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HomeMy WebLinkAbout06-27-16 CHC Correspondence - Item 1 (Schmidt)CII Y OF SAN LUIS voiary JUN 2 4 2016 COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT RICHARD SCHMIDT, ARCHITECT June 24, 2016 Re: 71 Palomar Dear Cultural Heritage Commission, Meeting: . C Stem: e-mail: slobuild@yahoo.com I urge you to reject the design before you for 71 Palomar on grounds it completely fails to deal kindly, sympathetically, or appropriately with this important historic site. It is a shame the designer doesn't care to recognize the uniqueness of this site and the greater care working with it requires of him than, say, dealing with a flat site with no historic building or vegetation on it. But since he isn't treating the site well, it's up to you to make sure he does if this project is to continue. This site is unique in our city, with its on-site topography determining the sensitive placement of house and many of the trees; its hillside location offering views outwards from the site but also views upward from below to the ancient forest on the city's skyline; the somewhat formal arrangement of trees, house entry, walkway indicating whoever laid it out was familiar with the classical architectural language of approach, entry, and object placement, as well as sensitivity to what happens as a person moves in time through space. The proposed plan destroys all of this by mucking with the underlying fabric of the site — moving the house, cutting the trees, destroying the axial spatial movement to the house entry thoughtfully laid out by someone in the past. This site is the nearest we have to the sort of dignity one finds in a hilltop park in Florence, gazing out over the city to the mountains beyond while surrounded by beautiful trees (including a lovely Italian stone pine — how appropriate for the Florentine analogy!) in a peaceful place. Yet this project proposal ignores all of this specialness and proposes something that's Anyplace LA to displace it. It is your job to see this sort of cultural heritage atrocity doesn't proceed. The proposed development has been composed with zero sympathy for the specific site and for the complex arrangement of built and growing cultural artifacts on the site, and that is the problem. It is possible to do a sympathetic design on this site — I am an architect, and thus I know this to be true. There is no reason for the CHC to jump onboard with an inappropriate concept of what to do here. Your duty, instead, is to understand and articulate what are important cultural heritage features and relationships which any new development must respect. That is not an unreasonable thing to ask — in fact, it's the way things should be done in a good city. Now, more detail about my thoughts on 71 Palomar, shaped by my background as historian/horticulturalist/architect. You are the Cultural Heritage Committee though it often appears you think of yourselves as only the Historic Buildings Committee. By that I mean the notion of protecting special places, special sites, like 71 Palomar, still appears to seem a bit exotic. That's understandable since the early -1980s study that initiated the city's cultural heritage program was a building survey focusing on Victorian era houses. (This bias was so strong that in the late 1980s when I nominated an industrial building to the National Register, your predecessor committee actually opposed it, while staff at the SHPO said "Thank goodness, finally something other than a Victorian house." With their help, the nomination was successful.) At the time of our city program's creation, the notion of preservation of historic landscapes was not yet mainstream. The professional effort at expanding cultural heritage preservation to include historic landscape preservation had barely got underway, via an important conference at New Harmony, IN, in 1978. But the idea was a strong one, and it caught on quickly. In 1981, the National Park Service recognized cultural landscapes as a National Register preservation category, and UNESCO followed in 1992 with its definition of sites as World Heritage cultural landscapes, exhibiting a blend of human and natural forces. So SLO's cultural heritage program has come of age during the period when cultural landscape preservation grew into a major part of the cultural heritage movement. So what is a cultural landscape? The National Park Service (NPS hereafter) defines them this way: Cultural landscapes "are composed of a number of character -defining features which, individually or collectively contribute to the landscape's physical appearance as they have evolved over time. In addition to vegetation and topography, cultural landscapes may include ... circulation features, such as roads, paths, steps, and walls; buildings; and furnishings, including fences, benches, lights and sculptural objects." Vegetation, topography, paths, and building all compose important aspects of the cultural landscape of 71 Palomar and define the site's significant and unique historic fabric. " properties have -a cultural landscape component that is NP continues Most histoneP ._...._.....p integral to the significance of the resource... A historic property consists of all its cultural resources—landscapes, buildings, archeological sites and collections." This last statement is of utmost importance to understand: deliberations about the cultural heritage of 71 Palomar need to consider much more than just the building and whether it's OK to move it. To explain: The CHC has already designated the house as important, but that's just