Apple's Steve Jobs gets OK to raze dilapidated mansion - Page 6

It's your point about sentimentality which is utterly wrong, as I have said several times already, and I have explained why it is wrong, in great detail. Sentimentality is about nostalgia, it is about emotive relationships, which is not the basis for determining places to be historic. How any given person "feels" about a place is not a basis for its significance. Reverence is also irrelevant.

You might try to understand this in the way (I'd at least hope) you understand the concept of law. A lawyer would not get very far with a judge if he asked him for acquittal because his client is a nice person. An argument in a courtroom has to be based in the law and on the evidence. Historians use very much the same method. Our "law" is the criteria for significance, our "evidence" is the historical record. Arguments not grounded in both get nowhere. I'm sure you'll never accept any of this, but it's no less true for that.

I understand your hostility to historic preservation for any reason other than your arbitrary and cramped "scientific" purpose, which is obviously the only one you will allow. This is why I am not interested in debating its value or importance with you. For every person I run into like you, who will never see the value no matter how much it is explained, fifty others get it right away. That's why I'm not interested in debating the value of historic preservation with you. It simply doesn't matter whether you approve of it or not, and I am not interested in trying to change your mind.

You mean I. M. Pei who did Pyramide du Louvre? Given that Pei is a modernist they got what they asked for and I actually like it. And we have one of those in DC too (modernist art museum by IM Pei)...which I'm sure you also hate.

One thing is for sure, Pei is far more significant an architect than smith ever was.

Because understanding and the means of documentation change. Because the thing itself has limitless resolution, and the mechanics of our recording and analysis do not. Because there are nuances of context and detail that elude even our most meticulous efforts at academic simulacra.

But most simply because human beings will respond to the experience of presence differently from the experience of documentation. I suppose that would count as "emotional" in your book, but frankly your reductive efforts to render preservation into a misguided bit of touchy feely irrelevance strike me as unintelligible. Speaking as a fully functioning human being.

1) You didn't answer the question
2) You are completely wrong about my opinions on historic preservation. Read on.


That would be scientific documentation and fact-seeking you speak of.


No, NOT irrelevant! I've never once implied sentimental preservation to be irrelevant. I think it's essential. I'm simply trying to show that when you separate out the fact-seeking, all that's left is reverence.

What's the point of preserving a US Civil War canon when we know everything about canons of that era? The materials used, the ballistics fired, the size, the shape, the color, the texture... after that, what is left?

It's a metaphysical representation of the US Civil War. When we touch that canon and walk the fields at Gettysburg, we connect on a human level to those events. Compared to that experience, factoids are all but irrelevant! What makes Gettysburg historic is not "the extent to which it represents or exemplifies a theme in history" as Millmoss defines, but rather that it allows us to connect with that theme!

The objective measures Millmoss blathers on about are merely our misguided attempt to assign a value to historic relics. It would be about as logical as writing an objective formula for love.

-Clive

It's probably about time for everyone to let go of this topic and move on. There's nothing more to learn, nothing more to teach, if it hasn't already happened, it's not going to.

J.D. hates philosophy.

...

Agreed. I was just about to say the very same thing myself.

I wasn't siding either way with Smith so your barking up the wrong tree on that... and my point is really not important since this issue seems to be more about following the rules as set down by EPA law prior to pulling down.

As for my bringing up Pyramide du Louvre it was done for two reasons...

One I find it objectionable to obscure the front of one of the most beautiful buildings I've ever seen with a building of such a conflicting design.

Two it seemed like a good example of what could take place on this site. Steve 'could' if he were forced to, construct his modern home right in front of the existing structure.

Now, as to my personal taste.. it really doesn't come into play but I'll tell you anyway... YES I am a traditionalist in my heart but thats not to say I can't appreciate SOME modern designs but would I personally choose to live in one... NO I don't think so. I don't have nearly enough polished chrome bed pillows or couches made from concrete to pull off the look.. (kidding - well sorta)

So now people might be wondering WHY I'm siding on Jobs when it comes to tearing down this building... and again that's quite simple.. my personal taste shouldn't enter the decision making process... If he wants to tear down what I would consider an AWSOME place that I'd kill to live in... Then who am I to say he can't, simply because I think anyone would be crazy not to love it.

If Steve (his builders/lawyers/etc) followed the proper procedures AND provided the building wasn't OFFICIALLY protected by any one of the different home preservation groups then the answer is quite simple for me... Steve can take down the building or do whatever he wants with it (proved the laws allow for it).

Nope, just a side comment.


It's really not that big in relation to the building.





Find me the pyramid...



Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I never found Baroque all that and I suspect some folks think that Visconti destroyed the original lines of the building.