Posted on Fri, Dec. 02, 2005
A plan for one big historic family
By David Moltke-Hansen and Kenneth Finkel
Philadelphia's past is on the cusp of change. After decades of
experimentation and tentative toe-dipping, there's now real promise that
this region can become America's historical capital. For the first time,
our community of museums, research libraries and historical organizations
is poised to act as a single, cohesive whole and seek federal designation
as a National Heritage Area.
This federal designation will be anything but automatic. No matter how
important our historical assets, many stakeholders will have to stretch,
as never before, across philosophical and geographic divides and
institutional interests to envision a bold and comprehensive future for
Philadelphia's past.
This process has already proved itself and reaped benefits in other cities
and regions that are developing themselves as heritage areas and corridors
- Pittsburgh; Lowell, Mass.; and, in the immediate vicinity, the
Schuylkill River Basin. In every case, planning alone has been a valuable
community-building exercise that has generated new thinking and
transformative action. It's exactly what the Philadelphia area needs.
For every 20,000 residents, this region has roughly one historic site and
two historical organizations. Our museums, libraries and archives hold
tens of millions of historic objects. Our communities are stewards to
thousands of sites on the National Register of Historic Places; 500 state
historical markers, and more than 100 National Historic Landmarks. We
preserve historic districts, streetscapes and landscapes everywhere, a
testament to our deep and ongoing commitment to history.
Defining our National Heritage Area begins with an inventory and builds to
a shared vision that will encompass the sweep of our history. We'll
transcend our traditional focus on the 18th century, augmenting the best
sites and stories from the 19th and 20th centuries. We'll go beyond the
celebrations of great anniversaries and men to develop programs that last.
To succeed, we'll need to agree on common-sense operating principles:
synchronized opening and closing times, coordinated programming at
historic sites, joint media plans, and combined marketing and fund-raising
for clusters of related institutions. We'll need to create or strengthen
our organizational infrastructure to accelerate our advance toward our
goals.
Why bother? Over the centuries, this region invented America and then
forged its future. Philadelphia innovation began long before Benjamin
Franklin stole thunder from the gods and created the lightning rod. And it
has continued beyond the time University of Pennsylvania engineers broke
ground for our present information economy with the invention of the
computer. Now, for the sake of our past and our future, we need to create
an enduring, robust plan to use, enjoy and broadly share our remarkable
legacy of innovation.
Why now? The time is ripe for a new vision. On the one hand, we are
convinced of this by the combined potential of information technology,
social change, new constituencies for culture, and the rise of the
creative economy. On the other hand, we've witnessed the revival of
Philadelphia in the 1990s and the continuing power and popularity of
heritage tourism.
It won't be easy. We'll have to turn away from the smaller issues and
toward the larger ones. Boards of directors will need to learn how
simultaneously to serve their organizations and the region, sometimes by
combining with related institutions. Instead of dedicating ourselves to
the pieces of the past about which we are individually passionate, we'll
need collectively to draw on our assets, add value, attract visitors and
foster growth. Then our wealth will be transformed from stumbling block to
building block. No longer will we suffer the poverty of plenty - too few
visitors and uses for our many sites.
Some stakeholders already have begun to embrace such a holistic approach.
There's a consortium for special-collection libraries, another for the
Civil War, and several collaboratives seeking to improve educational
outcomes. Over the last few years, private and public funders have
encouraged and supported these approaches to heritage development. Others
like the trends they see and are poised to join in forging deep and
lasting collaborations that will be the rule, not the exception.
We have to remember that the idea propelling this vision has to be so
broad, so grand and so audacious that it captures not just our
imagination, but also the imagination of those around us. We have to be
guided as well by Carnegie Corp. president Vartan Gregorian's wisdom,
offered to the historical community a few years ago: "Philadelphians need
to realize that modesty is a private virtue but a public vice." There's no
time for bashfulness as we define our National Heritage Area and secure
Philadelphia as America's historical capital. If we want gold, we have to
have brass.
David Moltke-Hansen is chair of the Civil War History Consortium. Kenneth
Finkel is chairman of the board of the Conservation Center for Art and
Historic Artifacts.
