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PRESERVATION BY ADAPTATION
Is It Sustainable?

GREGORY DONOFRIO
University of Minnesota

Figure 1. Stereograph of butcher shops on the ground floor of Faneuil Hall Market, late nineteenth century.
Photographs of marketing activity on the interior of Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market prior to their redevelopments
in the mid-1970s are rare. (Bostonian Society, Boston Streets photograph collection, ca. 18551999, VW0001/004075)

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The historic preservation field is aggressively promoting itself as green. Adaptive reuse of historic buildings is
now widely considered a sustainable development practice. As with architecture in general, however, sustainability in preservation is too often narrowly framed around environmental issues such as the conservation of
materials, energy, and water. Commonly accepted definitions of sustainability recognize two other components:
economics and culture. Rarely does the preservation field consider sustainability as an entire system of interrelated environmental, economic, and social relationships, as envisioned by the Brundtland Report of 1987. This
article offers several reasons for the preservation field to engage in the full spectrum of sustainability concerns,
including economic and social issues. It then reexamines one of most famous case studies in the canon of
historic preservation in the United StatesFaneuil Hall Marketplace in Bostonto consider the extent to which
sustainability was addressed as a system of interrelated relationships. In conclusion, it suggests that preservation could be made more sustainable by drawing connections among several existing concepts, findings, and
methods developed by Randall Mason, Setha Low, and others.

You cannot ever really turn back the clock, or have things as they were. The
appropriate resolution of the hard realities of necessary change are what
preservation is all about. And yet every appropriate solution kills the old buildings
a little bit at the same time that it keeps them alivea practical and philosophical
paradox.1

Adaptive reuse involves many decisionsoften compromisesabout modifying historic buildings to accommodate new uses, a point emphasized by Ada Louise Huxtable, the
inuential architecture critic for the New York Times, in her review of Bostons Faneuil Hall
Marketplace, which reopened to enormous crowds during the summer of the United
States bicentennial in 1976. The well-documented success of Faneuil Hall demonstrated,
to the extent no other project had before it, that preservation was nancially feasible,
socially desirable, and environmentally responsible. In the contexts of the environmental
movement and the energy crisis of the 1970s, preservationists promoted adaptation of
old buildings for new uses as a form of recycling. While preservation saves and recycles,
however, Huxtables quote suggests that sometimes other valued aspects of old buildings
are destroyed in the process. She sensed that adaptation had changed Faneuil Halls tradi-

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tional social and economic character (Fig. 1). Although at that time she would not have
phrased the question in this way, today we might ask: Is adaptive reuse inherently sustainable?
Preservation advocates have recently become fond of saying that existing buildings
are the greenest ones of all, an expression that begins to reveal the degree to which the
natural environment has overshadowed other aspects of sustainability. New initiatives and
guidelines developed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the National Park
Service further reinforce this bias.2 To be sure, energy conservation is a critical global
concern. It is therefore appropriate and desirable that sustainability has become one of
the most visible concerns in the contemporary eld of historic preservation. However, as
with architecture in general, sustainability in preservation is too often narrowly framed
around environmental issues such as the conservation of materials, energy, and water.
Commonly accepted denitions of sustainability recognize two other components: economics and culture. Of course, preservation scholars and practitioners also address these
issues, but separately. Rarely does the preservation eld consider sustainability as an
entire system of interrelated environmental, economic, and social relationships, as envisioned by The Brundtland Report of 1987, and other similar documents.3
Signicant opportunities exist to implement sustainability in a more holistic manner,
perhaps addressing in the process some challenges and criticisms that have been expressed
about preservation over the past several decades in popular and scholarly literature from
both inside and outside of the eld. While preservationists have championed energy conservation since at least the 1970s (Fig. 2), there is also a lesser-known, but equally long,
discourse related to social and economic sustainability. This article offers several reasons
why the time is ripe, and the need is great, for the preservation eld to engage in the full
spectrum of sustainability concerns, including economic and social issues. It then reexamines one of most famous case studies in the canon of historic preservation in the United
StatesFaneuil Hall Marketplace in Bostonto consider the extent to which sustainability was addressed as a system of interrelated relationships. The ultimate objective here is
not to propose a radical new structure of preservation thinking, but rather to suggest the
connections among several existing concepts, ndings, and methods developed by Randall
Mason, Setha Low, and others.
As its inuence grows, preservation practices and norms, the fundamental policies of
which have changed relatively little over the past forty-ve years, have an ever-greater risk
or conversely an opportunity to affect the development of social and physical environments. Preservation has gained a level of popular acceptance and professional recognition
as a mainstream planning tool that would have been inconceivable even a decade or two
ago. One small but telling indicator of preservations ascendance: out of a total of thirty
neighborhoods, streets, and public spaces celebrated by the American Planning Association
in 2011 as Great Places in America, twenty-six (nearly 90 percent) were listed in the
National Register of Historic Places, if not also protected by local forms of designation.4
Success, however, brings its own challenges and draws additional critics. While preservationists should celebrate their achievements, they would also be wise to thoughtfully
contemplate criticismsfrom inside as well as outside the eld. There is always the poten-

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tial for cultural and political backlash. One recent example is the Cronocaos exhibit by Rem
Koolhaas and the partners of his rm OMA. Installed at New York Citys New Museum in
summer 2011, it argues that we are approaching a climax of preservation, a choice of
words that implies descent is imminent. According to reviews and interviews, Koolhaas
and company offer a battery of preservation critiques, among them: preservationists
already control too much of the world (12 percent of the globe by their estimate), and
they have perverted heritage places by marketing them as commodities.5
While indictments of this type are hardly originalarchitectural historian Reyner
Banham blamed preservationists for overzealous restrictions, mismanagement, and generally undermining the good life in his 1963 essay The Embalmed City6Koolhaass
point about the growing commodication of preserved sites is still worth taking seriously.
Increasingly sophisticated direct and indirect measurements overwhelmingly document
that preservation activities such as rehabilitation of historic property, landmark designation, heritage tourism, and museum operations are all sound investments with substantial
economic returns.7 Once widely perceived as an impediment to market-based development, preservation is increasingly seen as the enabler of, even the catalyst for, developer
prot, according to Alison Isenbergs history of downtown marketing.8 With so much
emphasis on dollars and cents, some rightfully question if economic considerations have
overshadowed preservations other traditional values such as history, aesthetics, and culture.9 If the very act of preservation changes or subverts some of the most valued qualities
of historic properties, how are we to mitigate this outcome in the interests of sustainability?

Delighted and Disconcerted by Adaptive Reuse

Programming old buildings with new uses became an economically viable and increasingly
popular downtown development strategy in the 1970s. The Advisory Council on Historic
Preservation trumpeted adaptive reuse as the clarion call of the new preservation in its
1978 report to the president and Congress of the United States.10 New federal rehabilitation tax incentives helped to level the economic playing eld between historic preservation
and new construction.11 A handful of books published at this time documented successful
case study examples in an effort to disseminate best practices.12 Finally, there was positive
proof of the nancial feasibility of recycling old buildings as ofces, housing, and retail
establishments to meet the demands of an increasingly postindustrial economy. Historic
preservation was seen by many as a tool to create distinctive and entertaining social and
retail environments downtown that could compete for economic activity with the suburbs.
Bostons Faneuil Hall, the rst of the so-called festival markets that inspired dozens
of imitations across the globe, became the public face for preservation in general and
adaptive reuse in particular. These retail-centered adaptations featuring food, unique boutiques, and sidewalk entertainments were enthusiastically patronized by middle-class consumers. Preservationists looked to them as the future of the movement.13 In the ensuing
decades, however, academics and architecture critics expressed mixed opinions about festival markets and the type of adaptive reuse associated with them, while some urban devel-

