What Are We Preserving?

But as we have seen, the promise of these façades was never intended as a true offer. To the workers, forced to enter through their monumental portals into a world without toilets or other middle class niceties, their grandiose statement was always plainly false. For the middle class public, it only now appears incongruous, as they pass through the entrances for the first time. In fact, the true historic nature of the structures is clearly expressed by the incongruity between exterior and interior. To the extent that the interiors are now to be bowdlerized and polished, that character defining relationship is compromised, and the historic expression of the structure is concealed.

Pier One has been converted to the new headquarters for the Port of San Francisco. The rehabilitation was awarded federal tax credits, was recognized by the AIA and the Urban Land Institute, and has generally been applauded among preservationists. Yet the project not only destroyed the important sense of contrast between façade and interior, it eliminated the separate identities of pier shed and bulkhead building. Any sense of the historic work environment of the pier is now completely gone. This loss was allowed because the National Register nomination made no case for historic significance based on the labor history of the property. The officially recognized history, in other words, is blind to any meaningful association with the work that gave form to the structures. Another project already approved for Pier Three actually includes the demolition of the remaining portion of the pier shed, and exhibits the same dismissal of the historic importance of the labor, and its social context, for which the buildings were created.

Although usually not recognized, this problem lurks in the preservation of many historic work sites, for spatial practices are seldom neutral—and historic preservation is a type of spatial practice. The problem is particularly troublesome where questions of class are involved, as here, because class remains one of the least understood social constructs in American culture. But most preservationists come from the middle class. As a result, historical class associations are seldom perceived during rehabilitation projects, so their physical manifestations, often seen as crude, unpleasant, or even frightening in middle class eyes, are easily destroyed.

On the San Francisco waterfront, the destruction of working class memory includes also the removal of memorials, such as the Andrew Furuseth bust dedicated in 1941 in front of the Ferry Building, honoring the founder of the Sailor’s Union of the Pacific; the SS Baton Rouge Victory memorial to merchant seamen killed in Vietnam, now displaced by Cupid’s Span; and the sale for scrap of two National Register eligible pile driving barges, the last of their kind anywhere and rich repositories of the history of the working people who actually constructed the waterfront currently being reappropriated.

What can be done? Preservationists must come to see that their own cultural vision interferes with their fully understanding workplace structures. When arguments such as those in this paper are presented, a common response from professionals is that they do not have the expertise to analyze the resources in this way. Although not as readily stated, there is also an assumption that it just isn’t important enough to do so. It is certainly true that most preservation professionals do not have the needed expertise. The obvious answer is to partner with those who do. This must include not only labor and social historians, but whenever possible, people who actually worked in the structures during their period of significance.

As for the question of the importance of this historic context; there should be a beginning presumption that the program for the building included the organization and command of the work it contained. The early factory system itself was created in order to bring formerly dispersed workers together under the greater direction of the employer, thus creating the need for a new building type. Every industrial workplace, from textile mills to office buildings, descends from that lineage. That is—every industrial workplace was an instrument of social control. Any analysis of a workplace that does not recognize this is seriously flawed.

Most importantly for preservation, without this understanding, it is not possible to identify character defining features conclusively, and therefore not possible to protect the integrity of the structure. In order to do a proper job of rehabilitation, and not to be complicit in the eradication of working class history, preservation must come to see that it is necessary to partner not only with different people—but with different understandings.