I’m here to write about architecture (old and new), historic preservation (the good, the bad, the ugly), cities (in all their messy glory), architects I admire (or don’t), why all of this matters to me, and why I think it should matter to you.
I am in love with old buildings. I did not realize this until I moved to St. Louis to attend college at Saint Louis University. St. Louis, I discovered, is one of the most underrated architectural cities in the country. There, I was face to face with red brick Italianate duplexes, second empire beauties of Lafayette Square, a Romanesque Revival former mansion right on my own campus (and speaking of SLU, the incomparable Gothic Revival College Church), among so many other styles and building types. I was also volunteering in low-income northside neighborhoods where I found beauty in vacant, crumbling brick rowhouses. I wanted to save them all. I wrote about these neighborhoods for a social justice magazine, hopeful I could help others see the importance of the buildings and people who inhabited these spaces.
Through my time at SLU I had professors and mentors who taught me more about the history of cities and architecture, and about historic preservation, and all the good it can do. Michael Allen’s tour of Old North St. Louis in a course my freshman year changed my life in ways I’m still not able to fully describe.
I came to Los Angeles because twice during my time in grad school I attended presentations about SurveyLA, the citywide survey of historic resources (in upstate New York no less). Completed between 2010 and 2017, I was fascinated that the city was even able to undertake such a feat and I also saw just how much historic architecture there was to discover there. LA came across as a city that took preservation seriously, and I wanted to see if that was true. I did not know much at all about LA or its history or its architecture when I moved here, but over the past three years, I’ve seen so much and learned so much. But I haven’t even scratched the surface.
Historic preservation combines all the things I love, architecture, history, and the great ecosystems that are cities. I sometimes tell people I’m like an investigator or an investigative reporter but for buildings. I meet a new building for a work project or for fun and I instantly have to know everything about it. Who designed it, who built it, who it was built for, why it was designed the way it was, who lived in or used it, how has it changed and who changed it, what happened there. Architecture is special because though many forms of art can delight and challenge us, and can be an expression of our values, architecture is art that people have to live in and use. It has to function. It’s where we live our lives.
Buildings of all types, styles, and ages have stories to tell. All we have to do is listen.
That’s what I do. I listen to buildings tell me about their past and about the kind of future they would like to have. Getting this right matters because the way we treat our historic buildings now will impact how people see them in future generations, or if they get to see them at all. There are buildings that were demolished before I was born I would have loved to see in person. And there are buildings that exist today that I want to be around for people who live 300 years after me to get to see.
This blog will be a place where I share stories about buildings, where I will critique both new architecture and historic preservation projects, where I will write about Los Angeles architecture and how it is transforming the city and other thoughts about how architecture affects us all and what the future of historic preservation should be.
If you love old buildings, or new buildings, or have thoughts about anything I write about, I hope you’ll leave comments or send me an email.
Olivia Holley White 