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Figure 2. National Trust for Historic Preservation, poster for Preservation Week, May 1117, 1980.
(National Trust for Historic Preservation; Old Town Restorations records [N 171], Northwest Architectural
Archives, University of Minnesota Libraries, Minneapolis)

opment specialists highlighted festival marketplaces as exemplary models of public-private

partnerships that were integral to the revitalization of American inner cities.14
Urban sociologists have generally been less sanguine about the socioeconomic, cultural, and aesthetic effects of adaptive reuse. Christine Boyer argues that festival marketplaces manipulate historic buildings and their functions to create tourist destinations with
a false sense of authenticity and a spurious sense of place, obscuring the citys actual
history.15 Sharon Zukin forcefully articulates the relationships among preservation, building use, and local heritage when she writes that at Faneuil Hall Marketplace preservation
techniques are completely detached from specic places. A visual theme is used to
replace a specic social and material context, which results in non-place places.16 Critiques that were once applied to a particular genre of historic building redevelopment are
now commonly asserted about preservation more generally. In most American cities,

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writes Michael Sorkin, the historic has become the only complicit ofcial urban value.
The result is that the preservation of the physical remnants of the historical city has
superseded attention to the human ecologies that produced and inhabit them.17
The general proliferation of adaptation led even some preservationists to question
the entertainment and luxury retail uses to which many historic buildings were being
put. Former Keeper of the National Register William Murtagh coined the term Boutique
Syndrome to describe the replacement of [local] service-oriented businesses by specialty
shops catering to tourists of historic districts. The ironic result of adaptive reuse activities, according to Murtagh, was that urban residents were being forced to shop in suburban malls for the services that no longer existed in their historic neighborhoods while
suburbanites ocked downtown to take in the entertainments offered by newly reprogrammed historic attractions.18 Others argued that fancy cheese shops and high-end clothing boutiques undermined or somehow trivialized the inner history of certain buildings,
especially historic industrial and waterfront neighborhoodsformerly blue-collar, working
environments.19
Eminent preservation practitioner and educator James Marston Fitch alluded to
preservation of function as an elusive goal, an unmet challenge, of the historic preservation movement. He noted that in certain historic districts, it was desirable to preserve the
physical fabric as well as the traditional function and indigenous population. He described
the challenge metaphorically as an obligation to intervene to preserve both, the container
and the contained.20 Fitch admired preservation projects that fullled this obligation,
singling out as examples the regeneration of Split by the socialist regime of Yugoslavia,
and the rehabilitation of Bologna, Italys historic city center carried out under the direction
of the communist-controlled municipal government. Urban preservation projects in the
United States like Charleston and Savannah were, he thought, less successful with respect
to social policy.21 On the one hand, Fitchs observations raise important questions about
the feasibility of planning for social and economic sustainability in the free-market economy of the United States, a country with strong individual property rights. Additional
oversight may, on the other hand, be viewed as merely an extension of current practice;
to balance preservations overemphasis on designs and appearances, preservation commissions might issue Certicates of Reuse to exercise more control over the new uses of
restored historic properties.22
The growing movement to make historic preservation more inclusive with respect to
race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation raises additional implications for social and economic sustainability. Properties nominated to the National Register of Historic Places for
their historical association with various racial, ethnic, and GLBT constituencies are slowly
becoming more common.23 The signicance of these sites may not be readily reected in
their architecture; rather, it stems in part from how they are used, when, and by whom.
One recent article suggests that this represents the emergence of a new type of preservation concerned with cultural history and practices of ethnic cultures [and] marginalized
peoples.24 Ostensibly the goal is not only to interpret the meaning and signicance of
such places, but also to understand and safeguard their living usesin a sense, managing

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if not preventing their adaptation. As a preservation impulse, this too has deeper roots
than commonly acknowledged. One early historic preservation textbook suggested methods for cultural preservation of ethnic ambiance.25 Other scholars maintain such tactics
preserve only the symbols of ethnic community, not their vitality. They see ethnic
preservation as exploitation, the economically motivated manipulation of Ghettos as
Tourism Attractions.26 Cultural geographer David Lowenthal has made similar observations, stating that preservation turns some buildings into treasured relics but seldom
extends their living virtues, because what we save is property and artifacts rather than
ideas or culture.27
Various municipalities across the United States experimented in the 1970s with
hybrid forms of land-use controls that were part landmark designations, part nely tailored zoning regulations. New York Citys Special Districts are a notable example. Created
by amending the citys zoning ordinance, special districts implement regulations and
incentives tailored, in part, to shape or curtail building adaptation, often with specic
economic and cultural objectives in mind. Their rst use in the nation in 1967 is also
probably the most well known: the New York City 42nd Street Theater District was
designed to preserve existing theaters and to subsidize the construction of new ones in an
area of the city long-renowned for live entertainment.28 Several special districts were
drafted in the 1970s to protect or enhance neighborhood uses considered historically and
cultural signicant.29 The Special Little Italy District, for example, was created in 1977 to
preserve and strengthen the historical and cultural character of the community and,
more specically, to retain stores and shops considered historically unique to the area.
Specialty uses thought to enhance the retail character of the neighborhood include bakeries, small-scale specialty grocers, liquor stores, and ice cream shops.30 Although their sitespecic nature makes them similar in some respects to landmark designation, special districts are generally intended to address nonarchitectural considerations beyond the scope
of most local preservation ordinances, or issues for which architecture is interrelated with
uses that are, or were once, considered economically and culturally signicant.31 Their
effectiveness as a tool for architectural, social, and economic preservation has not been
widely studied.32
An ambitious movement arose in the early 1980s to broaden the preservation elds
policies and legal protections to include a more diverse spectrum of historic resources,
including cultural resources that have no tangible form (Fig. 3). Congress directed the
Secretary of the Interior to work with the American Folklife Center of the Library of
Congress to develop recommendations to preserve cultural heritage such as arts, skills,
folklife, and folkways that could be integrated into the National Historic Preservation Act.
The resulting report recommended a number of clear legislative and administrative
changes necessary to bring this vision to fruition.33 None were codied into historic preservation law. Nonarchitectural heritageso-called intangible culturestill does not
receive the same government support, subsidies, and protections afforded to historic
property in the United States.
Nevertheless, within various academic disciplines there is a growing recognition of

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Figure 3. Kevork Bebserekian at the Narjarian familys Sevan Bakery, Watertown, Massachusetts,
documented in 1982 by Folklife Centers Ethnic Heritage and Language Schools Project. (Photograph by
Vicky Westover, Ethnic Heritage and Language Schools Project Collection, Archive of Folk Culture, American
Folklife Center, Librar y of Congress)

heritage places with cultural and functional signicance, but little aesthetic merit or material integrity measured against established architectural canons or professional standards
and guidelines. For example, Dolores Haydens Power of Place project showed that parking
lots with no obvious physical referents to historic events or persons could form the basis
for dialog about, and dissemination of, community values, meaningful stories, and shared
heritages.34 Substantial research, most by geographers, documents understandings of place
that recognize the value of meanings, practices, and uses that are historically uid and
contingent, as well as sometimes independent of material integrity.35
It has, however, been challenging to integrate this research with mainstream preservation policies. The preservation eld follows a paradigm of practice in which material
fabric is thought to convey signicance, as if buildings, landscapes, and objects speak their
meanings. Randall Mason calls this the memory/fabric connection, a way of thinking about
historical signicance that has been part of the preservation movement since its beginnings in the mid-nineteenth century.36 It still inuences preservation decision making.
One recent study of preservation planning in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina found
that commonplace sites with special meaning for communities could not be recognized
in the National Register of Historic Places due to differences of opinion about the interpretation and application of historic eligibility and integrity criteria.37 Similarly, geographers
studying Maxwell Street Market in Chicago found that despite broad recognition of its

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Figure 4. Maxwell Street Market, 15th Street near 14th Place and Sangamon Avenue, Chicago, Illinois,
spring 1989. (Photograph by Alfonso Morales, private collection of Alfonso Morales)

historical signicance and continued vitality as a nexus of economic and social exchange,
preservation administrators determined the market lacked sufcient material integrity to
merit National Register listing (Fig. 4).38
These preceding examples point not only to a deeply rooted bias toward the physical
aspects of architectural preservation, but they also indicate the preservation eld has
fundamental blind spots that inhibit seeing economic and social values worth saving. At
the risk of stating the obvious, planning for sustainable preservation requires studying
and understanding the ways that economics and culture may be historically signicant as
they relate to place, practice, and activity. The case study that follows examines a food
market listed in the National Register of Historic Places and the conscious attempts of
preservationists to preserve place-based economic and cultural conditions deemed historically signicant.

