{"id":193,"date":"2017-09-20T14:35:58","date_gmt":"2017-09-20T19:35:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fredmcghee.com\/?p=193"},"modified":"2017-10-18T08:42:51","modified_gmt":"2017-10-18T13:42:51","slug":"austin-needs-to-fix-its-historic-preservation-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fredmcghee.com\/?p=193","title":{"rendered":"Austin Needs to Fix Its Historic Preservation Problem"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Map of Austin’s Urban Freedmen’s Communities, Circa 1900<\/h4>\n

Austin last took a hard look at its historic preservation program in the early 2000’s, where a joint task force made up of Planning, Zoning and Platting, and Historic Landmark Commissioners made some recommendations to upgrade but not fundamentally alter the city’s program as originally established by always serving ZAP commissioner Betty Baker in the mid 1970’s.\u00a0 <\/span>Betty Baker herself chaired the 2003-2004 task force<\/a>\u00a0that was tasked with examining the question.<\/span><\/p>\n

The time has come for Austin to do heritage preservation and management correctly.\u00a0 <\/span>Piecemeal reforms applied over the years have not worked; we need a complete redo.\u00a0 <\/span>As one of Austin’s leading African-American preservationists I offer my time and services toward the achievement of this objective.<\/span><\/p>\n

Basic Background<\/span><\/h3>\n

At a time during the early to mid 1970’s when the full meaning of the National Historic Preservation Act and the National Environmental Policy Act was still being figured out, Baker advocated for and helped to successfully enact a historic preservation program in Austin that was fundamentally Southern and bourgeois in character and administration.\u00a0 <\/span>It reflected an early post-Lyndon Johnson, Roy Butler-esque repudiation of the Great Society and embraced a more homespun Texan understanding of history and historical significance grounded in respect for private property rights. \u00a0I should not have to say so but I am going to do it anyway: \u00a0this was a program designed by white people to primarily benefit white people, just as the Austin “Gentleman’s Agreement” concluded just a few years prior had been. \u00a0Austin’s African-American and Latino preservationists could get properties landmarked, but only at white ruling class discretion.<\/span><\/p>\n

In doing so Baker was not being altogether unusual; what she put into place was an Austin version of what already existed in other cities of the former Confederacy such as Charleston or Savannah, already bourgeoning centers of a peculiarly Southern brand of heritage tourism that emphasized the quality of the fine china at plantation big houses and avoided discussion of the slave quarters.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>In examining this history it may be useful to bear in mind that First Ladies from Lady Bird Johnson to Laura Bush – and women like them at lower levels of government like Betty Baker – have played an important part in the politics of historic preservation over the years. \u00a0Baker did not take as many cues from the preservation programs in place in Galveston and San Antonio, the two Texas cities generally judged at the time to have the “most history” because some of the history in those cities was more complicated.<\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps the most enduring legacy of what Baker established in Austin was the program’s misguided over-focus on historic buildings.\u00a0 This imprudent attention has led to the compromise or destruction of dozens of non-architectural historic properties in Austin, some of them of considerable research value. \u00a0<\/span>In 2017 it is fair to say that when Austinites think of “historic sites” they nearly always think of historic buildings, not archaeological sites or Traditional Cultural Properties, although the latter two are also historic properties eligible for National Register consideration and historic landmarking. \u00a0The excessive attention paid to historic buildings is, of course, a sign of white middle and upper class bias; members of minority groups and the working class have rarely occupied grand estate homes whose “historic” character is obvious to the untrained eye. \u00a0City staffers at this stage don’t even bother to meaningfully pretend that they care about anything other than historic buildings; the recently completed East Austin historic resources survey was not only strategically gerrymandered to exclude much of East Austin as well as Montopolis, Dove Springs and Del Valle, it only focused on buildings, not archaeological sites or TCP’s.<\/span><\/p>\n

Proper Qualifications Matter<\/h3>\n

You may be wondering:\u00a0 are the city’s historic preservation officer Steve Sadowsky and his recently hired assistant qualified to render professional judgments about historic architecture?\u00a0 Answer:\u00a0 no, they are not.\u00a0 Neither meets the Secretary of the Interior’s professional qualifications standards<\/a> that for decades have been regarded as the education and experience minimums for historic preservation professionals in the United States.<\/p>\n

