Hi All!!….The Practical Historian, here.

The word practical has a slightly different meeting to each of us.  My dictionary favorite says : likely to succeed or be effective in real circumstances; feasible.

I don’t think any one thing makes you practical.  It is a mind set that you either live by or have to conform to in order to achieve or afford the task at hand.  I have spent all my life relating to the practical side.  It has been a life’s journey finding harmony between practicality and creative design.  They can be successful together.  In fact, I believe they make for the best type of architecture.  I have found through the years that historical preservation is full of contradictions.  The largest being the impractical way historical preservation goes about re-purposing our buildings.  Keeping the old only for  the sake of it being old isn’t what I consider practical.  Staying with a material that will require ongoing maintenance seems unreasonable.  Forcing a specific way of construction that doesn’t provide the desired result is a waste of time and dollars.  One doesn’t admire the old building because it is simply old or needs attention.  It is admired because of its architecture.

As we develop well into the 21st century, technology creates yet another form of conflict within historical renovation.  Have you noticed that the world around us has become consistently more detailed and complicated?  Information online is now accessible to us all.  Initially it was easy to understand allowing us to formulate a plan and then execute.  Unfortunately, there is always someone else out there smarter than the last guy!  In order to prove their intelligence, they add more detail to the previous set of information.  One simple Google search for your downtown building will provide you with so much information that you’ll need hours of extra time and a doctoral degree in order to find and execute what it is you want to do.

If you own a downtown building, the world should thank you for preserving our original sense of community.  If downtown no longer existed, all of us would certainly miss the sense of community and fellowship it provides us.  It is important that there are viable options available to you so that your small contribution to history can be achievable.  If you ask me, that starts with being practical.