be done. So does the District government. But preservationists do not.
Photo by mosley.brian
The question as posed by Van Dyne is whether the church is worthy of preservation. That’s not really the right question. The building is clearly worthy of preservation. Were it a mobile piece of statuary, there would never be any issue as to whether to save it or destroy it, even if most people who laid eyes on it thought it bland or hideous. The right question is - should a worthy piece of architecture be saved given that the land on which it sits is of extreme value to the landowner, the city, and the residents of the District of Columbia? The issue, in other words, is the scarcity of city land.
That scarcity means that there’s a significant opportunity cost to saving the building. Doing so would leave a fairly unproductive hole in the middle of the city’s office core. It would mean foregone jobs in the District - temporary construction positions and permanent office jobs. And it means a lost opportunity to increase tax revenue, an important point in light of the city’s budget shortfall and growing population.
Given these constraints, preservation has a high immediate cost, and the city should think very carefully - and empirically - about whether to save a structure like the church at 16th and I. But it’s important to remember that these constraints are, to a certain extent, artificial. At present, downtown and the Golden Triangle are basically built out. But they’re not built out because there is any physical or logistical limitation on the addition of new square footage. They’re built out because of a quirk of law - a piece of legislation passed in a vastly different era that limits heights on buildings.
Once we remember this fact, it becomes clear that we can have our cake and eat it too. The city can solve the problem of a scarcity of District land by creating more of it. When a property on valuable land is deemed to be worthy of historical preservation, the landowner could be granted transferable development rights equal to the potential value of the property on which the historic building sits. Those rights could then be transferred to another parcel of land, even if such a transfer took the building over the city’s height limit.
In that case, the historic building is saved, the property owner’s rights aren’t infringed, the city gets its additional space and tax revenue, and the overall goal of adding density is met. This process would also allow heights in the city to be increased in a slow and orderly fashion, which is appropriate given the growth pressures on the city.
Preservation is a tricky subject in any case, but the District has made preservation choices more difficult than they need to be. There’s no sense in artificially limiting the extent to which we can save our architectural heritage and accommodate a growing city.