Why Place Is Important Part II–Circling The Wagons

I live in Washington, DC, a city of transients.  Every four or eight years a new Administration comes to town, and with it new people.  If a new President is ambitious, he will clean house from top to bottom – from the inner sancta of the White House, to his advisors and counsel, to Secretaries, Assistant Secretaries, and Deputy Secretaries. When Congress changes after elections, ex-members head for home and with them go their staffs and the the K Street lobbyists who depend on their patronage.

In recent years Washington has become an important national IT center, beginning to rival Silicon Valley and Route 128.  While still small in comparison to these techie nodes, the Washington information technology industry employs thousand of people and even during the recession added many more.  These employees, however, move quickly as opportunities open on the West Coast or abroad. 

The Washington metro area is one of the nation’s wealthiest and thanks to this economic advantage, families move internally as well as to other regions of the country.  They ‘move up’ all the time, trading in small condos for starter homes, then moving farther out to get more house, then eventually come back in for residence in sought-after neighborhoods. Retired couples may stay in DC, but more often than not move elsewhere at least to a second home. In short, except for the poor, inner-city neighborhoods, Washington is a wealthy, fluid place.

Community, therefore, is defined very differently in Washington than in other more stable, conservative areas like many parts of the rural South or wealthy enclaves of New England.  Although most of us readily identify ourselves as Washingtonians and have made friends whom we have known for years; and although we are practiced locals able to negotiate the traffic, the neighborhoods, Georgetown, Capitol Hill, and the Mall, we are still not from here and are likely move.

I was born, raised, and schooled in Connecticut; but despite my peculiar Central Connecticut New Britski accent and bits of my Italian-cum-WASP past still sticking to me, I am community-less.  I have no allegiance to New Britain or to Connecticut; nor any sense of place or feeling of belonging. I am right at home in Washington. I might be tempted by some aspects of small-town living, but my preferred home is an impersonal city, and my community is virtual, electronically-connected, and personal-at-a-distance.

I have spent a lot of time in a small Mississippi town with deep roots and cultural memories.  One day on an early trip there, a long-time resident drove me around the town.  Not only could he tell me who was living in every house, but who had lived in them, where the family money came from and who married whom.  There has always been something attractive about this social intimacy, and the familiar patterns of church, school, family, and neighborhood are appealing; but I always return to Washington.

Many of my friends, however, have a very definite sense of place and belonging. One whom I have known since our India days in the 60s retired to his old family place in the Berkshires, a summer cottage where they went every year until his parents died.  He tore the now ramshackle house down, retained the footprint to satisfy the zoning board, and built a larger, modern all-year-round residence.  The small western Massachusetts town where they live has always been home and will now always be.

Another friend returned to an exclusive New England community to live after many decades of summering there.  Her family was one of the first residents of the area and was responsible for much of its early development.  She is attached to the land, its history, its architecture, formal English gardens, and manicured lawns; and wants it never to change.  She would like to assure her children of family continuity. 

My West Coast friend to whom I referred in the first of my articles on place has a similar history.  She is from an old California family whose ancestors were some of the state’s earliest settlers. The small community where she lives is more than just the place where she was born and raised, but part of a continuing history that goes back over 100 years.

There is, however, a dark side to all of this. Plenty has been written about the ingrown, gossipy, and petty nature of small towns; but not much about their self-protective insularity – a circle-the-wagons mentality which is designed to keep out the outlier, the different, and the strange. For example, although sensible justifications may be given for trying to keep out new development, large dwellings, and associated upscale amenities – e.g. bad for the environment, the importance of open space, the need for a health serenity – the real reason is class.

Potomac, Maryland is a suburb of Washington which used to be a quiet, conservative, wealthy, old-school community.  The houses were of modest size and well-integrated into the landscape.  There was a pleasing balance between lawn, garden, and dwelling.  Many lots were secluded in wooded copses, gravel roads were common, and city services like water and sewerage deliberately delayed to preserve a traditional style of country living with artesian water and septic tanks.  The houses were usually one story, angled to fit the property, with lots of windows looking out to the gardens and trees in front and behind.