Faneuil Hall Marketplace: Preservation of Function and Use

Ada Louise Huxtable was not particularly troubled by the structural modications or
design interventions that she saw at Faneuil Hall Marketplace during the summer of 1976.
Yes, the buildings had been altered, some of them radically so, and she admitted as much.
Rather, what she most regretted was the loss of the honest shabbiness of the old Faneuil
Hall Marketplace, Bostons primary food district, in continuous operation since the mideighteenth century. Food merchants were forcibly displaced from the area throughout the

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1960s by several urban renewal projects. One of these was the reuse of Faneuil Hall and
Quincy Market, brought to fruition by developer James Rouse working in partnership
with the architect and design collaborators Benjamin and Jane Thompson. According to
Huxtable, in the process of restoration and adaptation, the markets had become elite,
cleaned-up, skillfully merchandized to appeal to the afuent and sophisticated public
that she called the Saturday generation.39 It was their money that was needed to support
such extensive and costly restoration. The market had become a place to pursue leisure
and entertainmentweekend activities for the Saturday generationnot a venue for
the purchase of lifes more fundamental everyday necessities. Changing the function, use,
and socioeconomic context of the district seemed to undermine its historic character,
regardless of its material preservation.
Today Faneuil Hall Marketplace is a six-and-a-half acre complex situated in the heart
of downtown Boston, adjacent to Government Center, the North End, the waterfront, and
Haymarket Square. In its present form, the market complex consists of four separate
buildings: Faneuil Hall, Quincy Market, and two rows of connected stores known as the
North Market Block and the South Market Block. The four are separated by cobble stone
streets, which, now closed to vehicular trafc, form a pedestrian mall interspersed with
light standards, planters, and benches. Together the buildings form a visually impressive
and historically signicant urban composition widely considered an important contribution to the canon of great American architecture. At the western end of the complex
closest to Government Center is the oldest building, Faneuil Hall, a Georgian style brick
structure built in 1741 as a mixed-use market to accommodate food stalls on the rst
oor, and city hall meeting rooms and ofces above, a design typology that was common
in medieval England and colonial America. The building was nanced by Peter Faneuil,
whose will mandated that food shops occupy the ground oor of the building in perpetuity.
To its east is Quincy Market, a massive, 535-foot-long Greek Revival building clad in granite that features a copper dome at its center. Flanking Quincy Market across the cobbled
North and South Market Streets are two blocks of attached commercial buildings that
form architecturally unied facades, also of granite. All three granite buildings in the
Quincy Market development were built between 1824 and 1826.
Faneuil Hall Marketplace was the most important food distribution district in Boston
until the mid-1960s, when it was redeveloped as a Festival Market. At midcentury, the
market district occupied approximately thirty-ve acres in which nearly all buildings held
food-related businesses (Fig. 5). Local-government statistics indicated that in 1962 a substantial percentage of all the food traveling through the city funneled into the Faneuil Hall
Market area, especially commodities like produce (19 percent), poultry (58 percent), and
butter and cheese (70 percent). Moreover, while more modern distribution facilities
located elsewhere in Boston handled a greater volume of food, Faneuil Hall Market had
the greatest concentration of food dealers (43 percent of city total) and was the second
greatest concentration of food-wholesaling employment (38 percent of city total food
wholesale employees).40

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Between the end of World War II and the nations bicentennial in 1976, different
constituencies made arguments for and against retaining food marketing functions in the
Faneuil Hall Market district. A 1949 U.S. Department of Agriculture analysis provided the
rst major postwar economic justication for relocating food wholesalers to some place
outside the center of downtown Boston.41 The issue did not attract the attention of preservationists until the middle of the next decade. Ironically, it was in the name of preservation itself that the food distribution function of Faneuil Hall was again called into
question. In 1955, the U.S. Congress created the Boston National Historic Sites Commission (hereafter the Boston Commission) to study colonial architecture in the city and
surrounding areas, and to make recommendations for its preservation and interpretation
in partnership with the National Park Service (NPS).42
Public criticism focused the Boston Commissions attention on Faneuil Hall, specically the appropriateness of its ongoing use as a food market. There were two opposing
points of view on the matter: on the one side were those who thought that the market
vendors were a disgrace to the Cradle of Liberty; and on the other were those who argued
that market uses were in themselves socially and economically signicant, and therefore
merited preservation. The former point of view was nicely summarized in an editorial
submitted by a Proper Bostonian, who wrote that food vending made the market a mess
with its sawdust, grease, tangled lettuce leaves and carrot crates! . . . The 40,000 visitors
who come every year to pay their respects to what Daniel Webster named the Cradle of

Figure 5. Map showing the uses of buildings in the Faneuil Hall Market area in 1950. Source: C. J. Otten,
et. al., The Wholesale Produce Markets at Boston, Mass. (Washington, D.C.: USDA, 1950)

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Liberty must seek out the sense of the honored past amid the smells and disorder of the
market stalls. The atmosphere is completely out of harmony! The interior of Faneuil Hall
would be more appropriate, suggested another writer, if the stalls were restored to more
of an eighteenth-century atmosphere, along the lines of the old-time shops seen at Sturbridge Village; they could sell conts, confects, sweetmeats of spiced delights, Indian
nectar in lump and lozenge balls and cakes and chocolate sticks, sturdy mustard to put
the stomach in Good Temper.43
The Boston Commission carefully considered these criticisms and suggestions. Would
it improve Faneuil Hall from a historic point of view if the shops were removed?44 The
Boston Commissions congressionally mandated charge was to study only eighteenthcentury architecture. It did not matter that Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market were fully
occupied by merchants, as the Commission was well aware. It was assumed they could nd
accommodations elsewhere, just as businesses in the way of Independence Mall were
forced to relocate. Merchants protested, but as Charles Hosmer wrote of the Philadelphia
project, there was no interest in 1947 in keeping businesses operating inside an area to
be designated as a shrine.45 Nearly ten years later, the same could be said of at least
some preservationists in Boston.
Other highly respected and well-connected Boston preservationists saw things from
an opposing point of view. The preeminent preservationist Walter Muir Whitehill acted
quickly to mobilize Bostons most powerful preservation advocates to speak in favor of
retaining the Faneuil Hall food merchants.46 Bertram K. Little, Director of the Society for
the Preservation of New England Antiquities (SPNEA, now Historic New England), offered
alternative perspectives on historic preservation. Prepared malls were a bad idea in his
opinion. He pointed out that Faneuil Hall had always been occupied by merchant stalls.
Little reminded the commission that architect Charles Bulnch remodeled and substantially enlarged Faneuil Hall by a factor of two times its original size in 1805. Eighteen
merchants occupied the market in the mid-twentieth century, but when the market hall
was rst built, it housed only seven. The most difcult thing to clear up in the visitors
mind is that it is not the original Faneuil Hall, the building in which the famous preRevolutionary meetings were held.47 Little was suggesting, in other words, that the merchants and their market activities were more reminiscent of the eighteenth centurythey
had more historical integritythan the building itself.
Whitehill drafted a powerful defense of Faneuil Halls food merchants, which he later
published under the title: Historical Continuity versus Synthetic Reconstruction.48 In
it he described how the widespread popular enthusiasm for historic restorations and
reconstructions like Colonial Williamsburg, Cooperstown, and other outdoor museums
were both threatening the integrity of existing historic structures and giving tourists a
beatic vision of eighteenth-century elegance lled with so much quaintness or cuteness. As a result, some Boston residents who should know better failed to see the true
historical signicance of the market stalls on the ground oor of Faneuil Hall:
The historical continuity of life in Boston is nowhere more genuinely represented
than in the stalls of Faneuil Hall market. . . . At any season the pleasing sight of

