Talk:National Trust for Historic Preservation

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[edit] Removed text

I removed the following text because it seemed very tendentious. I'm not quite sure how to fix it, but maybe someone more familiar with the National Trust can salvage it. It's more about preservation in general than the National Trust. PRIIS 09:39, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

As the preeminent nonprofit organization in the American preservation movement, the National Trust is highly controversial. Although it borrows the rhetorical style of the Left to agitate on behalf of preservation and against the conservative attitude that property rights are paramount, the Trust's positions have often divided it from other left-wing and progressive movements such as environmentalism and public education.

The divide arises from the fact that preservation of old buildings is expensive, since it is hard to make them safe and bring them up to modern code without totally destroying their historic nature. In turn, preservation draws down scarce public resources which could have been allocated to other needs like hiring more teachers and buying textbooks, and preserved buildings occupy land that becomes unavailable for other higher-density uses, thus pushing people out of urban cores and encouraging sprawl. And most professional historians do not support preservation because much of their work is done by analyzing old documents and interviewing surviving participants of historic events. Buildings rarely play a key role in history except for certain rare events like assassinations and the signing of treaties.

uhhh, huh? I'd like to meet these "historians" who don't think the built environment affects history.

J. Crocker 20:10, August 10, 2005 (UTC)

Should mention be made of the controversy surrounding the demolition of the St. Louis Century Building? Ajacksb 19:46, 22 June 2007 (UTC)