Access the rest of the Why Do Old Places Matter series.

Old places embody our civic, state, and national, and universal identity.

Jamestown. Mount Vernon. Independence Hall. Old South Meetinghouse. Valley Forge. The Missions of California. Fort McHenry. The Alamo. Sutter’s Mill. Harpers Ferry. Fort Sumter. Gettysburg. Appomattox. Little Bighorn. Pearl Harbor. Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. The very recitation of these names conjures the long timeline of American history. These places—and countless others—embody the history and principles of the United States. For generations, these places have inspired Americans to learn our uniquely American story.

In America, we’ve had policies to preserve places of national identity for more than 75 years, and patriotism and national identity have been key drivers of movements to save old places.¹ But we aren’t as single-minded or as uncritical about our civic or national identity as we may have once been. As I listen to people talk about the reasons that old places matter, I noticed that, although many people mentioned national identity and patriotism as a reason that old places matter, others are reticent to refer to national identity—or patriotism—as a reason for saving old places. This reticence seems to reflect what American academic and literary critic Edward Said described as the “… vexed issue of nationalism and national identity, of how memories of the past are shaped in accordance with a certain notion of what “we” or, for that matter, “they” really are.²

What is this “vexed” issue of national identity, and how do we responsibly talk about places that reflect our national—or other identities? Many of the places we first deemed worthy of preservation were saved to celebrate and promote an idea of a shared American heritage—essentially an American identity. The Daughters of the American Revolution, the National Society of The Colonial Dames of America, and many other state or local organizations saved old places to promote American ideals. These places inspired people about American history and American institutions, while also acting to form an American identity. The places we sought to preserve represented what we valued from the past. At the same time they also represented what those who saved these places aspired for America to be.

Countless writers and scholars have criticized the selective choice of what was preserved as part of our national identity, by whom, and for what purpose.³ As someone who has cared about old places for most of my life, I am painfully aware of the exclusive character of many early preservation efforts, and the conscious attempts to use old places to tell only a selective view of American history—essentially to define American identity in a way that left people or issues out. Slavery and enslaved people were not acknowledged at plantation houses. Native Americans were treated as an inhuman enemy at frontier sites. The presence of Irish, German, and Eastern European people was not recognized at a host of places that they built, and where they lived and worked. For many years, mill workers, farmers, mechanics, and shopkeepers were not visible in the old places that were preserved as sites of our national identity.

The process of redefining who “we” are is continuous, and today our old places increasingly reflect a more diverse history. Lowell, a textile mill town in Massachusetts, has been a National Park since 1978. Steel mills are preserved in Pittsburgh. The reality of slavery is acknowledged at plantations. In my view, it is critically important for people who care about old places to acknowledge the sometime exclusive history of the preservation movement, and to continue to push to have all the stories included in the places that define who we are as Americans. Americans argue vociferously about what our country is, who it is for, and what it means. These debates help reshape and re-form and—hopefully—deepen our understanding of history and identity. The old places that embody our identity are the perfect venues for those discussions and debates.

Nationalism and national identity have a dark history. One of the surprises of Rome for me is the prominent presence of buildings from the Fascist era. Mussolini made dramatic changes to the city plan and built hundreds of buildings, many of which consciously sought to tie the Fascist regime with the image of Imperial Rome. The buildings are often monumental, stripped-down versions of Classical buildings—a distinctive style developed to create a new national identity, just as Americans built Greek and Roman style buildings to tie our nation to the republican and democratic ideals of the classical world. The Fascist identity Mussolini sought to create was utterly discredited with the defeat of the Axis in World War II. But the buildings remain and are actively used today. People differ about whether and how the meaning and history of these buildings should be acknowledged and recognized.

Reynold Reynolds, a filmmaker and a Fellow here at the American Academy, shared with me a film he made about the demolition of the Palace of the Republic in Berlin, the former home of the People’s Assembly of East Germany. The Palace was originally built in 1973-74 on the site of the Berliner Schloss, (which was heavily damaged by bombs in WWII and destroyed by the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in 1950), perhaps the most symbolically powerful site in Berlin. As a representation of the ideals of the GDR, the Palace was without question a symbol of a national identity. But it was a national identity that was no longer valued when Germany was reunited in 1990. Despite the fact that the building represented a discredited regime, Reynolds’ project shows that many Berliners viewed the demolition as the erasure of their history, and the loss of the opportunity for that history to be acknowledged and transformed. As Reynolds said, “… thousands of citizens demonstrated against the planned demolition and hoped the building would be protected against historical censorship, but alas, one day, twenty years after the fall of the Berlin wall, the Palace completely disappeared.”⁶

The continued presence of old places permits the acknowledgement of history—and former identities—and the transformation of identity over time—the necessary and continuous critical revision of identity, informed by the past. Monticello now doesn’t hide the reality of Jefferson’s life with the enslaved people he owned, although that was not always the case. The enslaved people and their descendants—both literal and metaphorical—are now visible and present at the site. Monticello is the venue for understanding this history, which leads to a deeper understanding of our national identity.

I have heard people say that identity is different in America than in European countries, which have a more homogenous culture. As French historian Pierre Nora stated, “In the United States, for example, a country of plural memories and diverse traditions, historiography is more pragmatic. Different interpretations of the Revolution and the Civil War do not threaten the American tradition because, in some sense, no such thing exists….”⁷Although I don’t necessarily agree with Nora’s statement, as I think about old places that represent an American national identity, it seems to me to be very American to voice critiques about that identity and to express diverse viewpoints about what the place means. Our old places of national identity can be the forum for this very American expression of views. What could be more patriotic than that?

Recently, I spoke with Jukka Jokilehto, who has been developing ideas about universal cultural value for the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM), about the fraught nature of identity. Jokilehto shared a critically important idea during our conversation. Places that reflect universal human values also reflect the diversity of cultural identities. In other words, places that are important to all of us arise from places that are important to some of us. When I spoke with Sofia Bosco, the Rome director of Fondo Ambiente Italiano (FAI), an Italian preservation organization, about old places in Italy, she clearly didn’t think about old places in Italy only as Italian. The FAI website features people all over the world talking about why places in Italy are important to them. As she told me: “Italy is a public museum of the history of everyone...the physical identity of a country is more than a library or a warehouse. It’s there for you, for everyone.”

Old places embody our ever-changing shared identities and serve as tangible sites for transforming identity. While we should guard against the dangers of nationalism, these old places, through the diversity of identities, reflect our universal humanity.

I’d love to hear what you think about the “vexed issues” of shared identity, national identity, and old places.