About twenty-five years ago large mansions were built along River Road.  These were not just large houses, they were the size of small chateaus.  All trees and greenery had been razed to make room from these houses; and even with the large lot sizes available in Potomac, the the dwellings took up most of the land.  These mansions were built side by side, and in offset developments. Each had its own character – some French Louis XIV, others Mediterranean, others Moroccan-Venetian – but they were all outsized, multi-storied, multi-garaged, and outfitted with pools, game rooms, gyms, and every kind of sub-kitchen, conservatory, and sitting room.

Soon these houses became the common butt of joke in every wealthy, traditional neighborhood of Washington – Spring Valley, Cleveland Park, Kalorama, and Wesley Heights. Although these areas have large homes, they are classically designed and built of Williamsburg brick or colonial white frame.  They are elegantly landscaped and keep their lawns manicured, trees trimmed, and flowers well-tended.

From this perspective of old money, tradition, and power, the Potomac ‘McMansions’ were absurd, obscene, and totally outrageous.  The talk quickly turned from size and design to the likely owners – Arabs with limitless oil money; shyster land developers; and New York (i.e. Jewish) investors.  To the WASPs of Upper Northwest, the McMansions signaled the invasion of a hyper-bourgeois, crass, tasteless, foreign materialism that threatened every considered, temperate, and modest expression of wealth in Washington. The mansions were bad enough, but the golf courses, tinsel-town excesses, fleets of Ferraris, Lamborghinis, and Hummers they spun off would degrade land, vista, and culture.

It wasn’t so much that old-time residents resented the houses per se, it was what and whom they represented.  In fluid and wealthy Washington where traditional community is not valued , all that is left is an outward community signifying status, culture, and position but serving no interactive needs. If community is not neighbors, common schools and churches, then it is only what it looks like.  If I lived in an old-monied area like Spring Valley in Washington, I could enjoy the shared culture and reflected sophistication of my neighbors and their homes. An intrusion of new money would erode whatever social and cultural identity I had created for myself.

About ten years ago, an oversized mansion-like house was built in Spring Valley.  As in Potomac, the land was cleared for a house double or even triple the size of anything else in the neighborhood.  It was constructed not of colonial brick or frame, but some yellowish stone and stucco.  It had a four-car garage, decorative overhangs, ornate entrances, and cobbled walkways.  Compared to everything around it, it was a monstrosity. 

“Do you know who lives there?”, was the whispered, conspiratorial question of neighbors.

“Arabs” was the answer.  “Has to be.”

The problem is that both the Potomac and Spring Valley houses met all current zoning and code requirements.  Nothing in local regulations said you couldn’t build a faux Moroccan palace or copy of the Chateau de Versailles.  Only in new, restricted-access gated communities and historic districts were exclusionary policies permitted. Otherwise it was a cultural free-for-all.

I sympathize with the residents of Spring Valley, Carmel, or Southport who are enraged at the invasion of new money; and I personally would not want a Sultan’s harem next to me; but I am annoyed at the self-righteousness of those who dig in their heels and fight ‘development’ because it is not their sylvan glades they are concerned about, it is Arab money. These are often the same people who rail against the One Percent and what they consider to be the depredations of the rich; but these activists are themselves wealthy – just with a different kind of wealth – and theirs is a protest against what others’ new money can buy.

By the same token, I know of a number of old-guard families in these enclaves who, having run through their trust funds, were more than happy to sell their tasteful brick colonial to the developer offering the highest price.  So much for community.

I probably would raise a fuss if some of this new money showed up in my neighborhood and if some new pimped up house started to be built on the next block; but I would not go to the barricades, believer in free markets that I am.  I might press for more restrictive zoning and push for regulations that took character and environment into consideration when granting permits; but I would keep my mouth shut about Arabs, New York developers, and real estate shysters. One of the best features of this country is its entrepreneurial dynamism.  It is hard to predict where this capitalist energy may lead – and in this case it leads to the mega-mansions of Potomac – but all in all it is a good system; and there is always the right of collective citizen action.

