The Short Answer: An exchange with Hillary Rodham Clinton
The senator from New York was the
first honorary chairman of Save
America's Treasures.
You have supported the preservation
of famous historic properties. Is this a personal
interest?
Yes, and has been for a very long time.
I had the pleasure of returning to the Longfellow
House in Massachusetts as First Lady and senator on
behalf of Save
America's Treasures, but my first visit was when
I was a college student at Wellesley. And when one
lives in the White House, as I did, one has a heightened
awareness about not just the historical significance
of these places, but also the personal meaning they
may have had in the lives of their inhabitants.
How do we protect cultural resources
while helping economic revitalization?
The protection of cultural resources
and historic places can and often does affect economic
revitalization in very positive ways. One of the first
places I visited when we kicked off Save America's
Treasures in 1999 was Seneca Falls in upstate New
York, where the women's movement was founded. The
National Women's Hall of Fame is there. Given the
historical significance of the site and its enormous
potential for drawing visitors, I am very hopeful
that one day it will be a premier destination and
a boon to the upstate economy. I recently introduced
legislation to confer national historic site status
on the Kate Mullany House, where the 19th-century
union leader lived and organized women workers in
Troy, New York.
In the historic Hudson River Valley,
Olana, the home and studio of the preeminent mid-19th-century
American landscape painter, Frederic Edwin Church,
will be restored with the help of a generous grant
from Save America's Treasures that I supported. It
is part of an overall plan to restore the house, the
surrounding landscape, and the fine art collection,
as well as build a new museum and visitors center.
The site already attracts 150,000 visitors annually,
and with the restoration and enhancement it is expected
to generate close to $25 million annually in economic
activity for the region and state.
A large cement factory is to be built
nearby. Should such a thing be allowed?
It would be a big step backward from
what has been a return to cultural and historic preservation
as an engine of economic development. Control rests
in the hands of the state, but I am concerned that
such a factory will disrupt what has been a steady
revitalization of the area.
Are cultural concerns of any real
interest to Congress these days?
Certainly these are challenging times.
As legislators, our attention is focused on the very
serious issues of war, terrorism, and the economy.
Because of this, the cultural community needs to work
harder than ever to ensure that the things that enrich
our lives, like the arts, and preservation of links
to our past, continue to be funded and considered
priorities. Even as we contemplate the enormous federal
expenditures for homeland security and the rebuilding
of Iraq, there is some good news. The Congress appropriated
$33 million for Save America's Treasures in the 2004
budget. The earmarked projects include everything
from the Art Deco Tower in the former Sears building
in Miami, to Frank Lloyd Wright's masterpiece, Fallingwater,
and the Edgar Allan Poe Cottage in the Bronx.
Should the federal government make
a public commitment to historic preservation?
Yes. This has been a focus of mine since
being elected to the Senate. I joined with Sen. Charles
Schumer and Rep. Jim Walsh in announcing congressional
approval for $600,000 in federal funding for the Erie
Canal National Heritage Corridor Commission, charged
with the development of a new program to enhance heritage
tourism, education, recreation, and economic development
along the more than 500-mile corridor.
What effect will the redevelopment
of Lower Manhattan have on historic buildings there?
Historic preservation will be important
to the success of a redeveloped Lower Manhattan, as
it has been in many other major cities. I am heartened
by the Metropolitan Transit Authority's October decision
to preserve the 115-year-old Corbin Building as it
plans the Fulton Street transit center on Broadway.
This is an important bellwether. Coalitions like the
Lower Manhattan Emergency Preservation Fund, of which
the National Trust is a member, have already provided
funding for inspection, cleaning, replacement, and
repair of buildings in the wake of 9/11's devastation,
and they have designated "corridors of concern"
to show Lower Manhattan's rich architectural heritage.
I am hopeful that developers, preservationists, and
our city and state governments can work together to
create a new Lower Manhattan that will not come at
the expense of buildings that are important but not
protected by landmark status or state and national
registers.
What categories of preservation are
most in need?
When we started Save America's Treasures,
we chose to focus on preserving those historic entities
that were deteriorating for lack of funds: not only
historic sites, but things as important as our charters
of freedom—the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution,
and the Bill of Rights—at the National Archives and
the Star-Spangled Banner at the Smithsonian. When
I looked at the list of 2003 award winners, I was
delighted to see preservation projects like the locomotive
collection at the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore
and the George Balanchine Foundation's video archives
in New York. Won't it be wonderful to watch, perhaps
a hundred years from now, how his original dancers
danced the roles he created for them?
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