PRESERVATION: THE ORIGINAL SUSTAINABILITY MOVEMENT

PRESERVATION: THE ORIGINAL SUSTAINABILITY MOVEMENT

Long before the LEED designation created by the United States Green Building Council.

Way before going green got adopted by both Hollywood and Madison Avenue.

There were a group of us thinking about sustainability long before that concept became a part of every urban and ecological dialogue.

We were preservationists. Some were skilled architects peeling back layers of: dropped ceilings, painted over windows, covered up terrazzo floors and other sins of the second half of the 20th century – to reveal beautiful architectural details and human-scaled public spaces.

Some of us simply dedicated all of our nonworking hours to preserving a bit of green space slated for over development.

We’ll take credit for fighting the City of Miami tooth and nail to preserve more than half of historic William Jennings Bryan Park as open green space – when the City wanted to pave most of it over in the name of a revenue-generating tennis center.

Let’s hope in these times of budget gaps, the City doesn’t try once again to destroy a single family diverse and working class neighborhood by selling its 2-acre park to the highest bidder.

In the city with the least amount of park space of any large population center in America, that would be immoral.

But whether the preservation movement aims to protect precious park space, a fabled downtown theater, a courthouse or an entire historic district, the end goal is much more than keeping alive something that we find pretty and sentimental.

Preservation is green. Restoration is sustainable.

While attending the American Institute of Architects national convention in Miami Beach this week, we couldn’t help but think of preservation in terms of green building.

On Monday, before the conference began, we looked at AIA architecture guides to Miami and lamented the loss of so many historic buildings torn down to make way for….ugly modern structures and far too often, lots that remain vacant years or decades later.

On Tuesday, we read an email from Anthony Flint, the great author of Wrestling With Moses that How Jane Jacobs Took on New York's Master Builder and Transformed the American City.

Jacobs, of course, is the patron saint of American preservation. Moses, a complicated figure who first enhanced New York with greenways, parks and urban amenities…then destroyed so much with freeways, apartment demolitions and self-aggrandizing schemes that, if all were completed, could have injured the city’s urban fabric to a point of no return.

On Wednesday, the informal opening on the AIA conference, we caught Richard Heisenbottle’s session on preservation. Highlighted was his R.J. Heisenbottle Architects’ proud restoration of Miami City Hall.

The former Pan American Airlines sea plane terminal right on Biscayne Bay in Coconut Grove had been half ruined with ugly paneling, dropped ceilings, covered grand windows and worse.

We had the pleasure of working in the restored City Hall for the better part of a decade, when not a day went by without a stranger wandering into the restored landmark and asking about is great history.

If the structure -- which is very small compared to many City Halls and is on nearly priceless waterfront land -- had been demolished, no one would care about whatever soulless edifice would have replaced it.

That evening, we met architect Steven J. Pynes, a board member of the Miami Design Preservation League. Were it not for the MDPL, half of South Beach could have been turned into a cold, unsustainable redevelopment project.

Without the late, great Barbara Baer Capitman and other angels of preservation, the Art Deco district might have become a giant parking lot to serve development to the south.

Without the her vision and determination, movies, TV shows, models, clubs and designers never would have had the chance to remake the Art Deco district one of the most successfully-preserved neighborhoods in America.

Where the MDPL saw a perfectly human-scaled, mixed-use urban neighborhood that could rival the most livable and beloved districts of Europe, the majority saw a fading God’s Waiting room ready for senseless “urban renewal.”

The intrinsic, sustainable value of preserving our public realm was driving home Thursday during the AIA’s preservation lunch.

Arva Moore Parks, the great Miami author and historian, gave a fun and fact-filled presentation on the value of preserving livable communities such as the Art Deco District and George Merrick’s Coral Gables.

The program, fun for both local and visitor, noted Miami’s history of diversity – long before it even became a city. Parks observed that with the history of Spanish exploration and ownership of Florida, it will be more than a century before English will have been spoken here as long as Spanish.

Today, while at the AIA convention, we lament that our journalistic and town-building pursuits will prevent us from properly observing our 22nd wedding anniversary this evening of June 11.

Tomorrow, after the AIA concludes, we will make our final arrangements for an upcoming trip to New York to celebrate more than two decades of marriage in high urban style.

We will stay in Chelsea and head toward Penn Station when we want to use the small fraction of the subway system that is accessible to wheelchair users.

We will think about sustainability and smart urbanism when we ride enter the much-loathed “modern” Penn Station that replaced the artful and soul-enriching “old” Penn Station back when progress was too often was equated with senseless bulldozing of the past.

We will take the elevator up to the High Line and marvel at how a handful of preservationists turned the city’s planned demolition of long-abandoned, elevated freight train lines into the hottest urban space the early 21st century.

What surely the majority saw as ugly old rusting tracks over an industrial district has been turned into a green, alive, wheelchair-accessible urban amenity where people now want to live, work, dine and more.

Let’s hope our future is filled with High Lines, preserved architectural treasures with adaptive re-use and the likes of Jane Jacobs, Barbara Baer Capitman, Richard Heisenbottle, Arva Moore Parks and the good keepers of the flame at the Miami Design Preservation League.