“Don’t it always seem to go -That you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone: They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” – from “Big Yellow Taxi.”- Part 1

“There may have been a time when preservation was about saving an old building here and there, but those days are gone. Preservation is in the business of saving communities and the values they embody.”
Richard Moe – Retired president of National Trust for Historic Preservation

Rocky Mount, NC has not had an inventory of its historical architectural assets since the preparation of the National Register Historic District nominations. We have no formal documentation or update to help with our preservation plans. Through a series of posts, I hope to spark your interest and support for an honest, up-to-date inventory. Do you know the show on TV – The Antique Roadshow? It’s a metaphor for our predicament. We don’t know the value of what we’ve got. The painting in the attic, the quilt on the bed, the antique silver chest….we have architecture, in some cases, like the Lustrom house on Sunset Ave, one of the few remaining in the country.

Because I grew up in Evanston, IL., the first suburb north of Chicago on the lake, this bit of information caught my attention. Though dated, it illustrates what I am sure has happened in our community as well. In 2003, The Chicago Tribune compared a new survey of historically significant properties within 22 of Chicago’s historic communities to a city-wide survey taken 20 years prior. The newspaper found that nearly 800 historically significant buildings had been destroyed over this 20-year period. According to the Tribune, the purpose of the original survey was to help the city protect its architectural heritage, but the new report demonstrated that the city failed to apply the knowledge obtained from the first survey by adding the necessary protections for these historic resources. The lack of legal protection enabled the rampant demolition of these buildings

 When talking about architectural preservation, I want you to think beyond a workman standing on a ladder, repairing a deteriorating wall. The amazing skill-set needed to restore and preserve a building is certainly a major part of the process, but without an honest inventory of where we stand, I repeat, we don’t know what we’ve got. Click Here:

While the demolitions have razed well-known individual structures…their most devastating impact
has been on the character of the city’s neighborhoods…
— Chicago Tribune, January 13, 2003

TOMORROW- In Rocky Mount – The Lustron Home – an all-steel house, with walls made of 2×2 20-gauge metal panels, with a porcelain enamel finish.