Read more at: The Kansas City Star

“Preservation” might call to mind old buildings filled with handcrafted furniture, documents and artifacts, all cordoned off and out of reach. We can no longer afford this perception. To meet the challenges our country faces, we must recognize how preserving old places creates housing, fosters economic opportunity and energizes neighborhoods. In a time of polarization, preservation can help rebuild connections to our histories and to each other, regardless of where we live or how we vote.

Old places hold more than artifacts. They tell layered stories of people who built them, lived or worked in them, reimagined them and pass through them now. Visitors sense this and get curious. Enter the Central Library here in Kansas City, and you’ll wonder: What did this building used to be? Who built it and why? How did this library come to be here? Those who explore Union Station will wonder how a 100-year-old train station became an amazing learning and entertainment hub in a thriving urban district. The history of Kansas City, its growth and transformations, echoes within these buildings.

Old places also hold the stories of our journey as a nation striving to honor the promise of our founding, proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence: All are created equal and each of us has unalienable rights. Visiting the places where American history happened connects our unfinished story with people in the past who fought to realize the Declaration’s promise.

That’s what 100 Americans did in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York, when they signed the Declaration of Sentiments, insisting women be accorded “all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of these United States.” It’s what Frederick Douglass did in Rochester on July 5, 1852, at Corinthian Hall, when he called the Declaration of Independence the “ring-bolt” in the chain of this nation’s destiny in a scathing indictment of slavery. “Would you have me argue,” Douglass asked, “that man is entitled to liberty? That he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it.” And it’s what Abraham Lincoln did at Gettysburg in 1863, when he called for “a new birth of freedom” in a nation committed to the idea that all are created equal.

Since the time of Lincoln and Douglass, many others have fought for the Declaration’s promise. Homer Plessy in 1892, and Rosa Parks 50 years later, acted on the principle that all are created equal when they challenged racially segregated seating on trains and buses. Fred Koramatsu stood up for unalienable rights in 1942 when he refused to move to an incarceration camp. Throughout the 2010s, Edith Windsor and Jim Obergefell insisted that the belief that all are created equal meant little unless it applied to everyone.

Americans today can reconnect with ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence by visiting historic sites and learning the stories these places hold. We can hear music at the Stonewall Inn and remember the day that galvanized the LGBTQ movement. We can walk the battlefield at Gettysburg where Lincoln’s words still echo, and tour Cedar Hill in Washington, D.C., where Douglass lived. We can visit the Women’s Rights National Historical Park and sit in Wesleyan Chapel, where Elizabeth Cady Stanton opened the first Women’s Rights Convention. And we can enter the Manzanar War Relocation Center, where 11,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated without cause in California, to learn their stories and to ensure that it never happens again.

These sites and others make up a commemorative landscape. They hold stories that reflect our nation’s boundless hopes and global roots. By inspiring, challenging and sometimes horrifying us, the unvarnished stories these sites tell unify us as a courageous, free people eager to learn, even when it’s hard, because we too strive to honor our nation’s founding values. Preserving such places enables all of us to be more informed, braver citizens committed to building a more perfect union for everyone.

Carol Quillen is president and CEO of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.