Anyone who has forgotten about the debate that boiled over last summer concerning historic preservation of Aspen’s 20th-century buildings is reminded of the many values surrounding the issue in a new city-sponsored documentary.
“A Fragile Heritage: Aspen’s Historic Preservation Debate,” produced by Vertige, a Denver studio, and directed by Alexandre O. Philippe, grounds the preservation debate in Aspen’s history. The film will be shown in the City Council chambers in the basement of Aspen City Hall on Wednesday and Thursday at noon. Admission is free.
In July 2007, Aspen City Council passed an emergency ordinance that required any building more than 30 years old to undergo a historic review before a demolition or renovation permit could be granted. If the property were to be deemed historic by the city, the owner could be prevented from tearing the building down.
This action invited much criticism from some property owners, and six months later, the ordinance was repealed in favor of a new ordinance that established a list of 89 “potential historic resources.” A citizen’s task force is examining — and will be making recommendations on — Aspen’s historic preservation program for post-World War II structures. In the meantime, anyone with property on that list who wishes to alter or demolish the property must enter a 90-day negotiation period with the city during which the city tries to convince (and possibly offer incentives to) the owner not to tear the building down.
But the film does not start there. With a somewhat eerie background score, it opens with the voices of people involved in the historic preservation debate set over picturesque photographs of the town, many of which were taken in February when there was so much snow newspaper boxes were barely visible. People talk about what a unique place Aspen is, and how its history as a mining town turned ski Mecca is part of what sets it apart from other world-famous resorts.
“Aspen is like the fishbowl at the top of the world. It’s very inward-looking in some ways,” says an unseen Ben Gagnon, of the city of Aspen’s community development department, as the viewer is greeted with a constantly changing array of pictures and moving images of life in town.
About a dozen people make up the body of interviews used by the filmmakers. There is no narrator and the story is guided entirely by the voices of Aspenites interviewed. Subjects include Amy Guthrie, the city of Aspen’s historic preservation planner; Aspen citizens Marilyn Marks and Mike Maple, who were among the most vocal opponents of the emergency ordinance; architects Bill Poss and Harry Teague; Georgia Hanson of the Aspen Historical Society; ski bum real estate agent Tim Mooney and former mayoral candidate and city councilman Tim Semrau.
The movie unfolds last year’s historic preservation debate by beginning with a little history of the historic preservation program itself. Initiated in Aspen in the early 1970s, the program emerged as a way to protect and preserve Aspen’s Victorian-era history, and bears much responsibility for what anyone must agree is a healthy and well-kept stock of Victorian homes, many of which have been renovated and added onto through the historic preservation program.
Things got a bit trickier by the turn of the new millennium when the city began efforts to preserve Aspen’s 20th-century architecture. The film presents an interesting discussion of the history and virtues of modernist, or Bauhaus, architecture, a style that, with all of its “de-ornamentation,” can be more “intellectually challenging” than others, according to Suzannah Reid, a former member of the Historic Preservation Commission. As such, Bauhaus can be harder to appreciate, the film points out.
The film also points out that Aspen has fine examples of modernist architecture, thanks in large part to the vision of Walter Paepcke, who brought in renowned Bauhaus architects to design the Aspen Institute and Aspen Meadows campus, where modernist buildings “were built at the moment in time modernism was coming to the United States, and were built by the people who were bringing modernism to the United States,” according to an unidentified voice-over. Other examples of private homes, as well as Aspen’s Given Institute, are presented to illustrate modernism.
The documentary also provides a primer on chalet-style architecture, which came to Aspen mostly thanks to European immigrants during the 1950s. The chalet and modernist styles are the primary targets of post-war preservation efforts.
“At first I thought that was ridiculous,” said Poss of the city’s efforts to save chalet-style homes, “but it is a piece of our history. So it should be preserved.”
The film gives delicate treatment to the political debate that grabbed so many headlines between emergency ordinance and appeal. Some of the subjects agree that the step was a necessary one, while some said they support the ends but not the means. Many of the subjects state that a key necessity of any historic preservation program should be a community consensus on what is historic. It is noted that the citizen task force is embarking on establishing that consensus.
In a moment that should ring a bell for anyone who watched the heated political debate unfold during the latter half of 2007, Guthrie, who was in the middle of the firestorm, lets out a large sigh when describing the frustration of the “balancing act” of historic preservation, and the feeling that you can never make everyone happy.
Maple, of the anti-Ordinance 30/48 crowd, takes viewers through a nuanced discussion of “preserving community” versus “preserving architecture,” and the challenges entailed in trying to do both simultaneously.
Hanson, of the historical society, states her wish to live in a community that automatically values its history, and that historic preservation need not be legislated.
Overall, the 27-minute film, for which the city paid $40,000, gives the viewer an interesting tour through Aspen’s past and present history, guided by some of its more involved citizens.
curtis@aspendailynews.com