What large North American cities have done the best job with historic preservation?

[Manitopiaaa]

Best
Boston (North End being their 'Penn Station' blunder that ended urban renewal)
Miami (remarkable how Miami Beach's Art Deco district is still perfectly intact)
Milwaukee
Montreal
New York (Robert Moses era was traumatic but brief and relatively minor, though we still get one sad pre-war getting demolished eyery few years)
Philadelphia
Pittsburgh (there's blight, but their Downtown isn't hollowed out like so many others)
San Francisco
Washington

Worst
Atlanta
Baltimore (still destroying rowhomes like its 1965)
Cincinnati (historically, they've since repented)
Detroit
Houston
Kansas City
Omaha (Jobbers Canyon)
Saint Louis (the "King of Historic Destruction" imo)
Toronto (facadectomies are crimes against humanity)

[daniel]

The best kind of historic preservation is not doing it at all, cities should be changing with time.

I don't know if there is any large city that doesn't have any historic preservation, but that would be my answer.

[DCReid]

Originally Posted by daniel

The best kind of historic preservation is not doing it at all, cities should be changing with time.

I don't know if there is any large city that doesn't have any historic preservation, but that would be my answer.

Probably the best cities are the old small ones that stopped growing. They could be the gold mining towns in the west, the factory ones in the east and midwest, and the textile ones in the south. Of the bigger ones, Quebec City comes to mind. For most of its history, larger North America cities tended to want to build new when it deems buildings as 'old' or ' no longer useful' rather than trying to adapt them to new uses. That has changed somewhat.

[muertecaza]

Phoenix is pretty bad. Mostly that's a function of the fact that we ain't got no history to begin with. But the anxiety over trying to preserve something leads to funny crusades, such as saving a decrepit hot-pink liquor store, built in 1957, on the questionable basis of it being an example of googie architecture.

This blog shows the biggest losses for Phoenix over the years, and while I certainly wish those buildings hadn't been lost, I don't think their loss were tragedies on the scale of some other cities.

[MAC123]

Originally Posted by daniel

The best kind of historic preservation is not doing it at all, cities should be changing with time.

I don't know if there is any large city that doesn't have any historic preservation, but that would be my answer.

I sincerely hope that you're joking.

[MonkeyRonin]

Definitely not Boston.


https://www.wbur.org/news/2015/10/15...st-end-exhibit

[galleyfox]

Chicago gives lip service to preservation, but the instinct isn’t strong. Nowadays, it’s about pragmatism. The city usually won’t demolish a building if it’s still structurally sound, but if a bigger development comes along, oh well. Rehabs often make the most financial sense (Old Post Office, Thompson Center) so preservationists do get their victories.

The full list of demolitions would make an adamant preservationist jump off a cliff from despair, because most would have been iconic buildings in any other city — though several of the later replacements are notable works themselves.


Federal Building
Replaced by Mies Van Der Rohe Federal Center


Chicago Stock Exchange,
Replaced by 30 N LaSalle


Masonic Temple
Replaced by Block 37


Home Insurance Building
Replaced by Art Deco Field Building

[Steely Dan]

Could any large US city ever be deemed "good" at historic preservation?

Given the uncountable number of treasures that were ripped down from coast to coast during the urban dark ages, I would answer with a resounding HELL NO!

[pip]

I would say Boston. Aside from the West End and Longwood Medical area many decades ago Boston is a modal for preservation since especially considering all the money that is flowing through that city.

[SFBruin]

I'm not quite sure, but I think that San Francisco has done a pretty good job, with a large number of Victorians still intact, along with a number of other historical buildings.

[photoLith]

Pittsburgh def is not good on the historic preservation front. They wiped out entire historic row house neighborhoods in the 30s-90s. We still have few designated historic districts.

One of the best is NYC, huge chunks of the city are preserved in very strict historic districts. I love looking at this GIS map. https://nyclpc.maps.arcgis.com/apps/...8b1eede432022b

[SIGSEGV]

New Orleans?

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by Manitopiaaa

Best

Philadelphia
Pittsburgh (there's blight, but their Downtown isn't hollowed out like so many others)

Like almost all older US cities, both Philadelphia and Pittsburgh wiped out large tracts of their historic cores. And, uh... Philadelphia certainly has blight too.


Pittsburgh's greatest destruction was the Lower Hill District (below), but it also eradicated wide swaths of the Northside and East Liberty neighborhoods... not to mention numerous early skyscrapers in its downtown and every single structure that existed on what is now Gateway Center and Point State Park.

[xzmattzx]

Las Vegas has to be the worst. The rare buildings from before the 1930s are still being demolished. A couple in Downtown Las Vegas from its railroad beginnings were demolished in the last 5-6 years.

Then take the Strip. The Mirage is set to be demolished (I think) to make way for Hard Rock Las Vegas. The Desert Inn, built in 1997, was demolished in 2004 to make way for the Wynn. Something from the 1980s is considered historic on the Strip now.

[SAN Man]

Savannah, GA!

The city oozes with history on every street, corner and building in the center city. It's considered a small city today, but it feels like it was being planned to be a huge city back in the 18th and 19th century with the street grid, to the grand boulevards with the small parks evenly spread throughout the city, to the giant Forsyth Park that reminds me a little bit of Central Park with grandiose fountains, all of the churches, the row houses and the interaction with the river with the port.

I took these photos on a recent trip to Savannah this fall.

Savannah Rowhouses by Manuel Sanchez, on Flickr

Savannah Rowhouses2 by Manuel Sanchez, on Flickr

Savannah Burial Ground by Manuel Sanchez, on Flickr

[goat314]

I wouldn't put St. Louis in a worst category. Most of the city is still a freaking living museum. In fact, I would argue that in many areas of the city the emphasis on saving history has prevented some pretty solid urban development in recent years. I think I read somewhere that St. Louis has one of the oldest housing stocks and a national leader in historic preservation. The problem in 2022 St. Louis is not preservation, but rather weak demand.

[craigs]

Boston may not be the worst, but no city that wiped out as much truly amazing, truly historic and unique urban core--we're talking fully one-third of 'cowpath' Boston--deserves top marks for best historic preservation. Scollay Square, the greater West End, everything along the route of the (original elevated) Central Artery--seen in the photo below--was priceless and irreplaceable. Some 20,000 Bostonians were displaced, their former neighborhoods obliterated. And the photo posted earlier in this thread of this same area only showed the beginning of the atrocity, which extended in a wedge all the way into the heart of downtown Boston.


Boston Public Library


Boston Public Library


source

[dave8721]

Probably New Orleans, Charleston or Savannah.

[photoLith]

Washington DC, to my knowledge the city largely never annihilated large chunks of its rowhouse neighborhoods like every other major city has.

[BnaBreaker]

Smaller cities that didn't experience a whole lot of growth during the last half of the 20th century probably get the nod here. Savannah, Charleston, etc.

Every other city either developed after that period for the most part, or demolished most of it's core in the name of "progress."