The Allen­town Preser­va­tion League, Inc. (here­after “Allen­town Preser­va­tion”) is the sole not-for-prof­it advo­cate for preser­va­tion and main­te­nance of Allentown’s his­toric archi­tec­ture and neigh­bor­hoods, espe­cial­ly those struc­tures with­in the city’s His­toric Demo­li­tion zon­ing over­lay. Allen­town Preser­va­tion was found­ed in 1991, and award­ed a 501(c)3 non-prof­it des­ig­na­tion in 1993, by a group of cit­i­zens ded­i­cat­ed to focus­ing atten­tion on the archi­tec­tur­al her­itage of the City of Allen­town. 

Over the past thir­ty years our organization’s focus nar­rowed to ware­hous­ing and sell­ing archi­tec­tur­al sal­vage at below-mar­ket rate, with advo­ca­cy and edu­ca­tion retreat­ing to the back­ground of our efforts. While we plan to con­tin­ue that project in the future as well as devel­op new ways to facil­i­tate the tech­ni­cal con­ser­va­tion of archi­tec­ture, our newest gen­er­a­tion of lead­er­ship has felt com­pelled to bring into the fore­ground the rea­sons for preser­va­tion and to raise aware­ness of the advances in preser­va­tion thought over the past thir­ty years.

To that end, we want to clar­i­fy that ours is not your grandmother’s preser­va­tion move­ment. We do not stand athwart devel­op­ment and progress for the sake of a quaint or orna­men­tal aes­thet­ic acces­si­ble only to the wealth­i­est twen­ty-per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion in ser­vice to their prop­er­ty val­ues, but stand instead in favor of urban devel­op­ment that accounts for the keen advan­tages of his­toric plan­ning, con­struc­tion, and archi­tec­tur­al idioms. Ours is a holis­tic project that ascribes val­ue to more than the super­fi­cial col­or and tex­ture of his­toric street frontage and façades, but to the sys­tem­at­ic and struc­tur­al ben­e­fits that they provide.

We at Allen­town Preser­va­tion are influ­enced by the range of ideas and research from the groundswell of grass­roots activism of non-prof­its like Strong Towns; the more gran­u­lar work of aca­d­e­mics like Max Page, Uni­ver­si­ty of Mass­a­chu­setts Pro­fes­sor of Archi­tec­ture; and the tech­ni­cal edu­ca­tion of trades­peo­ple like Scott Sidler of the Crafts­man Blog and Austin His­tor­i­cal.

Preser­va­tion is no longer mere­ly a mat­ter of archi­tec­tur­al beau­ty, his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance, or the influ­ence that mon­u­men­tal struc­tures had on soci­ety. Preser­va­tion is now insep­a­ra­ble from envi­ron­men­tal  con­ser­va­tion and the eco­nom­ics of jus­tice. We must pre­serve our his­toric archi­tec­ture for rea­sons of envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty, to stand against the kind of gen­tri­fi­ca­tion that dis­pos­sess­es and dis­places peo­ple, and to con­front some of the ugli­est parts of our history.

In many ways, the mod­ern instinct toward preser­va­tion is deeply allied with the human­i­tar­i­an goals of urban activists like Jane Jacobs and the con­ser­va­tion goals of enti­ties like the Archi­tec­tur­al Con­ser­va­tion Lab­o­ra­to­ry, now Cen­ter for Archi­tec­tur­al Con­ser­va­tion, at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Pennsylvania.

In our post-pan­dem­ic efforts to assess and rede­fine our prin­ci­ples and role, we iden­ti­fied the fol­low­ing as pri­or­i­ties for advo­ca­cy and com­mu­ni­ty action: 

• Respon­si­ble stewardship
• Main­te­nance as an ethos
• Ver­nac­u­lar architecture
• Small lot, mixed-use planning
• Walk­a­ble neighborhoods
• Urban forestry
• Holis­tic livability

When we speak of respon­si­ble stew­ard­ship, we are fram­ing this in terms of our indi­vid­ual and col­lec­tive respon­si­bil­i­ty for the mate­r­i­al and cul­tur­al assets which are cur­rent­ly in our pos­ses­sion and the choic­es we make with respect to them, includ­ing the envi­ron­men­tal and human­i­tar­i­an costs of those choic­es. 

