Don't Erase Our Past

June 14, 2011

Dear Editor:

It’s easy to understand why the recent actions of the Landmarks Commission in regard to the Town Square Park have been so misunderstood. ("WHAT I SAY -- Landmark Inflation," June 13, 2011) The work of the Commission is, unfortunately, by its very structure a nay-saying kind of business as the Commission remains silent on nearly everything that happens in this city until there is a negative impact on a landmark. This is actually quite a rare occurrence.

Santa Monica has few landmarks and each is evaluated based on its significance to Santa Monica’s discreet history. In the 1930s demand for the preservation of historic battlefields led to the development of Historic Preservation policy. The Secretary of the Interior determined that landmarks designation should be done on a local level because residents have the greatest access to the particulars of the back-story of their hometowns.

In Santa Monica less than 1 percent of all the properties even have potential to be landmarked, and only a third of that 1 percent actually are landmarked. It’s important for the integrity of any city to preserve these places especially when they are so rare.

When the new Town of Santa Monica was established it was settled primarily by hard working folks with conservative American values who came from farms in the mid-west to improve the quality of their lives. These hopeful, industrious, prosaic folks dominated our town up until the 1970s when Hollywood refugees and scrappy artistic types brought a much more progressive mindset to the forefront.

Forty years later, we are already forgetting how recent the changeover was and are anxious to erase our past to substantiate the claim that Santa Monica is “World Class.” In fact, a real world-class city celebrates all the layers of character it has known, telegraphing that to its residents and visitors, and creating a depth of engagement that cannot be created any other way.

It’s true that we don’t have anything that rises to the level of the Chrysler Building here in Santa Monica though we do have a few structures deemed to have national significance. But the point of Landmark Designation is not only to preserve the great monuments of engineering and design but to also preserve just a little bit of all the kinds of places that used to be, so our city develops a layered continuum of the past, the present and leaves plenty of room for the future when the next new ideas that the generations will be coming up with will improve on what we have done.

Nina Fresco
Landmarks Commissioner