the beginning of what this site deserves. The entire site should be considered as a cultural landscape, of which the building is but one part. If one looks only at the building, and not at the site as a historical/cultural artifact, one misses the bulk of what there is of cultural value. I'm urging the CHC to look at the whole site — historic building, historic grounds layout, historic trees, topography, placement of building and plantings with respect to topography, views to and from the site — as what has cultural heritage significance for our community and what merits cultural heritage protection. I realize this is no small effort. Being able to see and understand such things takes both practice and effort. As my favorite 19th century polymath George Perkins Marsh remarked, for anyone "the power most important to cultivate, and, at the same time, hardest to acquire, is that of seeing what is before him." In our digital age, it seems to be becoming even more difficult to see what is before us. But we all need to try to see what this site offers, because what it offers is so rich compared to our customary daily environment. And if the proposed project goes ahead, nearly everything this site offers will be destroyed. The NPS requires "integrity" for National Register qualification. By integrity it means "the authenticity of a property's historic identity, evinced by the survival of physical characteristics that existed during the property's historic or prehistoric period. The seven qualities of integrity as defined by the National Register Program are location, setting, feeling, association, design, workmanship, and materials." When one starts moving historic buildings about on their historic cultural landscape, one creates a muddle, disturbs the meaning, significance and integrity of the place. For example, moving the Sandford House and cutting the historic trees as applicant proposes totally destroys three of the essential aspects of integrity considered for National Register qualification: location, setting and feeling. There is no good reason for this to happen on this site. Consider just one of the simplest cultural heritage relationships that would be destroyed, the classical axial approach to the house, which was laid out with utmost thought by someone in the past. Passing between two vertical elements is a classic way architects and vernacular designers alike use to denote entry. At the Sandford House, one does this twice, along a walkway that leads, on axis, from a viewing platform at the top of the stairs from the street, to the front door: First one passes between two Eugenia trees, then, continuing in a straight line, between two Araucaria trees. One moves through the space between top of stairs and front door by entering this "propylaea" formed by trees before continuing through the open. This time/space passage is punctuated by a culturally -recognizable object composed of trees instead of stone. YET ALL OF THIS — THE EXPERIENCE OF THE PASSAGE AND THE PHYSICAL RELATIONSHIPS AMONG ARTIFACTS -- WOULD BE DESTROYED BY THE PROPOSED DEVELOPMENT'S INSENSITIVITY. Moving the house, cutting the trees, putting a mundane zig-zag walk from relocated stairs to relocated house. Why should this wanton destruction of historic fabric and meaning be allowed when it's not necessary? Moving the house and wholesale cutting of trees also violates NPS rules for National Register qualification: These rules require "identifying, retaining and preserving the existing spatial organization and land patterns of the landscape as they have evolved over time." NPS continues: "Individual features in the landscape should never be viewed in isolation, but in relationship to the landscape as a whole... "Overall, it is the arrangement and the interrelationship of these character -defining features as they existed during the period of significance that is most critical to consider ... As such, landscape features should always be assessed as they relate to the property as a whole." That is the NPS directive for treating a cultural heritage property like 71 Palomar. As you can see, it requires much more than looking only at the house. I'm asking that the CHC do just that — look at the whole site as what's of cultural heritage significance, not simply at a building which all by itself, divorced from its setting, lacks much meaning. I am confident if you do that, you will agree the proposed design is inappropriate and must be disapproved. Thank you. Richard Schmidt PS. Three additional comments: 1. The Earthscapes report stating there's no NPS/NRHP problem with moving the building is clearly wrong. The NPS states as much in warning that "relocating buildings, structures, furnishings and objects, thus destroying or diminishing the historic relationship between the landscape and these features" could be grounds for disqualification. 2. The "arborist report" rationalizing removal of 49 of the 51 trees on site in fact offers no cogent justification for any of the removals (the most substantive critique, of the eucs, can be fixed with corrective pruning), and furthermore, the arborist was hired by the developer, so delivered what the developer wanted. As it's said, "If somebody's paycheck depends on saying certain things, the person says those things." 3. The trees are important habitat for songbirds (many of them city -designated "species of concern"), raptors and owls. The initial study ignores this. This is a major failure of the city's environmental review. Bird habitat loss is an important issue that must be weighed in any evaluation of tree removal.