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sides of beef and crates of vegetables being unloaded from trucks reminds the passerby of the vitality of an unbroken tradition that still serves a valued purpose in
the present day life of Boston.49
For those who complained of trash generated by the market, this was a matter of perspective. The markets produced both delightful as well as distasteful clutter; during the holidays, fragrant . . . piles of spruce trees, were one of the markets many delights, a
harbinger of changing seasons through changing market products.
According to Whitehill, Faneuil Hall needed neither interpretation nor improvement
for tourists. Proposals to displace real market merchants in favor of imitation eighteenthcentury shoppes would only alienate the building from its original and ongoing function. For Whitehill, who was beginning to formulate these ideas into a larger philosophy
of historic preservation practice, the ght over the markets uses was a case study in
standards and ethics. There is little intellectual honesty in substituting the imitation of
an imitation for what is authentic. The ground oor of Faneuil Hall tells its own story as
it stands. . . . The market in operation was a veritable object lesson in food processing
where Bostonians could participate in the increasingly rare experience of buying their
victuals straight from the carcass, without the dubious embellishments of cellophane (see
Fig. 1).50 As Whitehill surely knew from his own shopping experiences, prepackaged meat
was becoming the norm in the postWorld War II supermarket.
The advocacy of Whitehill and other preservationists had an immediate inuence on
urban renewal designs for the market area. Subsequent planning studies wrote favorably
of the markets past, current, and future functions. As one of them noted, Any attempt
at restoration which displaced the present [food] retail activities would not only be historically false, and cause economic loss to the city, but would destroy an essential ingredient
of the areas life and character. With the added pedestrian trafc generated by the new
Government Center, planners envisioned a market district of unusual intensity where
both tourists and Bostonians of many classes and interests would come to shop in and
observe the colorful market activity. The physical and human infrastructurebuildings
and merchantswas already there; the city need only capitalize on these assets and
further encourage the present activity. In closing, it recommended market activities be
preserved through leasing arrangements under the control of a federal agency such as the
NPS.51
Later studies executed under Edward Logue, Bostons new city planner, gradually
retreated from the idea of preserving food functions in the market area. The subtle evolution of the wording and preservation terminology that marks this shift is signicant. A
renewal plan prepared by Kevin Lynch determined preservation of the market structures
was a priority, but it proposed to do so by adapting them to practical contemporary uses,
and by continuing or commemorating traditions of early Boston.52 Lynch and his colleagues
quoted Whitehill on the market buildings architectural signicance, but overlooked or
ignored his evaluation of the economic and social signicance associated with their functions.

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Figure 6. Benjamin and Jane Thompson at the entrance to the site office of Benjamin Thompson &
Associates in the Quincy Market Building, circa 1976. (Photograph by Peter Vandermark, private collection
of Peter Vandermark)

Just as it was beginning to apply for urban renewal funding from HUD to restore
Quincy Market and the anking rows of granite stores, the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) received a reuse proposal from the husband and wife team of Benjamin and Jane
Thompson (Fig. 6), who were later joined by the developer James Rouse.53 They proposed
restoring the popular functions for which the area was well known by rejoining historic
form and function for public enjoyment.54 In fact, historic uses were rhetorically emphasized even more than physical preservation. As a press release announced on the eve of
the markets reopening in 1976, continuation of valid patterns of use, more so than
preservation of architecture, is fundamental to all the design concepts for the restoration
of the market.55 Fresh foods were central to the redevelopment concept. Rouse gave the
Thompsons total control over retail programming and tenant selection. Their goal was to
create a complete food market to emphasize the nature of the area as an everyday place,
where Bostonians would come to buy daily staples and seek emotional fulllment. It would
operate like a traditional public retail market where stalls were rented by independent
businesses that maintained a direct relationship between buyer and seller.56
The Thompsons articulated the rationales for this concept as a series of deeply held
personal and philosophical positions. Restoration of the market was a defense of urbanism, a deance of the supermarket syndrome and chain-store credo of homogenization
and nationalized commercialism.57 They were likely rebelling against supermarket chains
like Safeway, Grand Union, and Giant, the names of which, according to food historian

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Warren Belasco, honored security, centralization, and homogenization.58 Ben Thompson

stated a general desire to preserve the multifaceted quality of regions as places with distinct physical settings, identities, and historical continuities. These existed even on a
micro-scale within cities as districts, zones, and enclaves [that] achieve special character
often based upon ethnic values and traditions.59
While they rhetorically stressed food growing, harvests, and abundance, the Thompsons did not emphasize other rules and goals of traditional public markets. Although a
fact sheet produced by the Rouse Corporation stated that Quincy Market would remain a
Farmers Market, the presence of actual farmers was neither alluded to nor anticipated.60
Likewise, the Thompsons made repeated references to locally grown foods . . . available
from the countryside,61 but never mentioned specic agricultural regions or demonstrated any knowledge of the relative vitality of diversied farming in Massachusetts or
neighboring states. It remained unclear where the markets food would come from, or, for
that matter, if its sources were really ever a priority. The preservation of farming, farmland, and farmers was not a stated goal of the Faneuil Hall Marketplace redevelopment.
The Marketplace was an incredible commercial success when it opened for business
in August of 1976. Some 10,000 shoppers were said to visit the market during weekdays,
and as many as 100,000 on weekends.62 In reviewing the new attraction, reporters marveled over Ben Thompsons triumph in having recreated an authentic food market . . .
satisfying daily needs of local customers.63 The Rouse Corporation (TRC) actively promoted the traditional merchants and their fresh foods in its Marketplace Life, a publication
combining advertisements and a market business directory in a magazine-like format with
recipes and merchant proles. The second issue featured an article that followed two
professional chefs around the market as they checked items off their grocery list (Fig. 7).
Could the Romagnolis purchase within the Quincy market everything needed for their
menu? it asked rhetorically. Would the selection and quality meet their professional
standards, and provide the sensuous excitement of remembered excursions? The answer,
of course, was a resounding yes. They found fresh spaghetti, extra dry Parmesan, calves
liver, zucchini, garlic, tomatoes, coffee, vinegar, and even a new paring knife. The selection
and quality, they said, were excellent; the atmosphere, magnetic.64
Behind the scenes, however, Benjamin and Jane Thompson soon began to worry that
the market was losing its special character and failing to attract the local consumers they
had most wanted to serve. By 1979, the Thompsons were so concerned by changes they
observed in the Quincy Market food merchants that they drafted a lengthy memo to TRC
describing and illustrating the issues with photographs accompanied by suggestions to
address each shortcoming. First, they perceived a troubling image problem. Quincy Market was becoming associated with pizza, piano bars, no-park, push and shove. The success of fast food and singles drinking operations was deterring the attendance of serious
shoppers seeking groceries. While it was admittedly impossible to regulate tourism,
souvenir-seeking sightseers with limited time and money were contributing to the alienation of the local customer. To address the issue, they suggested downplaying the Go-

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Figure 7. Franco and Margaret Romagnoli, hosts of the hit television cooking show called The Romagnolis
Table shop for Parmesan cheese at Doe and Sullivan, one of ten original businesses that came back to
Quincy Market after the rehabilitation. Source: Fanny Hall, A Mornings Marketing with the Romagnolis,
photograph by Peter Vandermark, Marketplace Life, no. 2 (SpringSummer 1977): 7. (Authors private
collection)