So while I appreciate the desire of wealthy traditionalists to keep things the way they have always been, I have never appreciated the elitism of the struggle. It is one thing to be self-preservationist – all human societies have been so – but it is another thing altogether to criticize only certain types of wealth.  After all, it was the same capitalist engine which produced old money and new money.

Does Place Matter?

I grew up in New Britain,Connecticut, called the Hardware City of the World for good reason.  During the early part of the 20th century major manufacturers such as The Stanley Works, Corbin Locks, and North & Judd, were headquartered in the city and for most of my life there, they cranked out screwdrivers, bolts, and wire.  I have vivid memories of gnome-like creatures moving eerily in the semi-dark of basement factories and the banging and clatter of machines. Other than these scary glimpses, I had nothing to do with the factories, the workers, or their children.  I lived in the West End of town where all the captains of these industries lived.  It had old colonial houses, picket fences, rose trellises, spacious lawns and a very old-world English feel.

It had nothing at all in common with the multi-story buildings that housed Polish immigrants – the gnomes I saw working the lathes and metal cutters.

New Britain was particularly interesting because of its varied and very distinct social strata.  There were the old-monied WASP factory owners; first generation Italian and Polish doctors, dentists, and lawyers; shopkeepers, painters, schoolteachers, and civil servants; and factory workers – a Marxist mix if there ever was one. People of each class stayed together.  There were no carpenter’s daughters at the Country Club; no St. Grottlesex offspring at the Roller Rink.

My mother recently died at 99, and my last ties to New Britain were cut.  Except for my ten years overseas, I visited the old homestead every year for 60 years and always drove around the city, curious about changes, and hopeful for some kind of renewal for the downtown, which had become tacky and shiftless. Beauty parlors, nail shops and psychic readers had replaced solid clothing stores, banks, and pharmacies.  I lamented any gussying up of my old West End neighborhood and the intrusion of iffy newcomers.  Of course in 1952 as the first non-WASP family to buy in this privileged enclave, we were once iffy newcomers.  According to our neighbors my father wore wife-beaters, smoked cheroots, swigged cheap Chianti, and threw things.

I saw no contradiction in all this.  I simply wanted nothing to change.  I wanted the West End, the well-kept four-story walk ups on Monroe Street, the Polish delis on Broad, the Frederick Law Olmstead park, the Country Club; the working class neighborhoods of Belvedere and Stanley Street; Jimmy’s Smoke Shop and the Miss Washington Diner to always be there.

On another level I don’t really care if and how New Britain changes.  I have never really had a stake in the place.  I and my friends were always on the periphery, dipping in to get gas, buy cigarettes, girly magazines and the occasional pair of galoshes; play pickup at the park.  Our life centered around the Country Day School, the Club, and holiday parties in Farmington and West Hartford.  I went away to school at fifteen, so never was plugged into the high school culture.  New Britain was a place to slide through on the way to someplace else.

In fact I don’t care if everything changes. I have never been active in historic preservation movements; never gotten fussed over social and demographic movements.  I am not surprised or angry at the McMansions built in the DC suburbs or at the city’s gentrified inner city neighborhoods.  The proliferation of luxury high-rises replacing older New York City neighborhoods doesn’t bother me at all.  America is all about the free movement of capital and the private market.  People move out of some neighborhoods because rents are too high while others move in, force positive changes in schools, community services, and infrastructure, and contribute to the city in their own way.

