Industrial strength

Historic factory under pressure from the present

I guess it's a recession.

Recessions hit architecture quicker and harder than most fields. When the economy is iffy, the people who build buildings - developers, governments, institutions - get nervous. Architectural dreams go on hold until things look brighter.

The downside is obvious. But there's an upside too. When life slows down, people have a chance to sit back and think about what they're doing. There hasn't been much time for that in the worldwide boom of recent years.

All over the planet, from Dubai to Beijing, buildings have been popping up like mushrooms after a rain. Often they are not the result of much thought. They merely provide a cheap thrill, some kind of wow factor.

Maybe they're spectacularly tall. Or maybe they tilt or twist in some improbable shape. Such buildings stand around the city like look-at-me guests at a costume party. They're the architectural equivalent of dancing with the stars.

It's a good time to think again about other issues: the experience of the forgotten pedestrians down at the feet of these jolly towers, for example. Or the value of preserving the buildings and neighborhoods of the past.

It's that second issue I'd like to see come to the surface again here. Once Boston was a leader in the movement for architectural preservation. Indeed, the saving of Old South Meeting House in the mid-19th century is the event by which historians often date the beginnings of the American preservation movement.

What got me thinking was the hot preservation issue right now. I don't mean the debate over City Hall, or the ongoing question of what will happen to the Dainty Dot building at the edge of Chinatown. I'm talking about the cluster of buildings in North Easton that are known as the Ames Shovel Works (or "shovel sheds" or "shovel shops," depending on who you're listening to). A developer wants to tear some of them down, add new upper stories to others, and convert the complex into housing.

North Easton is world famous among architects for the work done there by the greatest and most influential American architect of the 19th century, H.H. Richardson. Richardson is best known as the designer of Trinity Church in Copley Square. For North Easton he designed the railroad station, the town hall, the library, and a tiny but unforgettable gatehouse for the Ames family estate.

The wealth that fueled all that architecture came from the Ameses, who created the shovel works. Nine granite shovel buildings were built between 1852 and 1907. In them, once, were manufactured an astounding 60 percent of the shovels in the entire world.

The shovels were used to build railroads, among other things, and one Ames went on to be president of the Union Pacific. Two Ames brothers, today, are leaders of a group calling itself the Friends of the Historic Ames Shovel Works at North Easton.

Richardson didn't design the shovel works: architects in those days didn't do workaday buildings. But the shovel works are an integral part of the town. They funded the mansions and civic buildings. Getting rid of them would be telling only half the story. It would be like the original reconstruction of Williamsburg, Va., where the houses were restored but not the slave quarters that supported them.

North Easton is one of the best preserved memories of America in its great industrial heyday. You'd think everyone would want to save the shovel works. Many do, including the Easton town planning agency, the Mass. Historical Commission, and Richardson scholars and historians from around the country who have weighed in on the issue.

The problem is a law known as 40B. It states that for most towns, if at least 25 percent of the units in a new housing development are "affordable," the developer is allowed to ignore local zoning rules and even landmark designations. The law is well intentioned, obviously. But in this case it's an invitation to disaster. This would be the first time that anyone has used the law to demolish a building that, like the shovel works, is listed on the state registry of historic structures.

The Friends have commissioned a study from a Boston architectural firm, Utile, that explores ways in which the 25 percent goal could be achieved and still be economical without despoiling the sheds. There's also a move to require a state environmental impact report. So the fight goes on. David Colton, the Easton town planner, doesn't expect a resolution any time soon.

I don't want to be misunderstood. The last thing I would like to see in North Easton is a "Shovel Works Theme Park," with tours and actors in costumes. That's not preservation, it's theater. Instead, the buildings need to be put back to work. There's nothing wrong with developing them into housing. But that should be done with respect for the buildings and the memories they embody.

New England, after all, is the heartland of successfully converted industrial architecture. Think of our mill towns like Lowell or North Adams, or tiny Harrisville in New Hampshire.

The preservation ideal, I think, is that we become gradually aware of the past as we explore the present. History shouldn't be shoved in our faces. In the words of MIT author Kevin Lynch, in his great book "What Time is this Place?," the past as seen from the present should be "like a fish in dark water" visible when you look for it, but not pulled up flopping in your lap.

Today, architectural preservation makes more sense than ever before, because of the need to conserve energy. Dick Moe, the president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, puts the case well.

He argues that the greenest building is not the new one, artfully accessorized with a planted roof or solar panels. The greenest building is the one that's already built. The energy it took to build it remains embodied in it. That energy will be wasted if it is demolished. And new energy will be expended in the demolition, and in the construction of any replacement.

There should be plenty of time to mull these issues as we move into the apparently oncoming recession.

Globe architecture critic Robert Campbell can be reached at camglobe@aol.com.