The Mission
By Beth Yarbrough
A sad house on a beautiful day in Chester, SC. While the decline is obvious, tax records indicate that there may be a new owner. If so, I wish this gorgeous old Queen Anne all the best.
No matter where you live, there is always that one house. We drive by it every day, and it always prompts the thought: “Why doesn’t someone save that place?”
And then we move on.
That was my habit for years until I unexpectedly found myself hanging out with preservation enthusiasts on a regular basis, and the game changed. One day I realized I was absorbing a lot of good information, so much so that I was no longer wondering why a place couldn’t be saved, but instead was making a mental note to place a few calls, send an email or two, and get a ball rolling.
A few years ago on a return trip from a photo shoot in South Carolina, it dawned on me that the one and only difference between the old me and the new was a bit of practical knowledge. I had not returned to school for a degree, had not taken a single course in anything related to historic preservation. I had simply learned how the preservation landscape works.
And if it was as easy as that, I knew it would be that easy for everyone, if given access to a few basics. That was the day that my little book, The Grassroots Guide To Saving What Matters: Historic Preservation For Everyday People was born.
Long-time subscribers to this site will remember that it actually first appeared as a series of articles here on Southern Voice. Once the series was complete, however, I began to see it as a book that could actually help affect change.
We don’t need to be professionals in order to save an old house. We simply need to know how the process works. It is not murky or mysterious or difficult to ascertain. In fact, most of it is hiding in plain sight. And any one of us can be the voice that first speaks up.
That is my hope for this little mission I’m on. We can all be preservation enthusiasts. And armed with a bit of good information, we can all make a difference.
Oh I do hope the person who is interested makes a positive difference. When I was a student in the Cooperstown [NY] graduate program way back in the 1970s, I often drove down a long winding road, taking back roads to Cherry Valley, passing an enormous Victorian house that was already leaning at dramatic angles. My heart ached for it. Decades later, living and working only an hour from Cooperstown, I traveled back, as I often did but decided to travel on the winding back road back through Cherry Valley to Cooperstown. I almost ran off the road. There was that house [somewhere I have a slide, which still needs converting]. It was magnificent. That house had four floors and a vast number of railings, towers and windows, but it was totally and beautifully restored. I should have left a note in the mailbox congratulating the owners on saving a house that I thought surely would be long destroyed by the elements and the course of ownership that might not have been interested in such a daunting rescue. I often say - we do win some - and each win is worth celebrating.