I have often been asked why I don’t see some intrinsic value in preserving old neighborhoods.  Isn’t there something important about assuring historical continuity? I have never thought so, because in most cases preservation is not about inherent cultural values but about property values.  The last thing most well-educated, upwardly mobile professionals attracted to the DC area would ever want to do is to live in some rambler in Gaithersburg or North Arlington.  They feel comfortable in the restored 19th century brownstones in up-and-coming neighborhoods like Bloomingdale.  For all their love of diversity, they want to dip into it only when it is convenient – like I did in New Britain – but to keep its nastier bits at bay.  They want to create a familiar, traditionally Anglo-Saxon enclave – no Latino parlor excesses, no black stoop culture, no gay club scene across the street.

Eventually these Bloomingdale newcomers will get tired of urban living and move out to get more air, space, and greenery; perhaps to find better and less corrupt government.  Some other eager and optimistic 30-somethings will take their place and revise the neighborhood’s sense of place, and the old-timers will not be missed.

No one wants to preserve the North Arlington ramblers, to ensure a historical continuity with the post-WWII 50s, the GI bill which made affordable housing possible, and which created inexpensive, livable, but mind-numbingly boring suburbs.  Preservation movements are very, very particular and self-serving.

I had a long discussion recently with a young architect who had been very much involved in historic preservations while in graduate school.  He had become as circumspect and wary as I had because the very concept of preservation was vague and ill-defined. Although it is clear that if you restore an existing building to its original condition, you have preserved it; but what if you only save the façade and redo everything else?  Or if you only keep some of the boards and planking? Or just keep the footprint?  Or tear everything down but build new buildings in the same style as the old?

A classic case of this is the rebuilt Old Town of Warsaw which had been completely destroyed by the Germans during WWII.  Based on photographs, historical records, and firsthand accounts, the Poles were able to rebuild the Old Town exactly as it had been. What was the point?  The most striking sense of historical preservation is the Hiroshima Memorial:

The Japanese did not rebuild the city or even parts of it ‘as it was’; and preferred a single, powerful, emotive memorial. The Chinese are similar in approach and attitude.  Major cities like Shanghai are rapidly and dramatically changing and modernizing with little thought to the past.  Both of these countries value tradition, but see core cultural values as important to retain while at the same time embracing the explosive rush into the future.

 

I have a close friend who lives in a community on the West Coast which has been for decades a conservative, old-monied refuge.  She and her friends are preservation activists and invest time, effort, and money in trying to keep the enclave pure – that is, to preserve its delicate balance of small-scale residences, wild, open spaces, small local shops and restaurants, and no-boardwalk beaches. The community’s real estate values are high and climbing because of its charm, character, and history; and it is no surprise that developers from Los Angeles are making exorbitant offers to older longtime residents who have run through their trust funds; pressuring the local council; and mounting a persistent PR campaign to relax zoning and other restrictive standards.

The activists’ protests have a lot to do with environmental protection - golf courses and swimming pools are less ecologically friendly than marshes, salt water, and gorse fields – but my friend’s desire to preserve the community and to keep it the way it always has been is more in her own personal interest than anything else.  

Her community is one of the most beautiful, sophisticated, and socially attractive places I have ever visited; and on a personal level I am all for her preservationist activities.  She and I are from the same conservative, WASP culture (in my case by rubbing shoulders, not by birth) which values such pristine, Anglo-Saxon, reserved, places.  Politically and philosophically, however, I am opposed to her efforts. Her activism is a thinly-veiled attempt to keep out the culturally different who want to play golf, shop at Neiman Marcus, and build big.  While she has a right to do so – to enter into the struggle of market forces – I feel there is a greater value in dynamic change, the mix of populations, classes, and interests than there is in preserving an old guard.

In this early part of the 21st century, the whole concept of place is changing.  People are less attached to solid earth, and brick-and-mortar, and physical community than they ever were.  Our community is defined by social networks, mobility, and rapid change.  The only people ‘attached’ to their communities are those who cannot move, whose economic choices are limited, and whose lot in life was cast long ago.

The new 21st community is increasingly virtual and will only become more so as the mind-computer interface becomes more efficient. We will correspond, interact, and socialize in virtual environments more than ever before.  The idea of a protected, preserved enclave will soon be a complete thing of the past.

