Preservation Efforts: In Vain?

When one looses two important modernist architectural works in one week, one must wonder how effective efforts to save threatened properties ever can be. 

The last week of February brought two major losses: James Fitzgibbon's Paschal house in Raleigh, NC and Richard Neutra's Cyclorama building in Gettysburg, PA.

Not that everyone was asleep at the wheel. 

Quite in contrast, the Paschal house, on the National Register of Historic Places, was demolished by the heirs after an eight-year effort to work out a solution; the Cyclorama was destroyed after what the non-profit Triangle Modernist Houses describes as a valiant ten-year fight against the National Park Service.

But as I mentioned before before, preservation starts with the owner, not the buyer.


Paschal house in Raleigh, NC:

Cyclorama at Gettysburg, PA:

Photos: Paschal house by Raleigh NewsObserver, Cyclorama by TMH