Every year , theNational Trust for Historic Preservation — which fights for the aegis of historic place and buildings — releases a list of its biggest wins and losses . This year , the expiration are very lamentable .
With a hebdomad pass on to go in 2014 , we ’re reach crown end - of - twelvemonth - heel metre . In all the blaring over what went right this year , it ’s easy to neglect some of the matter that went wrong . Even if you ’re pro - development , it ’s knockout to argue with wanting to preserve some of these . How about a National Forest and sanctified Native American sacred place that ’s being turn into a two - mile - all-embracing and 1,000 - fundament - abstruse volcanic crater by mining ? Or perhaps a watershed of the Civil Rights Movement that ’s being twist into an anon. glass headquarters for a usefulness company ?
This was one of saddest — but perhaps least surprising — fib of the year when it add up to real landed estate and preservation in New York . 5Pointz is a monolithic storage warehouse in Long Island City , the owner of which decide to take into account street artists to paint de jure in the 1990s . 5Pointz quickly became a so - foretell “ graffiti mecca , ” with more than two decades of oeuvre from artist that the National Trust says number in the thou . Preservation try were deny “ due to a lack of architectural significance and the fact that the graphics was less than 30 years old . ”
It is now being demolished to make way for apartments . But surely , the apartments will interesting , veracious ? They ’ll be across the street from MoMA PS1 , after all ! Oh , you odorous fool :
Top : Thomas Hawk / CC
In what world would you sell 5,400 acres of soil for 2,400 Acre nearby ? A humans in which you make that the smaller tract sits above a immense ore deposit — and in which an ” exchange ” of land would allow you , a mega - mining caller , to “ privatise ” part of aNational Forestthat President Eisenhower put under shelter in 1955 . That ’s exactly what happened in Oak Flats , Arizona , part of a National Forest that local Native American tribes consider sanctified . On December 12th , Congress passed an enactment that will allow mining below the surface for ore , creating an perfectly gigantic volcanic crater on the surface that will be two miles wide of the mark and 1,000 feet deep .
Top : Patrick Dockens / CC
The Civil Rights Movement take place in perfectly ordinary places across the country — from dining compartment to department stores — that were made into extraordinary , historical landmark by context . In New Orleans , the very first sit - in in the city convey place in the Woolworth Building , which came to play as a hub for the move in the metropolis .
Despite attempts to protect it as a critical landmark in American chronicle , the construction wasdemolishedto make way for a $ 70 million mixed - usance gamey - raise that willreportedly look something like this :
Top : Wikimedia Commons
Oklahoma City ’s very first modernist edifice — the recreational theater known as Mummers Theater — was inspired by the anatomical structure of a computer potato chip . Its “ organizing ideas ” are borrowed from “ the electronic age,”in the word of its architect , the great John Johansen who design the building less than 50 years ago ( and was a student of Frank Lloyd Wright ) . Were it not for the signs of age , you might mistake Johansen ’s poppy boxes , connected by concrete bridges , as a entirely coeval building . It ’s one of the most important but overlooked pieces of architecture in the country .
And despite “ class of legal battles and solicitation from advocates , ” the National Trust reports , the buildingwas razed this spring . To seemingly make way for — judge what!—aglassy column :
Top : Tom Barnes / CC
Wheatley , in Houston , is one of the most contested sites on the list . It was opened in the late 1920s and became one of the biggest segregate African American schools in the US . In the 1970s , its population dwindled and the school — and region — fell victim to rezoning , finally developing problems with law-breaking . But many vicinity community member wanted to save the school for the history it was witness to : “ Members of the community feel that an irreplaceable piece of local , and in many agency , home as well , culture has been turn a loss , ” explains the National Trust . The former school will be home to a fresh prep school for boys .
Top : Wikimedia Commons .
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