We take it for grant­ed because we’re so immersed in our built envi­ron­ments, but build­ings are the largest and most finan­cial­ly and eco­log­i­cal­ly cost­ly objects craft­ed by human beings. Build­ings are also intend­ed to be per­ma­nent rather than dis­pos­able, they are insert­ed into places in ways that are dif­fi­cult to undo, mak­ing them nat­u­ral­ly trans­gen­er­a­tional objects that we all inher­it and for which we are com­mu­nal­ly respon­si­ble inde­pen­dent of our own indi­vid­ual wants, as well as con­tem­po­rary fash­ions. 

Build­ing con­struc­tion accounts for near­ly forty per-cent of all car­bon diox­ide emis­sions and in an era when the imper­a­tives to slow the warm­ing of our plan­et and con­comi­tant increase in severe weath­er that threat­ens local ecolo­gies and exist­ing infra­struc­ture, we must learn to be more respon­si­ble stew­ards of what already exists — what has already been extract­ed from the earth, what was already trans­port­ed across vast dis­tances, what has already been processed and milled and man­u­fac­tured using already expend­ed energy.

It takes an enor­mous amount ener­gy to demol­ish exist­ing struc­tures, to haul and dis­pose of the result­ing waste, to extract raw nat­ur­al resources, to man­u­fac­ture con­struc­tion-ready build­ing mate­ri­als, to trans­port those mate­ri­als to a con­struc­tion site, and to then assem­ble the new phys­i­cal struc­ture. Old build­ings embody all of the spent ener­gy used to orig­i­nal­ly con­struct them. The longer a build­ing stands, the greater its off­set of those ener­gy expenditures.

As an exam­ple, an exten­sive study by the Nation­al Trust for His­toric Preser­va­tion found that an exist­ing 50,000 square foot struc­ture embod­ies approx­i­mate­ly 80 mil­lion BTUs of ener­gy — equiv­a­lent to 640,000 gal­lons of gaso­line. Demo­li­tion of such a build­ing would result in 4,000 tons of waste. If only 40% of mate­ri­als are retained, it would take 65 years for a new green, ener­gy-effi­cient build­ing to off­set the embod­ied ener­gy that was lost. We must con­serve the durable goods that are our his­toric build­ings not mere­ly because they make up the unique fab­ric of our neigh­bor­hoods, our com­mer­cial and indus­tri­al dis­tricts, but because they embody the con­sump­tion of count­less nat­ur­al resources that we can no longer afford to con­sume anew.

A neglect of main­te­nance has quick­ly become one of our gravest prob­lems as a soci­ety, but an ethos of main­te­nance first, fore­most, and for­ev­er must be cul­ti­vat­ed if we hope to uncou­ple our­selves from unsus­tain­able mod­els of growth. Small­er, for­mer­ly indus­tri­al cities like Allen­town — long in decline — have many advan­tages over cities that have under­gone con­tin­u­ous cycles of rede­vel­op­ment. Because the lion’s share of our res­i­den­tial, com­mer­cial, and indus­tri­al archi­tec­ture was built with durable meth­ods of con­struc­tion and mate­ri­als of greater integri­ty, we retain strong foun­da­tions for a sus­tain­able, main­tain­able future. Unlike mod­ern stick frame struc­tures clad and out­fit­ted in mate­ri­als that are typ­i­cal­ly rat­ed with twen­ty to fifty year lifes­pans, Euro­pean cities have shown us that struc­tur­al brick and mason­ry will stand for at least five hun­dred years if not more and that on aver­age the typ­i­cal brick wall only needs to be repoint­ed every 120 years. Almost noth­ing built today is as durable or as wor­thy of our care as the tens of thou­sands of brick and mason­ry struc­tures already built here.

