Recent social networking has helped me to delve deeper into the world of historic preservation in architecture. It’s one particular discussion thread that has me thinking. It seems that preservation isn’t always about architectural history in America, Britain, and Canada; sometimes it provides poignant reminders of zeitgeist.

Such is the case for David Rotenstein, a consulting historian. Rotenstein found his work on a residential project facilitated significantly when a bevy of previous residents and neighbors helped him climb deeper and deeper into the home’s 1930s roots. The owner of a neighboring house was particularly thrilled to talk to Rotenstein about the original community, going back to when it consisted of only two houses. Her story reminds us of history’s gravity.

Images Courtesy of David Rotenstein, consultant in historic preservation

In this case, the story of a subdivision outside Atlanta, Georgia meant looking at race relations. When she was a little girl, Sandra’s parents had an African American maid. The maid once babysat her not in her own house, as was their custom, but in her house, or what she called a ‘little shack’. Spending the night with the maid in a segregated neighborhood introduced the little girl to a whole different type of residence. It wasn’t exactly the white, upper-middle class life she led.

‘Nostalgia and memory play critical roles in transforming the past into history,’ Rotenstein wrote. Indeed.

An interlocutor from the UK exemplified that point.

‘We had some (deeds) written in olde English (very difficult to read until you got into the swing of it) on goat-skin with very impressive seals,’ she wrote.

That reminds me of an American tradition. Builders, at least in the old days, and perhaps some today with a penchant for traditions, had a habit of burying something like newspapers within the walls of new construction. (Or in Mafia flicks, they’d be corpses of someone like John Gotti.) Imagine doing major renovations of the dining room in the pre-War house you just moved into. You’re knocking down a wall, only to find a pair of shoes—which was a superstitious tradition in New England—or a newspaper or mementos. What would it tell you about your home’s history? How would that affect your life there? Could it even affect the renovation and new design?

Another, final tidbit of appeal from this online discussion came to us from Canada. One member discusses his experience working with the Parkwood Estate, a national historic site in Oshawa, Ontario. Meeting family members and former household staff members of a historic estate finally revealed the answer to a story that had plagued many who worked at and visited the estate. A daughter of the autobaron who owned it helped solve the mystery of a curiously shaped hem of trees on the estate: a small plane crashed into one of the gardens in 1930.

If you’re interested in more stories of historic preservation read my article about a couple of houses in Lima, Peru. You’ll read about an Italian missionary restores a house built in 1900 with the historical assistance of two elderly sisters who’d lived there in the early 20^th century, all the while discovering that it had been the residence of a group of hari krishnas, and the house of Victor Delfín, one of Peru’s most famous artists.

What makes you interested in historic preservation? The stories or the historical values of design and vernacular?

Sandra’s parents

A version of this story originally ran in Hong Kong-based Perspective magazine.