Historic Richmond Executive Director Cyane Crump (Photo courtesy Historic Richmond)
Since its founding nearly 300 years ago, Richmond has been the backdrop of many complex stories, all of which are woven together to make up the city as we know it today. Remnants of these stories are perhaps most apparent in the city’s architecture, with each neighborhood, street and building offering different perspectives from different eras. Cyane Crump, executive director of Historic Richmond, explains how these architectural stories are preserved and why doing so is important for our future.
R•Home: Can you define the difference between historic preservation, historic restoration and rehabilitation/adaptive reuse of buildings?
Cyane Crump: We think of “preservation” as maintaining a historic building as it is. This is about the building being a snapshot of a particular point in time or preserving the building as it is now as a snapshot of today by retaining the most historic fabric, making the fewest changes and following the highest standards. A great example is the John Marshall House, which has been maintained largely as it was during Marshall’s lifetime.
We think of “restoration” as restoring a building to what it was at a particular period of time. For example, we are restoring Monumental Church to as close as possible to its original appearance in 1814. This involved returning to the original paint color scheme and removing stained-glass windows and other features added in the Victorian era.
We often use another term — “rehabilitation” — to mean the updating of a historic building to meet continuing or new uses while retaining the building’s historic character. For example, a rehabilitation of a historic house often involves updating bathrooms and kitchens for more modern uses while still retaining the building’s historic character.
Rehabilitation often happens in tandem with an “adaptive reuse.” This is when a building is adapted for a different use than the one for which it was originally built. The classic Richmond example of adaptive reuse is the conversion of a tobacco factory into apartments or offices.
R•Home: Why should historic preservation be important to everyone?
Crump: Preservation is good for people, the environment and the pocketbook! Not only does the hands-on work of maintaining, repairing, restoring and reusing historic buildings provide all types of jobs to boost the local economy, but it saves the places that help tell the story of our community. These stories help us understand who we are, where we came from and how we can move forward. More than that, preservation provides housing opportunities. Our historic buildings provide a lot of housing and conserving and reusing them supports housing affordability and an array of housing choices. Preservation also conserves resources by sending fewer dump trucks to the landfill, and that is good for the environment.
R•Home: What is Historic Richmond’s role in preservation?
Crump: Historic Richmond is a nonprofit focused on preservation of historic buildings and places, sparking neighborhood revitalization. Over the years, we have rolled up our sleeves and have taken an active role in saving countless structures including Old City Hall, the National Theater, commercial buildings in Shockoe Bottom, the 200 block of West Franklin Street and the Linden Row Inn. These structures reflect a broad cross-section of our civic and cultural history. We focus a little bit on history, a little bit on housing and a lot on people and places.
