Whenever I register my car, I have to maneuver through an old building in the center of my small town that isn’t really designed for the job. It’s kind of inconvenient, awkward and definitely inefficient, especially if there’s an after-work rush.
But I have voted at town meeting to keep it that way, even though it costs local tax dollars. And therein lies the weirdness of old buildings.
Human beings spend an awful lot of time, energy and money keeping old stuff around. Just this month, for example, the National Park Service approved a 10-year plan which will serve as a guide for historic preservation throughout New Hampshire. It’s a 48-page testament to how hard it is to prevent historic structures from falling down or burning up.
But it doesn’t say why we should bother keeping old structures around. It starts with the unspoken axiom that historic preservation is a good thing and proceeds from there.
I sympathize because while I agree that preservation is good — I have served on my town’s historic commission — I’m darned if I can say why. Why am I willing to spend tax dollars so I can register my car in a space that was a classroom 150 years ago rather than in an efficient modern office? I don’t really know.
Jennifer Goodman, executive director of the N.H. Preservation Alliance, can list plenty of objective reasons to keep old things around.
There are environmental reasons: Reuse is always better than demolition and building anew. There are economic reasons: Renovation creates jobs and lures tourists. There are community engagement reasons: Rallying to save the local general store does more to bind together a town than just about anything.
But none of them explain why I feel that it’s better in some weird way to do town business in an old, creaky building than a new, airtight one.
The usual explanation why people like history tends to involve the word “connection.” Standing inside a town hall where others have stood for two centuries can, they say, connect us to, well, something — to the community or the land or the peoples who were here before us. But that has never seemed satisfying to me.
The only explanation I can think of is that historic preservation helps assuage my fear that the world is arbitrary.
For example, I see a covered bridge from the 19th century, and notice that it was built where the river is narrow and has solid banks. That makes sense.
Then, I can see that its location explains why the road was built here instead of somewhere else: because they needed to use the bridge. The road’s location in turn explains why buildings were built where they were instead of somewhere else, which in turn explains why the town has the shape and pattern that it does.
If the bridge wasn’t there any more or had been replaced with a modern one, I wouldn’t have historic evidence explaining the patterns around me. I would miss the comfort of understanding a little something about the world.
That isn’t a complete explanation for my enjoyment of historic structures, however. But maybe expecting a complete explanation is the wrong way to approach the question.
Not everything is logical, not everything has a numerical value, not everything is defined by a quantifiable metric. We also need feelings, emotions, sensations that can’t be explained, that are ineffable in the sense of producing a reaction that can’t be put into words.
Proximity to historic objects and structures seems to be one of those ineffable things. My town clerk’s office might be illogical but it’s a good thing in my mind and in the mind of plenty of other people. I can’t explain why but that doesn’t make it any less real.
So, hooray for historic preservation even though it’s often a pain in the neck. Long may it continue, although hopefully without too much more pressure on my property taxes.
