Editorial
Preservation owes a lot to Henry Ford. But in the process of making people aware of the value of the past, he made a number of mistakes. One that modern experts find most objectionable was his uprooting of buildings from their original sites, thereby stripping them of their historical context, all in the name of historical preservation. (The above came from a Detroit Free Press newspaper article from, I believe, the early 1980's.) I've heard this argument countless times during discussions. I've also read newspaper and magazine editorials concerning this practice. And it never ceases to amaze me that some can't see the forest for the trees. Case in point are the many small localized historic structures dotting the maps that still remain on (or very close to) their original site, such as my own hometown's 1872 school house. We've had many, many public activities held inside the school house, much of it in such a way as to give publi...