Should this render the “professional” staff advice rendered by these people null and void?\u00a0 In my opinion it should.\u00a0\u00a0It is rather doubtful that the Austin City Council would accept counsel about a legal, medical or engineering matter from unqualified advisors, yet this has been the case in Austin ever since Steve Sadowsky was elevated to his current position as historic preservation officer.\u00a0 Furthermore, if this historical report<\/a> authored by Mr. Sadowsky at the (since demolished) segregated Texas School for the Deaf serves as an example of Mr. Sadowsky’s skills as a historian, he should also be disqualified from rendering judgments in this arena and should defer to the skills and judgment of properly credentialed and skilled crafters of historical narratives.\u00a0 As an African-American ASL speaker who studied at Northeastern University under Harlan Lane<\/a>\u00a0and Hartmut Teuber, I would have authored a rather different narrative based upon a much broader array of sources.\u00a0 One that would have strived to do justice to the history at stake.<\/p>\n

But scholarship was never Mr. Sadowsky’s intent; he is, in fact, not a scholar, but a historic preservation administrator.\u00a0 And he understood his job well:\u00a0 to facilitate the demolition of two historic structures at a publicly owned\u00a0<\/em>school at the behest of David Lurie, head of what was then called Austin\/Travis County Health and Human Services.<\/p>\n

In case you were wondering, the questioning of Mr. Sadowsky’s credentials also has a history.\u00a0 The matter was also raised in 2003 and 2004<\/a>.\u00a0 At the time, then council-member Jackie Goodman said Sadowsky was a historic preservation “expert,” noting that he holds an M.A. from Middle Tennessee State University, a JD from Washburn University and a BA from Vanderbilt University.\u00a0 \u00a0She then noted that he served for ten years as the architectural historian for TxDOT (which says a lot about TxDOT, but that’s another story) and taught history for two years at Middle Tennessee State University.<\/p>\n

What Goodman conveniently neglected to mention was this:\u00a0 1.\u00a0 Sadowsky’s master’s degree is in historic preservation, not history, archaeology, or architecture.\u00a0 2.\u00a0 Sadowsky does not meet the Secretary of the Interior’s professional qualifications standards.\u00a0\u00a0Nonetheless, a self-satisfied Goodman declared that\u00a0\u201cwe don\u2019t just hire anybody for these jobs\u201d and supported Sadowsky’s elevation to historic preservation officer.<\/p>\n

Mr. Sadowsky’s record since speaks for itself and has been marked by incompetence and the loss of irreplaceable community heritage, particularly in East Austin.\u00a0 Any redo of Austin’s historic preservation program must staff it with properly credentialed and experienced professionals in\u00a0each<\/em> category of eligibility who can render scientifically sound judgments divorced from political considerations or pro-development biases.\u00a0 The ultimate rendering of political or policy judgments about whether to historically landmark properties is the job of elected officials, as would be the case with any zoning matter.<\/p>\n

Why Are There So Few Austin Historic Districts?<\/h3>\n

Another aspect of Baker’s legacy is the stringent requirement for landmarking historic districts. \u00a0It is notoriously difficult to establish historic districts in Austin due to a requirement that at least 51% of property owners in the proposed district agree to the zoning change. \u00a0The former Austin Historic Preservation Officer weighed in publicly about that<\/a>\u00a0in 2004; it was a major factor in why she left her position and was replaced by her assistant Steve Sadowsky. \u00a0Here’s the truth: \u00a0in most American cities historic zoning is conducted\u00a0like\u00a0any other<\/em> type of zoning. \u00a0Special districting requirements such as Austin’s are unusual and are usually enacted at the behest of real estate interests and private property rights fundamentalists.<\/p>\n

What is now clear over forty years later is that Austin’s historic preservation program has become inequitable, one-sided, and unfair. \u00a0It not only subsidizes the preservation of an elitist conception of the city’s history, the program also buttresses city-driven practices of gentrification. \u00a0In short, a program that should be protecting the heritage of every culture in our city is instead administered in keeping with the cult of minimally regulated real estate development that has characterized the recent history of our city. \u00a0In doing so, our city’s leaders are not only violating the spirit and letter of historic preservation laws and violating basic standards of professional practice, they are engaging in deliberate acts of institutional racism. \u00a0What is also problematic is this: \u00a0Austin’s minority taxpayers are subsidizing tax breaks for rich West Austinites and are not seeing their own history adequately reflected in Austin’s landscape.<\/span><\/p>\n

In this presentation<\/a> I made two years ago\u00a0before the Austin Human Rights Commission concerning the Rosewood Courts historic zoning case, I pointed out some of the hypocrisies and racial inequities in the city’s historic preservation policies and practices. \u00a0I could elaborate on them with further quantitative and qualitative data–further discussion of the role of real estate development (and Betty Baker) in the destruction of Clarksville in particular–but in the interest of saving time and space I will now focus on what I see as the most important fixes our city should undertake in order to satisfactorily reboot our city’s historic preservation program. \u00a0I also encourage you to read or re-read my February 7, 2017 blog post<\/a> in which I offered preliminary reform remarks in the wake of the most recent audit of the historic preservation program.<\/span><\/p>\n

Basic Principles<\/h3>\n