Go aspects of the market and developing promotions and advertising that emphasized
comfortable uncrowded shopping days, evening hours, and family goods.65
Second, the quality of goods and services that were supposed to accommodate local
shoppers were suffering as a consequence of a drift toward quick-sale food items primarily catering to the crowds of tourists. In a series of Polaroid snapshots, the Thompsons
illustrated how merchants who were contractually bound to only sell certain fresh, specialty foods were, on their own initiative, diversifying into other ready-to-eat snacks. They
recommended establishing clearer guidelines specifying precisely what tenants could sell,
followed by rigorous enforcement by designating someone to police the merchants and
implement the standards. Noting that leasing to and management of food vendors was
unlike working with boutique retail tenants, they suggested TRC hire someone with the
specialized skills necessary to understand the fresh-food industry. Third, there was a
looming specter of homogenization raised by franchise businesses.66 The secondary literature maintains the marketplace, initially at least, was lled with independent Boston
merchants, not the moneyed chains that dominated suburban malls.67 Its planners and
promoters surely sought to convey this impression, but in reality chains were part of the
commercial mix from the very beginning. There were the Magic Pan Restaurant and Proud
Popover, franchises owned by Quaker Oats, and a General Nutrition Center (GNC), a natural-food chain store consisting of more than one thousand outlets by the early 1980s.
In closing, the Thompsons alluded to the commitments made to the city of Boston
to preserve the physical and functional character of the markets. TRC had agreed to the
formation of a Faneuil Hall Marketplace Commission. As its lease with the city specically
stated:

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Lessor and Lessee acknowledge that the present and historic character of the use of
the street oor of the Quincy Market Building is as a meat, cheese and produce
market with related market uses. Lessee shall not use or permit the use of any
portion of said oor for any purpose other than as a meat, cheese and produce
market or for related market use of the same general character. The sale of food for
on-premises consumption shall be permitted to the extent that such sale does not
affect the general character of the street oor. . . . Lessee shall submit any proposed
changes in the general character of the street oor of Quincy Market Building to the
Commission for its review and approval or disapproval, and no such changes shall
be made without the approval of the Commission.68
Thus continuity of policy and leadership they advised, would be essential in honoring
TRCs ninety-nine-year lease with the city.
Though unstated in their memo to TRC, underlying the Thompsons concerns with
the growth of franchises and the drift of fresh provision merchants to fast food was
TRCs rent structure and the skyrocketing charges for taxes and common area maintenance that the company passed on to its tenants. The initial plan to offer leases on a
range of nancial terms that charged tenants varying percentages of their gross income
depending on the type of businesses they operated would have beneted the low-margin
food merchants. However, when leases were ultimately issued at Faneuil Hall Marketplace,
all tenants were charged a standard $10 per square foot base rent plus 5 percent of their
gross sales, with the exception of the original returning merchants who were offered special three-year terms. They were also assessed a $5 per square foot operating charge for
real estate taxes, heating and cooling, re prevention, electricity, sewer, trash, and common area maintenance. By the early 1980s, the base rent had quadrupled to $40 per square
foot and the operating expenses had grown more than vefold to $27.37 per square foot.69
Fresh food vendors struggled to keep up with the escalating charges. Instead of
enforcing more rigorous guidelines as the Thompsons had recommended, TRC amended
individual leases to allow fresh food merchants to sell prepared meals. It was a tacit
acknowledgment that there was no other nancial way for these merchants to stay in
business given the rent and operating expenses that TRC was charging. By the late 1980s,
reporters began referring to Quincy Market as fast food alley.70 Some of the original,
preredevelopment food merchants like The Produce House were still there in name by
the early 1990s, but at that point they made most of their money selling things like baked
potatoes stuffed with cheese and vegetables (Fig. 8).71
Had it ever been convened, the Faneuil Hall Marketplace Commission might have
held TRC to its commitment to the city to preserve functionally the main oor of Quincy
Market as a place for fresh meat, cheese, bread, and produce by stabilizing the rents of
merchants who sold them. The commission and its requirements were never implemented
and, for a time, they were largely forgotten. Because the marketplace was such a tremendous success from the beginning, the city deferred to TRCs expertise in marketing and
tenant selection. However, Jane Thompson remained convinced, long after her direct

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Figure 8. Percentage of Faneuil Hall Marketplace Establishments by Type in the Quincy Market Building,
1978 and 2008. Statistics compiled by the author from Faneuil Hall Marketplace business directories.

involvement with the marketplace was over, that their failure to form the commission was
a terrible oversight. When she wrote the director of the BRA in the mid-1990s insisting it
instate the commission and begin taking a more direct role in managing tenant mix and
other economic issues, one of the mayors representatives responded to say that the city
saw no need to get involved.72 One of the consequences of cities like Boston becoming
more entrepreneurial in their approach to public-private real estate developments is that
they have also become more prot-minded in the management of their investments.
Among the possible reasons the BRA was inclined to look the other way as TRC blatantly
violated the terms of its Faneuil Hall Marketplace lease is that the city had a nancial
stake in the prots generated by tenant rents and gross revenues.
TRC wrung staggering prots out of the project; sales per square foot in Quincy
Market were well beyond the income generated by the most protable suburban shopping
malls.73 The direct, indirect, and induced economic benets of tourism generated by the
marketplace are an even greater scal consideration. While some Bostonians, the media,
and other critics continue to grouse that the marketplace has become little more than a
mall, it remains an extraordinarily popular tourist attraction. In May 2008, Forbes Traveler
rated it the fourth most visited tourist site in the United States; with twenty million
annual visitors, Faneuil Hall Marketplace ranked below the National Mall and memorial
parks of Washington, D.C. (24 million), but well above Disney World (17.1 million), Disneyland (14.9 million), and Universal Studios (6.2 million).74
Even with these measures of success, there are still periodic calls for nally forming
the Faneuil Hall Marketplace Commission, now sometimes referred to as a watchdog
group or an advisory committee. In 2004 TRC sold its marketplace lease to General
Growth Properties (GGP), the second-largest mall operator in the country. GGP has continued to implement the basic management strategies established by TRC: charging ever

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higher rents to nationally or internally based chains that demand larger and larger retail
spaces. As of 2006, there were a total of only 82 stores in the entire three-building marketplace, down from its 1979 peak of 172; more than half of the total square footage is leased
to national chains. Some food and retail tenants pay as much as $150 a square foot for
rent. Faced with these statistics, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino requested meetings with
GGP in 2006 and threatened to audit the citys lease agreement with the company. At the
same time, the BRAs director voiced his opinion that it was nally time to form an advisory committee.75 Menino had looked into the possibility of forming a commission more
than a decade before, when TRC still held the lease, but nothing ever came of it.76 After a
number of meetings with GGP in 2006 and 2007, the city canceled its plans for an audit
and, again, the Marketplace Commission was never formed.77 To date, the issue remains
unresolved.
Most of the concerns over the marketplace voiced through the local media involve
the issue of large franchises displacing small, locally owned businesses. The earlier transition from fresh food to fast food at Quincy Market is not part of this discussion. Perhaps
that battle was lost too long ago for most local observers to even remember that it was
once an issue. More readily apparent is an irony brought about by the national surge in
interest for local agricultural products over the last ve to ten years. As in so many other
cities, Bostonians are eagerly seeking out farmers markets to shop for produce that they
value for its freshness, for its connection to the local economy, and for the personal interactions they experience when they buy directly from producers. In 2000 a nonprot group
called Friends of the Boston Public Market joined forces with the Massachusetts Department of Food and Agriculture to undertake a study to determine the feasibility of establishing a year-round indoor public market somewhere in the downtown waterfront area.78
No one mentioned Faneuil Hall Marketplace.

