The Death of a Thousand Cuts

When a building or a district gets landmarked, it is not about restricting development or creating some historic theme park. It is simply the recognition that pieces of our culture, the stories of our common heritage were carved in our buildings. This is something that belongs to all of us and needs our protection. That heritage is no less significant for a workers cottage than it is for a mansion or skyscraper.
For the most part Chicago’s landmark ordinance, realizing that a building needs some flexibility to thrive, limits itself to a building’s exteriors. It puts most of its energy into the portions of a building that is visible from the street.
The ordinance can’t make you restore your building or put back elements that were lost before it was landmarked. Instead, it directs the Landmarks Commission and their staff (who oversee the ordinance) to identify those portions of a building that are still original or significant and gives them the power to protect them.
Sure they protect them from demolition, but that is rare. The grueling day to day work of these people is not protecting them from the wrecking ball, it is saving our heritage from the death of a thousand cuts.
Every new owner, every new tenant, every new manager looks up at the front of their building and says, “This would be better with….”.
The cuts all seem small: It needs a bigger cornice, I want French doors or a picture window.
The reasons all seem good: It’ll look more historic, no one is ever going to use that door again, I can’t sell a condo without a balcony and the latest buzzwords “adaptive reuse”.
But historic preservation is not about what your building could be. It is about saving what remains of what remains of what they once were.
Each little cut takes a piece of that away.
Enough cuts, and there is nothing left.

Paul K. Dickman