I am still close to my West Coast friend and visit her often.  I love to poke around the small bookstores in her town, shop at the local butcher and greengrocer, take walks on ocean trails, never have to see a McDonald’s, Walmart, or multiplex, and never have to rub shoulders with anyone but our crowd.  On one level I am just as elitist as she is.  On another profoundly different in the way we see the world.

Wow, Is It Ever Hot!

I grew up in central Connecticut before the age of air conditioning and hated the thick, humid summer heat.  Many people think that all New England is a summer vacationland – cool, ocean breezes and salty spume from Atlantic waves breaking on rocky shores.  Light sweaters in the morning and a pleasant, damp chill in the evenings.  Not so in the Connecticut River valley where summers were as steamy as the Deep South, 90F was not uncommon; but houses had not been built with Southern cross-ventilation in mind.

The only cool place in the house was the basement, and it was my refuge.  It was damp and always smelled a bit moldy, but it was below ground, a steady 65F, and a blessed relief from the thick, motionless air up top.

My father installed an exhaust fan and put it in the upstairs landing window.  It was big and powerful, sounded like a DC-3 yawing down the runway, and sucked cool air from outside through any open windows.  The trick was to close everything in the house except two windows in the den or kitchen and let the fan pull in the evening air.  The incoming breeze was so strong that we had to batten down the family pictures, the local newspaper, and the TV Guide. 

My mother insisted that the fan be turned off at night.  She said that she couldn’t possibly sleep with the roar of ‘that airplane engine’ 5 feet from her head and was worried that it would overheat, catch fire, and burn the house down.   Which meant that my room was always an airless hothouse – still, damp, and thickly humid.

I thought of my father’s exhaust fan when I lived in Delhi many years later.  In the late 60s Delhi still had few modern amenities and government offices were not air conditioned.  In summer daytime temperatures can reach 120F, but it is a dry heat, so humidifying the spacious rooms of higher-up government babus with ‘Desert Coolers’ was the only relief.  A Desert Cooler consisted of a straw tick extended from floor to ceiling in front of a large window.  At the top of the window was a small gutter in which holes were perforated.  Water pumped up into the gutter trickled down through the holes to soak the tick, and an industrial-strength fan blew air through the wet straw, humidifying and cooling the room.

Although the room was many degrees cooler than the infernal temperatures outside, it stank like a barnyard; and the noise of the fan, ten times bigger and more powerful than anything my father ever envisaged, was deafening.  It roared, rattled, and thundered as the power fluctuated.  When it was at its best the fan generated a wind so powerful that the official seated at his desk had to play chess with his paperweights.  As soon an official document was placed in front of him for signature, the babu slammed a paperweight on top of it; and when finished banged it back on top of another pile of fluttering, dog-eared documents.  It was grand burlesque.  I hollered my remarks to the babu-ji, he slammed his paperweights down, I held my breath against the rank, fetid air, and before I could begin, the audience was over.

Delhi in the summer then was hot, very hot. So hot that the walls of all the buildings retained the heat for hours, and even if you slept outside on the barsati it was too hot to sleep until it was time to get up.

Eventually we were able to buy an air conditioner, but because of the intermittent power, brown-outs and power cuts common in the city, many nights were spent sleepless, hopeless, and hot.  Even when the unit was working well, it only cooled a narrow corridor of air, just enough to send a breath of freshness across the face.

The hottest place in India has always been Nagpur, a city in the far eastern part of Maharashtra in the geographical center of the country.  In the winter it is one of the most pleasant places to visit. The air is fragrant with the perfume of orange blossoms and flowers.  In the summer, however, it is an inferno, and temperatures rise to 120F and stay there.  When I toured Nagpur in the late 60s, there was no air conditioning, and no air stirring in my small, cheap hotel room.  There were only two possibilities.  One could soak a sheet, lie under it while the ceiling fan dried it.  The rapid evaporation chilled the sheet and gave a few minutes of relief from the incessant, brutal heat. Or one could curl up on the tiny balcony outside, twisted like a contortionist in a circus, and fight mosquitos and scurrying rats.  It was hell.