Conclusions
Is Faneuil Hall Marketplace an example of sustainable preservation? One could reasonably
argue that embodied energy was retained by preserving parts of the original buildings.
Whether the project was also socially and economically sustainable may depend on our
understanding of these concepts. Anthropologist Setha Low offers a useful denition of
cultural sustainability that builds on the scholarship of economist David Throsby. Culturally sustainable development refers to the preservation of arts and societys attitudes,
practices, and beliefs. Low goes on to dene social sustainability as a subset of cultural
sustainability that refers to maintaining and enhancing the diverse histories, values, and
relationships of contemporary populations situated in unique cultural ecosystems. Furthermore, in order to achieve social and cultural sustainability, the place-specic cultural
ecosystems that support them must also be preserved. Social relations and cultural practices are, in other words, structured and made possible by physical places. Material and
cultural heritage are in this way interrelated.79 Extending this denition one step further,
economic sustainability in the context of preservation can be construed as ensuring the
nancial conditions necessary to retain the material and social components of the cultural

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ecosystem. This requires sufcient economic resources to preserve not only the material
aspects of place, but also the interrelated uses, practices, interactions, and transactions.
If these denitions are accepted, then the Faneuil Hall Marketplace redevelopment
does not appear to have been sustainable over the long term. Although some businesses
survived the social and economic transition instigated by the restoration and adaptation
of the market, it quickly became difcult for them to maintain their traditional products
and styles of marketing. Adaptive reuse radically altered the markets social and cultural
ecosystem; as is so often the case with historic preservation, market management vigilantly enforced design standards, but in the pursuit of nancial gain it ignored earlier
commitments to maintain traditional market uses and products.80
The preservation elds preoccupation with material fabric is already well documented; what else can we learn from this case study? Will newer tools and concepts enable
truly sustainable preservation development in the future? Recognition of intangible culture might raise awareness of the economic and social values supported by heritage
places. Intangible heritage is a category of culture now ofcially recognized by the United
Nations Economic, Scientic, and Cultural Organization.81 However, as folklorist Alan Jabbour argues, the term intangible culture creates a false dichotomy that masks more than
it reveals. Rather than describing any salient features, it denes a class of cultural
resources in terms of what they are notthat is, tangible.82 A denition that merely
excludes a resource from some other more established category is a form of marginalization. After all, preservationists seldom refer to historic architecture as tangible heritage.
Moreover, the notion of tangibility is itself problematic when applied to foods, ethnic
activities, or unique commercial practices. None of these are intangible if we dene the
word as that which is beyond the perception of the senses. On the contrary, as several
scholars have noted, heritage does not exist outside the realm of human experienceit
must be seen, touched, heard, or tasted.83 One might then surmise that intangible heritage is ephemeral or subject to change, as opposed to tangible heritage that is physical
and xed.84 Yet this too is a matter of degree, subject to interpretation. Among the maxims
of modern preservation practice is that buildings and landscapes necessarily change over
time, and that these changes may in themselves become historic.85
Instead of marginalizing culture and economics as intangibles, a more fruitful
approach may be to expand the scope of what is considered signicant, and to increase
the level of participation when making these decisions, as Mason has suggested.86 It may
also be time for the preservation eld to reconsider its theoretical orientation to the past.
As others have observed, preservationists tend to see their profession as fundamentally
historical.87 Diligent research and documentation of the past uses and users of a property
are an integral component of preservation practice. Typically preservationists do not, however, aim to understand or preserve the present functions of historic properties.88 This
mentality is woven into the administrative structure of preservation laws, which generally
state that a property can only be considered historic if it is associated with past people,
events, or architectural styles. If people and culture are to join the environment as goals
of sustainable preservation, contemporary users of historic properties must be seen as

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active participants in heritage places rather than passive recipients, mere receptacles for
so much public advocacy, education, and interpretation.

Acknowledgments
My research was enabled in part by an Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship at the Massachusetts
Historical Society in Boston. I would like to thank several people who assisted my research,
including librarian Peter Drummy at the Massachusetts Historical Society, Lisa Starzk at
the Boston Athenaeum, Nicole DeLaria, at the Special Collections Library at the Boston
Historical Society, and Barbara Bezat at the University of Minnesotas Northwest Architectural Archives. Richard Senier generously shared his memories of being among the rst
tenants of Faneuil Hall Marketplace after its redevelopment in the 1970s, and his subsequent legal ghts with the Rouse Corporation in his capacity as president of the Faneuil
Hall Merchants Association. Helpful comments and suggestions were provided by Peter
Hendee Brown, Chad Randl, and anonymous peer reviewers. Meredith Keller expertly
coordinated article submissions, reviews, and publication. Any errors that remain are my
own.

References
1. Ada Louise Huxtable, Why You Always Win and Lose in Urban Renewal, New York Times, 16 September 1976.
2. See, for example, National Trust for Historic Preservation, Position Statement: Historic Preservation
and Sustainability, http://www.preservationnation.org/information-center/sustainable-communi
ties/sustainability/position-statements/sustainability.html (accessed 08/22/2011); and U.S. Department of the Interior, The Secretary of the Interiors Standards for Rehabilitation and Illustrated
Guidelines on Sustainability for Rehabilitating Historic Buildings, http://www.nps.gov/tps/stan
dards/rehabilitation/sustainability-guidelines.pdf (accessed 08/22/2011), neither of which mentions
social or economic sustainability.
3. The Brundtland Report, also known as Our Common Future, famously dened sustainable development
as development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own needs. Although not its primary subject, Jean Carroon provides a
good overview of sustainability goals, policies, and reports in her book Sustainable Preservation: Greening Existing Buildings (Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2010), 4262.
4. The intent of the APAs annual Great Places program is to honor places of exemplary character,
quality, and planning. See American Planning Association, Great Places in America, http://www.
planning.org/greatplaces/neighborhoods/2010/ (accessed 08/23/2011). The APA barely acknowledged
preservation as late as the 1980s, according to Eugenie Birch and Douglass Roby, The Planner and
the Preservationist: An Uneasy Alliance, Journal of the American Planning Association 50, no. 2 (1984):
194207. Another example among many: a report on Americas older industrial cities published by
the Brookings Institution recently singled out historic architecture as vital competitive assets for
revitalization, suggesting that the number of National Registerlisted properties in a city was a positive indicator of its potential for economic recovery, in Jennifer S. Vey, Restoring Prosperity: The
State Role in Revitalizing Americas Older Industrial Cities, Brookings Institution, Metropolitan Policy Program, May 2007. One could legitimately question if these examples are objective or methodologically sound, but the point is they reect a strong cultural and professional embrace of
preservation principles and programs.
5. James Kessenides, Beyond Preservation?, MetropolisMag.com, 3 June 2011, http://www.metropolis
mag.com/pov/20110603/beyond-preservationmore-19715 (accessed 07/30/2011); Lunch with the
Critics: Cronocaos, a review by Alexandra Lange and Mark Lamster, Places, 2 June 2011, http://

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6.
7.

8.
9.

10.
11.

12.

13.

14.
15.

16.
17.
18.

19.

places.designobserver.com/feature/cronocaos/27628/ (accessed 07/30/3011); and Nicolai Ouroussoff,

