Preservation in the News

I've been working on several "meatier" posts, but am in a hurry today and wanted to post these interesting recent preservation articles from the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun, Boston Globe, and Newsday before I lose track of them.

• Preservation becoming an illusion (David Bahlman and Royce Yeater, Chicago Sun Times, 04/07/07), which describes the Commission on Chicago Landmarks' recent approval "...of a developer's plan to dismantle the 11-story Farwell Building on North Michigan Avenue, in order to erect a new structure that would house retail and office space along with a parking garage to serve a new 40-story condominium tower." Bahlman is president of Landmarks Illinois; Yeater is Midwest regional director of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
  

• The danger of becoming skin deep, Chicago historic buildings become shells as new rules of preservation are letting city's history slip away (Blair Kamin, architecture critic, Chicago Tribune, Sunday, 04/08/07; free log-in may be required). Includes a slide show (14 slides) illustrating recent "facadectomy" projects in Chicago.

• Urban puzzle (Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh, Boston Globe, 03/31/07), a review of three recently published books about gentrification: There Goes the Neighborhood, by William Julius Wilson and Richard P. Taub; There Goes the 'Hood, by Lance Freeman; and Black on the Block, by Mary Patillo. Mr. Venkatesh, a professor of sociology and African-American Studies at Columbia University is the author of Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor.
  

• NYC home to nation's only high school arts preservation program (Emily Zeugner, Newsday, 04/08/07). Ms. Zeugner writes about the Preservation Arts and Technology Program at the Brooklyn High School of the Arts which was founded in 2000.