The hottest I have ever been was in Ouagadougou during a national strike. For a week there was no electricity, no air conditioning, no fans, and no respite from daytime temperatures that approached 125F.  The only thing we could do was to sit outside in the hotel courtyard and drink beer until 2am, then go upstairs to bed.  Because the hotel was built for air conditioning, most rooms had no windows, and trying to sleep in a cell whose walls had been baked like a kiln for 14 hours was impossible.  Yet sleeping outside would have meant being bitten, eaten, stung, and crawled on by mosquitos, biting ants, cockroaches, and rats.

It is hard to believe, but all those years in the infernal bush of Africa and the torrid Deccan of India, I got used to the heat and became increasingly uncomfortable in the cold.  I now love living in Washington, DC where the summer temperatures are consistently above 90F and the humidity well over 60 percent.  I wait for the hot weather to set in so I can store all sweaters and long sleeves and live in sandals, T-shirts, and shorts for four months.  I now love the heat so much that I take summer vacations in the Deep South.  I never turn on the car air-conditioner and let the earthy smells of red dirt, cotton fields, and hot-baked prairies fill the car.

Hot, humid air holds the scents and perfumes of grass, flowers, bushes, and trees.  Air conditioning dries them out, excludes them, and provides only cool.  I admit that I sleep with an air conditioner; but spend as much time outside as possible even when the temperature is well into the 90s.  Perhaps being hot brings back good memories.  Like eating a civilized, four course meal on the deck of a restaurant over the Niger River in Bamako.  The lunchtime temperature was at least 100F, but the fans were enough, and the chilled Chardonnay was crisp, bright, and thirst-quenching. Or baking on a beach near Jacmel on the South Shore of Haiti, then eating lunch under the palm trees and drinking rum punches.

The world is divided into many halves – early-risers and slug-a-beds; couples with children and those without; and those who love the heat and those who hate it. Whereas I never break a sweat on a long walk on the C&O Canal near Washington, I often pass drenched and unhappy friends.  While I sit happily in the sun along the Waterfront in Georgetown, smelling the strong scent of river water, and and enjoying the summer mix of inboard diesel and sun tan lotion which brings me back to my days on Long Island Sound or the Jersey shore, my friends are holed ujp in dark, dank bars on M Street.

The thought of a skiing trip rattles my bones. When I was a student in New Haven, my roommates insisted that I go with them to northern Vermont to ski Stowe.  The temperatures at the bottom of the mountain were minus 15F.  It was so cold that the oil froze in gearboxes and it was painful to take deep breaths.  On the top of the mountain it was at least minus 25F.  Everything was still, frozen, without scent, and lifeless.  It was scary. 

Friends who go to Maine in the summer are crazy. My parents took summer vacations to Kennebunkport, and in the early morning a local resident would take a dip in the ocean and write the temperature in large numbers in the sand on the beach.  Fifty-seven, he wrote.  Fifty-five.  Fifty-eight.  The water was so cold that only the children went in and only for ten or fifteen minutes.  I remember standing at water’s edge, only up to my ankles.  The pain was unbelievable – a deep, dull ache, and then a numbed senselessness. The idea of going to Maine or Vermont for the summer is unconscionable, witless, and illogical.  Why would anyone want to be cold? In the waters off northern South Carolina where the Gulf Stream comes close to shore in the summer, the temperature is always in the low 80s. There you can float, look out at the ocean or the white beach, loll and roll, nap, and be totally, perfectly happy.

So, bring on the heat and the humidity.  Give me nineties in both categories.  Let me shvitz, bake, and cook until October.  The perfect climate is one in which you never feel cold – the ambient temperature is always near body temperature or higher.  Breezes are always warm. Changes in weather may bring rain, showers, and wind but never a Canadian cold front.  The closest to this ideal I can imagine is the Caribbean, and I still might get there.  There is still time.