An Architects Fear that Preservation Distorts, New York Times, 23 May 2011.
Reyner Banham, The Embalmed City, New Statesman (12 April 1963): 52830.
Reviews of the literature include Randy Mason, Economics and Historic Preservation: A Guide and
Review of the Literature, Brookings Institution, Metropolitan Policy Program, September 2005; and
David Listokin, Barbara Listokin, and Michael Lahr, The Contributions of Historic Preservation to
Housing and Economic Development, Housing Policy Debate 9, no. 3 (1998): 43178.
Alison Isenberg, Downtown America: A History of the Place and the People Who Made It (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 259.
Randall Mason, Be Interested and Beware: Joining Economic Valuation and Heritage Conservation,
International Journal of Heritage Studies 14, no. 4 (July 2008): 30318; Marta de la Torre, ed., Assessing
the Values of Cultural Heritage: Research Report (Los Angeles: The Getty Conservation Institute, 2002);
and Randy Mason, Economics and Heritage Conservation: A Meeting Organized by the Getty Conservation
Institute, December 1998 (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Trust, 1999).
Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, Report to the President and the Congress of the United States
(1978), 1.
Federal tax incentives for historic preservation were envisioned in the 1966 Act but did not come to
fruition until 1976; they have since gone through a number of revisions. Details about their evolution
can be found in Listokin, Listokin, and Lahr, The Contributions of Historic Preservation to Housing
and Economic Development.
Examples include Gene Bunnell, Built to Last: A Handbook on Recycling Old Buildings (Washington, D.C.:
Preservation Press, 1977); National Trust for Historic Preservation, Economic Benets of Preserving Old
Buildings (Washington, D.C.: Preservation Press, 1975); Robert W. Burchell and David Listokin, The
Adaptive Reuse Handbook: Procedures to Inventory, Control, Manage, and Reemploy Surplus Municipal
Properties (Piscataway, N.J.: Rutgers Center for Urban Policy Research, 1981); Urban Land Institute,
Adaptive Use: Development Economics, Process, and Proles (Washington, D.C.: ULI, 1978).
To get a feeling for the sense of limitless preservation possibilities inspired in the late 1970s by the
rehabilitation of Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market, see Richard Ernie Reed, Return to the City: How to
Restore Old Buildings and Ourselves in Americas Historic Urban Neighborhoods (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1979): 14555.
Bernard J. Frieden and Lynne B. Sagalyn, Downtown, Inc.: How America Rebuilds Cities (Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT Press, 1989).
M. Christine Boyer, Cities for Sale: Merchandising History at South Street Seaport, in Variations on
a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space, ed. Michael Sorkin (New York: Hill
and Wang, 1992), 189.
Sharon Zukin, Landscapes of Power: From Detroit to Disney World (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1991), 20.
Michael Sorkin, ed., Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space
(New York: Hill and Wang, 1992), xiv.
William J. Murtagh, Keeping Time: The History and Theory of Preservation in America, rev. ed. (New
York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1997), 167, 215; Murtagh did not offer a cure for Boutique Syndrome;
rather, he presented it as one of the pressing problems that preservation would confront in the future.
According to Sharon Zukin, boutiquesrelatively small clothing and accessory shopssuperseded
department stores in the 1960s as the places where women shopped with the intent of constructing
a unique identity; see Sharon Zukin, Point of Purchase: How Shopping Changed American Culture (New
York: Routledge, 2004), 13437.
Geographer Peirce F. Lewis argues that adaptive reuse is a poor strategy if our desire is to preserve
cultural memory in The Future of the Past: Our Clouded Vision of Historic Preservation, in Controversies in Historic Preservation, ed. Pamela Thurber (Washington, D.C.: National Trust for Historic
Preservation, 1985). Planner Ann Satterthwaite proposed methods for preserving industrial waterfronts, beginning with recognize[ing] the critical nature and function of the area or the resource, in
Ann Satterthwaite, Methods of Planning for the Protection and Enhancement of Historic Water-

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20.
21.
22.

23.

24.
25.
26.

27.
28.

29.

30.
31.

32.

33.
34.
35.

128

fronts in Selected Papers: Conference on Conserving the Historic and Cultural Landscape, Denver, Colorado, May 23, 1975 (Washington, D.C.: Preservation Press, 1975).
James Marston Fitch, Historic Preservation: The Curatorial Management of the Built World (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1982), 177, 76.
Ibid., 6566.
Wayne De La Roche, Preserving without History, in Historic Preservation: Forging a New Discipline,
ed. Beth Sullebarger (New York: Preservation Alumni, Inc., 1989): 3339; on design preservation
versus preservation of building use, see also Robert A. Sauder and Teresa Wilkinson, Preservation
Planning and Geographic Change in New Orleans Vieux Carre, Urban Geography 10, no. 1 (1988):
4161.
See, for example, Antoinette J. Lee, The Social and Ethnic Dimensions of Historic Preservation, in
A Richer Heritage: Historic Preservation in the Twenty-First Century, ed. Robert E. Stipe (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2003): 385404; and Gail Lee Dubrow, Blazing Trails with Pink
Triangles and Rainbow Flags, in Restoring Womens History through Historic Preservation, ed. Gail Lee
Dubrow and Jennifer B. Goodman (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003): 28199.
Eric W. Allison and Mary Ann Allison, Preserving Tangible Cultural Assets: A Framework for a New
Dialog in Preservation, Preservation Education & Research 1 (2008): 2940.
Nathan Weinberg, Preservation in American Towns and Cities (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, Inc.,
1979): 14247.
Irving L. Allen, The Ideology of Dense Neighborhood Redevelopment, in Gentrication, Displacement
and Neighborhood Revitalization ed. J. John Palen and Bruce London (Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1984), 33; and Joseph M. Conforti, Ghettos as Tourism Attractions, Annals of Tourism
Research 23, no. 4 (1996): 83042.
David Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 406.
The special theater district has generally been considered a success; see Todd W. Bressi, ed., Planning
and Zoning New York City: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University
Press, 1993), 74.
Examples include Little Italy, Chinatown, and the Yorkville-East 86th Street District; on Little Italy
see Conforti, Ghettos as Tourism Attractions; on East 86th Street see Alexander Garvin, The American City: What Works, What Doesnt, 2nd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002), 25; on Chinatown see
Richard F. Babcock and Wendy U. Larsen, Special Districts: The Ultimate in Neighborhood Zoning (Cambridge, Mass.: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 1990), 90.
The City of New York, Zoning Resolution, Article X: Special Purpose Districts, Chapter 9: Special Little
Italy District, section 10900.
The clear separation that exists between the responsibilities of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission to control building appearance, and the City Planning Commission to regulate
zoning matters such as building height, bulk, and use was the result of one of the last revisions to
the New York City landmarks legislation before it was enacted into law; some think this separation
contributed to the success of the law because it avoids conicts that might have resulted from overlapping bureaucratic responsibilities. See Eric Allison, Historic Preservation in a Development-Dominated CityThe Passage of New York Citys Landmark Preservation Legislation, Journal of Urban
History 22, no. 3 (March 1996): 35076.
See Babcock and Larsen, Special Districts, 3; Conforti, Ghettos as Tourism Attractions; Satterthwaite,
Methods of Planning; one exception is Emily Goldman, Dusting off the Deeds: Land Use Control
for Sunnyside Gardens (19242007) (MA Thesis, Cornell University, 2007).
Ormond H. Loomis, coordinator, Cultural Conservation: The Protection of Cultural Heritage in the United
States (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1983).
See her chapter on Grandma Masons Place in Dolores Hayden, The Power of Place: Urban Landscape
as Public History (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995).
Tim Cresswell and Gareth Hoskins, Place, Persistence, and Practice: Evaluating Historical Signicance
at Angel Island, San Francisco, and Maxwell Street, Chicago, Annals of the Association of American
Geographers 98, no. 2 (2008): 392413.

