May is celebrated annually nationwide and statewide as “Preservation Month.” This event offers MainStreet organizations an opportunity to reflect on local historic “assets,” unique and authentic places, traditions, heritage, and also “endangered places.”
In 2012, the National Trust for Historic Preservation has suggested the theme of “Discover America’s Hidden Gems.” The New Mexico Historic Preservation Division has chosen the theme of New Mexico’s Centennial of Statehood recognition.
It might be fun to combine “hidden gems” and the statehood Centennial to discover properties and sites worthy of rediscovery and interpretation on New Mexico’s MainStreets. It’s true that many New Mexico towns boomed and erected great buildings during the statehood years. A little bit of research will yield many hidden gems and also obvious community treasures such as Carnegie Libraries, County Courthouses, City Halls, and other iconic civic buildings.
While “historic preservation” sometimes conjures up feelings of legal process, Dr. Bill Dodge has been effective at demonstrating the all-important “heritage preservation” values in his regional New Mexico MainStreet Historic Preservation workshops offered this spring.
Heritage preservation projects are critical for local communities to conserve and promote unique architectural and cultural assets that build a unique sense of place. Sometimes these assets are not only registered historic buildings but also older properties of solid architectural quality that still have many good years of economic uses. In historic preservation lingo, this is the difference between “significant” buildings and “contributing.”
These unique assets in turn contribute to a community’s appeal for cultural and heritage tourists and also to a town’s suitability for business and industrial prospects. We’ve often heard of communities losing a new business because their downtown failed the all-important “curb appeal” test.
Developing a “preservation ethic” is thus good economic development strategy as well as sound stewardship of the built environment. Bill Dodge encourages the cultivation of “design literacy,” or the ability to “read” the local built environment looking for “character defining” features that make a building or downtown memorable. These character defining features might include distinctive materials such as brick, sandstone, adobe, or custom glazing.
Take a stroll downtown and try to find the unsung bits and pieces of architectural excellence that are worth preserving for future generations. Becoming a steward of your town’s heritage is not only good MainStreet practice, it’s essential for economic development.