President's Note: The Power of Place
Places hold power. They can inspire awe, like the gardens at Filoli in Woodside, California. They can fill us with joy as they strengthen our resolve, as at Sojourner Truth Legacy Plaza in Akron, Ohio. They can call us to form a more perfect union, as happens at James Madison’s Montpelier in Orange County, Virginia, or light a way through grief, as President Lincoln’s Cottage in Washington, D.C., does. And, like the Tenement Museum in New York City, they can connect us to others—those who lived in the past and those around us—and strengthen our sense of belonging as Americans.
Most human beings have, I think, felt this power. We’ve stood in places whose stories have moved us and left us open to new experiences we couldn’t fathom before. Grateful for such an unexpected gift, we’re also greedy for more.
I grew up in New Castle, Delaware, one of the oldest continuously occupied towns in its region, amid buildings dating from the turn of the 18th century. These sites, such as the Dutch House, hold layers of stories related to the people who have lived and worked in my town. Our living room, we think, was once a jail. I celebrated more than one family birthday in the Arsenal, a former restaurant that was housed in a 19th-century munitions depot. Even though as a child I knew little about these places, I felt connected and grateful to the generations before me, because their work and legacy opened me to new ways of seeing the world.
I was also greedy for more. When as a graduate student I traveled to Rome for the first time, I visited the Basilica of San Clemente, a structure composed of multiple layers, the oldest of which dates from the first century C.E. Its inhabitants have included worshippers of the god Mithras, Ambrosian monks, and Irish Dominicans. Imagining and learning about their worlds transformed what I could see in my own.
People who become preservationists recognize the effort it takes to make such experiences possible for everyone. The power places hold can lie dormant or even push people away unless it’s thoughtfully activated by a vast network of artisans, architects, scholars, attorneys, teachers, developers, entrepreneurs, town council members, activists, policy makers, philanthropists, community groups, and congregations. That network includes each of you. As we gratefully mark our 75th anniversary and anticipate an exciting future, I and the National Trust thank you.
