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After WW II there was mass movement to modernize everything. With Europe in ruins danged near everything had to be new. In the US after the Dust Bowl, Depression and years of frugality during the war people were ready for new looks. It's hard to castigate our ancestors back over a span of well over half a century that they should have preserved this or that.
People simply weren't in the conservation mood. The technology, industry and the economy were rushing headlong to the future. And the future didn't have creaky-looking old buildings from 1901 in it. They bought new cars that looked far from anything made in the 1930s. They divested themselves of those old cars because they reminded them of the hard times and sacrifices of the 30s and war years. Sure we look at them differently in 2007 but back then they were just old cars and old buildings.
In 1947 there was no real movement or interest in notable architecture appreciation of previous eras. There was no conservation of much of anything. Certainly there was no money to preserve a notable old building at a certain corner if urban expansion dictated another use format requiring a new layout. Yeah it's cool to have the old Firehouse just as it was in 1890 but when a national company offers lucrative expansion plans that will provide construction jobs now and other jobs later the reality was to take the offer before another town did.
We now have the luxury and money to pick and choose what businesses we will allow or what buildings ought to be considered as historical. As the nation was expanding back then all we cared about was building a future that would never again hurt us like the Depression did. If that meant replacing ye olde Firehouse with a shoe manufacturing plant the choice for payback was clear.
Anyhow I'm not sour on preservation as such but simply showing the mindset of people that did things before us. From our position relative to today it may seem obvious but it wasn't always so.
People simply weren't in the conservation mood. The technology, industry and the economy were rushing headlong to the future. And the future didn't have creaky-looking old buildings from 1901 in it. They bought new cars that looked far from anything made in the 1930s. They divested themselves of those old cars because they reminded them of the hard times and sacrifices of the 30s and war years. Sure we look at them differently in 2007 but back then they were just old cars and old buildings.
In 1947 there was no real movement or interest in notable architecture appreciation of previous eras. There was no conservation of much of anything. Certainly there was no money to preserve a notable old building at a certain corner if urban expansion dictated another use format requiring a new layout. Yeah it's cool to have the old Firehouse just as it was in 1890 but when a national company offers lucrative expansion plans that will provide construction jobs now and other jobs later the reality was to take the offer before another town did.
We now have the luxury and money to pick and choose what businesses we will allow or what buildings ought to be considered as historical. As the nation was expanding back then all we cared about was building a future that would never again hurt us like the Depression did. If that meant replacing ye olde Firehouse with a shoe manufacturing plant the choice for payback was clear.
Anyhow I'm not sour on preservation as such but simply showing the mindset of people that did things before us. From our position relative to today it may seem obvious but it wasn't always so.
