Who Can You Believe

[L Verge]

The Stephen Decatur House on the Square is a good example of one that was saved. There are others where the facades were at least saved, but office complexes were incorporated behind those facades. The Dolley Madison House is one of these. This has been a useful technique in at least D.C. - saving the historic facade, but doing adaptive use with the rest of the building.

Most historic preservation covenants protect the exterior, but allow owners to make necessary upgrades to the interior. Homes and buildings of great historical significance, of course, are preserved as close to the original as possible. The big issue today (as our country seems to have lost interest in its history) is determining what the true historical value is of some "old buildings." We have seen that a lot in our home county here. After the tobacco buy-outs, large farms went up for sale and developers grabbed them. Many had homes dating to the post-Civil War era as well as 19th-century and early-20th century barns and outbuildings. They took up space that McMansions could be built on, so down they went. In most cases, those buildings had no significant historical value. The county has saved some of the old tobacco barns and stripping sheds in order to maintain a sense of the historic economy that controlled our area for nearly 300 years. The point is - not every old building is historic. In the case of the Old Clubhouse, however, it definitely should have been preserved for its historic value.