While many might point to the pres­ence of tox­ic sub­stances like lead and asbestos in old­er struc­tures and the risks they pose to pub­lic health, the truth is that lead and asbestos abate­ment must be under­tak­en at cost whether a build­ing is to be demol­ished, ren­o­vat­ed, or restored. Why pay tens of thou­sands if not mil­lions for the safe removal of these sub­stances only to demol­ish the abat­ed struc­ture? The past use of mate­ri­als now con­sid­ered a threat to pub­lic health should not ham­per our con­tin­u­al com­mit­ment to main­tain­ing and appro­pri­ate­ly updat­ing and retro­fitting res­i­den­tial and com­mer­cial build­ing stock.

Allen­town and cities of sim­i­lar size retain some of the last rem­nants of ver­nac­u­lar archi­tec­tures of place. Do they also fea­ture stun­ning exam­ples of grand aca­d­e­m­ic archi­tec­tures, which can be found any­where? Yes. Do many of the more run-of-the-mill build­ings share char­ac­ter­is­tics with oth­er indus­tri­al era struc­tures, build­ings you might find any­where from Boston to St. Louis? Cer­tain­ly. But there is also a local char­ac­ter that is not dis­cov­er­able else­where. Area spe­cif­ic pat­terns and orna­ments, the use of mate­ri­als that are either local­ly or region­al­ly abun­dant, designs that are either unique to us or which are uncom­mon else­where. It is no longer pos­si­ble to find this kind of loca­tion spe­cif­ic archi­tec­tur­al lan­guage. New con­struc­tion looks the same in Mem­phis, Ten­nessee as it does in Phoenix, Ari­zona or Port­land, Maine. The mate­ri­als that are used in build­ing either com­mer­cial or res­i­den­tial struc­tures can­not be dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed from one area to another.

The homog­e­niza­tion of archi­tec­ture was a mod­ernist project of the mid­dle twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, one which sought to sup­plant the local­ized wis­dom of drafts­peo­ple builders who under­stood the spe­cif­ic needs of their par­tic­u­lar place with one-size-fits-all designs that rely exclu­sive­ly on mechan­i­cal air han­dling and cli­mate con­trol sys­tems to remain hab­it­able. As we find our­selves more and more sub­ject to severe weath­er, these kinds of her­met­i­cal­ly sealed struc­tures and the enor­mous amount of ener­gy required to keep them liv­able is an obsta­cle, when we can avail our­selves of struc­tures that were designed to breathe, to stay dry, to warm and cool peo­ple instead of spaces, which won’t suf­fo­cate us on stale air or bloom with mold the moment the air han­dler breaks down. These archi­tec­tures of place are an asset by which our tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tions should be informed, being sup­ple­ment­ed rather than depen­dent upon the par­tic­u­lar solu­tions of the post­war era.

We reject the failed pat­terns of post­war urban renew­al zon­ing and devel­op­ment pro­mot­ed by the likes of Robert Moses, which have only cre­at­ed less liv­able, less resilient, and less durable com­mu­ni­ties. We must active­ly seek to dis­rupt these pat­terns and replace them with the demon­stra­bly more liv­able, more resilient, and more durable plan­ning of our proven past.

In par­tic­u­lar, we resist the allure of lot con­sol­i­da­tion and the con­struc­tion of large block-scaled build­ings, which con­sol­i­date own­er­ship and com­mu­ni­ty risk. Large block-scaled build­ings simul­ta­ne­ous­ly become unman­age­able alba­tross­es that require out­sized cap­i­tal invest­ments fre­quent­ly enough to become unten­able over the longterm. Count­less exam­ples of such build­ings from the mid­dle 20th cen­tu­ry stand as tes­ta­ments to either defer­ring main­te­nance or becom­ing over­lever­aged to meet those main­te­nance needs.