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36. Randall Mason, Fixing Historic Preservation: A Constructive Critique of Signicance, Places 16, no.
1 (2004): 65.
37. David Morgan, Nancy Morgan, and Brenda Barrett, Finding a Place for the Commonplace: Hurricane
Katrina, Communities, and Preservation Law, American Anthropologist 108, no. 4 (2006): 70618.
38. Cresswell and Hoskings, Place, Persistence, and Practice.
39. Huxtable, Why you Always Win and Lose.
40. Daniel J. Ahern and Martin R. Adler, Progress Report on Food Market Relocation, Including a Recommended Site for a New Food Distribution Center, unpublished report marked Internal
Condential, Rotch Library, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
41. C. J. Otten et. al., The Wholesale Produce Markets at Boston, Mass. (Washington, D.C.: USDA, 1950).
42. There is scant mention of the Boston National Historic Sites Commission in the secondary literature.
One exception that mentions it briey is Bruce Ehrlich and Peter Dreier, Tourism and the Livable
City: The New Boston Discovers the Old Boston, Revolutionary Ideas in Planning: Proceedings of the
1998 National Planning Conference (AICP Press, 1998).
43. LeRoy Atkinson, Whats All the To-Do about Bostons Historic Faneuil Hall and Market? Worcester
Sunday Telegram, 2 December 1956.
44. Transcript of the minutes of the ninth meeting of the Boston National Historic Sites Commission
(hereafter BNHSC), 17 May 1956, Box 5, Walter Muir Whitehill Papers, Massachusetts Historical
Society (hereafter MHS), MS. N-2177.
45. Charles Hosmer, Preservation Comes of Age: From Williamsburg to the National Trust, 19261949 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1981), 772.
46. Surprisingly, Whitehill was not an original member of the Boston Commission, but rather was later
added in 1957 following the death of member Charles H. Watkins, according to Murphree Named an
A.E.C. Adviser [appointees to other commissions named as well], New York Times, 5 April 1957.
47. Transcript of the minutes of the twelfth meeting of the BNHSC, 8 June 1956, Box 5, Walter Muir
Whitehill Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, MS. N-2177.
48. Walter Muir Whitehill, Historical Continuity versus Synthetic Reconstruction, in Walter Muir Whitehill: A Record Compiled by His Friends (Minot, Mass.: Anthoensen Press, 1958), 13.
49. Ibid.
50. Ibid.; ellipsis in the original.
51. Adams, Howard & Greeley, with consultants, Government CenterBoston (Boston: n.p., 1959).
52. Emphasis added; Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, Waterfront Redevelopment Division,
Report on the Downtown WaterfrontFaneuil Hall Renewal Plan (Boston: The Division, 1962).
53. Additional background information on development proposals can be found in John Quincy, Jr.,
Quincys Market: Decline and Survival, chap. 7 in Quincys Market: A Boston Landmark (Boston:
Northeastern University Press, 2003).
54. Summary of Fact on Proposal for Faneuil Hall Markets by Rouse-Boston, Inc., subsidiary of the Rouse
Company (undated), Benjamin and Jane Thompson Papers, MHS, Ms U-497, box FHM 2.
55. Press release, Faneuil Hall Marketplace, 8 June 1976, John Quincy, Research Materials on Quincy
Market, MHS, box 2, folder: Press Packet, 1976.
56. Benjamin Thompson, Notes on the Restoration of Faneuil Hall Marketplace, February 1974, Benjamin and Jane Thompson Papers, MHS, Ms U-497, box FHM 4.
57. Benjamin Thompson and Jane McC. Thompson, Reviving Bostons Marketplace, undated typescript,
Boston Public Library, Government Documents, BRA/954.
58. Warren Belasco, Appetite for Change: How the Counterculture Took on the Food Industry, 19661988
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1989), 40.
59. Frederick John Pratson, Benjamin Thompson: Hell-Bent on Staving off Ugliness, Yankee (December
1976): 7277, 14041.
60. Summary of Fact on Proposal for Faneuil Hall Markets by Rouse-Boston, Inc., subsidiary of the Rouse
Company (undated), Benjamin and Jane Thompson Papers, MHS, Ms U-497, box FHM 2.
61. Benjamin Thompson and Jane McC. Thompson, Restoration of Faneuil Hall Marketplace: Comments
on Historic, Architectural and Urban Issues, unpublished typescript, August 1976, MHS, John
Quincy, Research Materials on Quincy Market, Box 1, Clippings, 19902002.

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62. Carleton Knight, III, Restored Market Draws Crowds, Preservation News (January 1977).
63. Jane Davison, Bringing Life to Market, New York Times, 10 October 1976.
64. Fanny Hall, A Mornings Marketing with the Romagnolis, Marketplace Life, no. 2 (Spring/Summer
1977): 7; from the authors private collection.
65. Guiding the Future of Faneuil Hall Marketplace, memo to TRC from Ben and Jane Thompson, 5
Dec. 1978, Benjamin and Jane Thompson Papers, MHS, Ms U-497, Box FHM 4.
66. Ibid.
67. See for example, Frieden and Sagalyn, Downtown, Inc., 6.
68. Indenture of Lease between Boston Redevelopment Authority and Faneuil Hall Marketplace, Inc., 21
February 1975, MHS, John Quincy, Research Materials on Quincy Market, box 1.
69. A number of sources document these gures; see for example Jacques Gordon, Case Study: Faneuil
Hall Marketplace, Boston, unpublished typescript, part of a series of case studies of downtown development directed by Professors Bernard J. Frieden and Lynne B. Sagalyn, MIT, January 1984, 55; John
Hubner, All That Glitters Is Not Gold: How Rouse Rakes it in at Faneuil Hall Marketplace, The Real
Paper (Boston), 31 March 1979.
70. Gail Perrin, Second Helpings, Boston Globe, 23 November 1987.
71. Sheryl Julian, To Market, To Market, Boston Globe, 17 July 1991.
72. See both Jane Thompson to Marisa Lago, Director of the BRA (CC: Mayor Tom Menino), 14 November
1995; and Antonia M. Pollak, Ofce of the Mayor, to Jane Thompson, 16 April 1996, MHS, John
Quincy, Research Materials on Quincy Market, box 1.
73. Frieden and Sagalyn, Downtown, Inc., 7.
74. Rob Baedeker, Americas Twenty-Five Most Visited Tourist Sites, ForbesTraveler.com, 5 May 2008.
75. Jenn Ableson, City Seeks Return to Roots for Faneuil Hall Marketplace, Boston Globe, 30 April 2006.
76. Chris Reidy, Menino to Look into Faneuil Hall Dispute, Boston Globe, 12 September 1994.
77. Maria Cramer, High Rents Squeeze Faneuil Hall Vendors, Boston Globe, 19 February 2007.
78. Gloria Negri, Talking of a Boston Market, Boston Globe, 25 October 2000.
79. Setha M. Low, Social Sustainability: People, History, and Values, in Managing Change: Sustainable
Approaches to the Conservation of the Built Environment, ed. Jeanne Marie Teutonico and Frank Matero
(Los Angeles: The Getty Conservation Institute: 2003), 4764.
80. Other historic markets in the United States have been managed in a way that intentionally seeks to
preserve their traditional functions, merchant mix, sales methods, and food products; however, the
legitimacy or wisdom of this type of preservation objective has been questioned by some authors who
maintain that markets must constantly change to meet consumer desires, and that over management
creates a false sense of history. For two very different perspectives on Pike Place Market in Seattle,
widely regarded as a preservation success, compare Judy Mattivi Morley, Historic Preservation and the
Imagined West: Albuquerque, Denver, and Seattle (Lawrence, Kans.: University Press of Kansas, 2006),
91126; and Norman Tyler, Ted J. Ligibel, and Ilene R. Tyler, Historic Preservation: An Introduction to
Its History, Principles, and Practice (New York: W.W. Norton, 2009), 19293. See also Ann Satterthwaite, Going Shopping: Consumer Choices and Community Consequences (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2001); and Roberta Grandes Gratz and Norman Mintz, Cities Back from the Edge: New Life for
Downtown (New York: Preservation Press, 1998), 20934.
81. UNESCO codied this policy in the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural
Heritage, which stated that the intangible cultural heritage (ICH)or living heritageis the mainspring of our cultural diversity and its maintenance a guarantee for continuing creativity, http://
www.unesco.org/culture/ich/index.php?pg00002 (accessed 06/02/2008).
82. Alan Jabbour, Folklife, Intangible Heritage, and the Promise and Perils of Cultural Cooperation, in
A Richer Heritage: Historic Preservation in the Twenty-First Century, ed. Robert E. Stipe (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 441.
83. See Laurajane Smiths discussion of Heritage as Experience and The Intangibility of Heritage in
her book Uses of Heritage (New York: Routledge, 2006), 4548, 5357.
84. On the tendency of preservationists to x the signicance of historic properties, see Mason, Fixing
Historic Preservation.

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85. See The Secretary of the Interiors Standards for Rehabilitation, numbers 3 and 4.
86. Mason, Fixing Historic Preservation; and Randall Mason, Theoretical and Practical Arguments for
Values-Centered Preservation, CRM Journal (Summer 2006): 2148.
87. Jabbour, Folklife, Intangible Heritage, and the Promise and Perils of Cultural Cooperation, 443;
according to Richard Longstreth, Historicity is what distinguishes preservation from all other pursuits in shaping the environment; Richard Longstreth, Taste versus History, Historic Preservation
Forum (May/June, 1994): 45.
88. For example, when preparing a historic structures report, the National Park Service recommends that
practitioners provide a description of original construction, modications, and uses, based on historical documentation and physical evidence; observation of current users is not a recommended technique for understanding historical signicance; Deborah Slayton, Preservation Brief 43: The
Preparation and Use of Historic Structures Reports, Technical Preservation Service, National Park
Service, Department of the Interior, April 2005.

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