While we do not reject every large devel­op­ment, we think it impor­tant that a com­mu­ni­ty active­ly reduce the pro­lif­er­a­tion of such build­ings, in favor of iden­ti­fy­ing vacant and under­uti­lized lots and advo­cat­ing for small­er scale infill devel­op­ment. We also encour­age the adap­tive reuse and appro­pri­ate sub­di­vi­sion of exist­ing large his­toric struc­tures, espe­cial­ly aban­doned indus­tri­al build­ings for new res­i­den­tial, com­mer­cial, or small-scale indus­tri­al uses.

Small lots in both res­i­den­tial neigh­bor­hoods and com­mer­cial dis­tricts diver­si­fies own­er­ship, reduces over­head and tax bur­den, and dis­trib­utes risk over a much larg­er pool of peo­ple increas­ing resilien­cy and the abil­i­ty to sur­vive eco­nom­ic down­turns. Small cities like Allen­town have proven remark­ably resilient to sys­temic fail­ures because of this. Recent pat­terns in devel­op­ment, while boost­ing the econ­o­my now, car­ry far greater risk and reduce resilien­cy in the future. Again, this does not mean that we are opposed to all such devel­op­ment on a case-by-case basis, but it does mean that we stand against such devel­op­ment as the default instead of the excep­tion to reha­bil­i­tat­ing our neigh­bor­hoods and com­mer­cial prop­er­ties as they exist.

We also encour­age city gov­ern­ment to devel­op­ment rea­son­able, com­mon sense tax rules and fine sched­ules to dis­in­cen­tivize mass prop­er­ty acqui­si­tions and improve stan­dards com­pli­ance by prop­er­ty investors which reduce rates of own­er occu­pan­cy and increase blight — down­right bog stan­dard bell­wethers of com­mu­ni­ty health; there­by cre­at­ing vir­tu­al lot con­sol­i­da­tion that sim­i­lar­ly reduces resilien­cy. At least exces­sive­ly large real estate port­fo­lios are reversible, while demo­li­tion of sus­tain­ably-sized struc­tures and con­sol­i­da­tion of small lots is not.

In addi­tion to pre­serv­ing the small lots and and high den­si­ty of our his­toric plan­ning, we also sup­port the reten­tion and expan­sion of mixed-use neigh­bor­hoods, with cor­ner stores, ground floor retail, at-home busi­ness­es, and acces­so­ry build­ing busi­ness­es. These are the prin­ci­ple means both his­tor­i­cal­ly and today that encour­age and sup­port sus­tain­able small busi­ness and ensure com­mu­ni­ty access to goods and services.

One of the prin­ci­pal rea­sons for pre­fer­ring his­toric mixed-use devel­op­ment pat­terns is that they encour­age walk­a­bil­i­ty and there­fore con­nec­tiv­i­ty with­in com­mu­ni­ties. Our auto­mo­bile-cen­tric choic­es since the sec­ond half of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry have con­tributed to the dis­so­lu­tion of strong com­mu­ni­ty ties, exac­er­bat­ed inequities, and made all of us far more sub­ject to the pre­car­i­ty of eco­nom­ic forces out­side of our indi­vid­ual con­trol. 

Retail mov­ing out of urban cores and mixed-use neigh­bor­hoods to sub­ur­ban com­mer­cial plazas and strips has indi­rect­ly com­pelled unnec­es­sary car own­er­ship, plac­ing much greater strain on city infra­struc­ture, increas­ing traf­fic con­ges­tion and lead­ing to unsafe street con­di­tions for dri­vers, cyclists, and pedes­tri­ans alike; under­uti­liz­ing land to pro­vide hous­ing to cars instead of peo­ple; and gen­er­al­ly wast­ing resources by seg­re­gat­ing peo­ple from the goods and ser­vices that they need to live. 

We sup­port a city — as it was his­tor­i­cal­ly planned — that sup­ports its inhab­i­tants on foot, on bicy­cle, on reg­u­lar and reli­able pub­lic tran­sit, and only rarely when absolute­ly nec­es­sary by auto­mo­bile, reduc­ing the city’s depen­den­cy on them and free­ing up our streets and land to serve peo­ple rather than over­sized machines.

Built envi­ron­ments are not mere­ly the sum of their archi­tec­ture, par­cel sizes, and uses, how­ev­er they are also intrin­si­cal­ly con­nect­ed to the choic­es that we make with respect to ded­i­cat­ed green space, veg­e­ta­tion, and the main­te­nance of bio­di­ver­si­ty with­in city lim­its. This is why we believe that parks, con­ser­va­tion dis­tricts, shade trees, and urban forestry more gen­er­al­ly are crit­i­cal com­po­nents of preservation.

The city of Allen­town is for­tu­nate to have a strong foun­da­tion here, with a large, deeply inte­grat­ed, and well-main­tained parks sys­tem and large tracts of well-forest­ed streets, but we can do more, we can do bet­ter, and we can ensure that this foun­da­tion is pre­served and built upon so that present and future gen­er­a­tions can con­tin­ue to reap the ben­e­fits of green streets and spaces.

The urban canopy has near­ly immea­sur­able ben­e­fits for the secu­ri­ty and well-being of our neigh­bor­hoods, but the choic­es that we make with respect to it have decades-long effects. The loss of a mature shade tree dam­aged by increas­es in traf­fic pol­lu­tion, by neglect­ed limb­ing, and a gen­er­al lack of mon­i­tor­ing and main­te­nance is a loss that will be felt for twen­ty to forty years.

An urban canopy is good for peo­ple and build­ings alike, espe­cial­ly in places where build­ings are fre­quent­ly as tall or taller than the trees, mit­i­gat­ing the risk of dam­age from falling limbs. Mature shade trees reduce the heat island effect, cool­ing asphalt and con­crete, and reduc­ing cool­ing costs in build­ings by as much as thir­ty-five per-cent. Trees are an essen­tial com­po­nent of improv­ing air qual­i­ty in urban areas, absorb­ing green­house gas­es and pol­lu­tants, cap­tur­ing air­borne pol­lens, and pro­duc­ing oxy­gen. 

Trees also pro­tect struc­tures from the ele­ments, slow­ing dam­age from exces­sive sun, wind, and rain expo­sure, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly shel­ter­ing  pedes­tri­ans, cyclists, and dri­vers from the same. Fur­ther­more, their exten­sive root sys­tems reduce sur­face run-off of water from storms, reduced soil ero­sion and sed­i­men­ta­tion of streams, increase ground water recharge that is sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduced by paving, while also help­ing to dis­perse sur­face ground­wa­ter above the canopy and reduc­ing street humid­i­ty and damp­ness in build­ing foun­da­tions. 

We call on city gov­ern­ment to bet­ter reg­u­late and devel­op the urban for­est in con­cert with oth­er goals, cre­at­ing shade tree require­ments, sys­tems for inspec­tion and main­te­nance, as well as penal­ties and enforce­ment for injur­ing, felling, or fail­ing to replace these crit­i­cal com­po­nents of the urban landscape.

To sum­ma­rize these moti­vat­ing prin­ci­ples, our build­ings do not exist sep­a­rate­ly, dis­crete­ly in a vac­u­um. They coex­ist along­side one anoth­er and with­in a dis­tinct cli­mate, geog­ra­phy, and cul­ture of devel­op­ment. Neigh­bor­hoods have a col­lec­tive char­ac­ter and are knit togeth­er by all of the choic­es that are made by city plan­ners, by civ­il engi­neers, and most of all by busi­ness and home ‑own­ers. We are not con­tent to advo­cate exclu­sive­ly for the main­te­nance and preser­va­tion of his­toric struc­tures, but also for the holis­tic char­ac­ter of our neigh­bor­hoods and streetscapes, whether its our pub­lic parks and shade trees, our pave­ment and road­ways, our pri­vate and pub­lic sig­nage, the walk­a­bil­i­ty of our neigh­bor­hoods, or the effi­ca­cy of our pub­lic tran­sit, our approach to preser­va­tion is com­pre­hen­sive and humane, tak­ing into account the whole scope of the com­mons and seek­ing to retain or restore the best that we have built and cul­ti­vat­ed in this community.