Matthew John Markling wrote:Journalism in the ‘Wood may not be dead after all.
If a piece of ('W)wood falls in an empty theater, does it make a sound?
Jim O'Bryan wrote:It is hard for a volunteer citizen run effort to keep up with a multi-national, multi-billion dollar company willing to lose $647 million dollars to date to put home grown local community groups out of business so they can monetize the news.
Goes to show there's a LOT of money out there, but it's increasingly sequestered into larger and larger and tighter and tighter bundles. Not that this skewing hasn't always been true to a large extent. But the old patrician industrialists were more inclined towards civic pride and building things that were the best they could achieve. A little Noblesse Oblige goes a long way. Thus Cleveland has the group plan, public square and the terminal; the county has the metropark system and the metrohealth system. And Lakewood benefitted with extraordinarily well built early 20th century edifices along Detroit and the Lakeshore, but also including a certain Hilliard Theater.
Excellence mattered. We've been living on and spending that capital for nearly a century now, and mindlessly destroying that legacy for "economic" expedience.
IMO, Noblesse Oblige died with the industrialists who actually ran businesses that made things of core value and lead communities. The last hoorah for them was when their surviving (and socially connected) spouses came together to form the Downtown Restoration Society in 1972, to provide stewardship over the culturally significant built environment.
This included a certain little grouping of Old Obsolete Derelict Dilapidated and "Structurally Unsound" Theaters that had collapsed roofs and water damage. They were deemed to have "No Functional Future." Funny. A silly group of people decided that such venues, the best our built environment has ever had to offer would be the key to clawing back some of the Strength of Community being lost to outmigration from urban sprawl. They figured a bunch of restaurants were not a cultural draw and a viable community in and of themselves.
And the nature of those edifices were the drawing card, just as the architecture and construction quality had driven almost all gentrification in the U.S. They understood this. They were patronizingly accused of living in the past and nothing could be further from the truth. They also wanted to leave a legacy that reflected their values and the values of those who would see fit to build those places the way they did. And they did so in such a way that the next generation could pick up their torch; that there was something there to pick up that torch for.
So Noblesse Oblige is dead. The new wealthy don't seem to share those values at all. I've asked, "Are we so poor a city that we can't allocate a few resources to buildings like this? Are we so poor a culture not to recognize the intrinsic value in edifices like that that will never be replicated?"
Spinoza said about 600 years ago that "All things excellent are as difficult to achieve as they are rare."
Goethe said, "Excellence is rarely found, more rarely valued."
I'm afraid I now know the answer to my no-so-rhetorical questions.
I understand there's little point in fighting it (demolition) if absolutely no one in Lakewood cares about these things and those who do pound their head against the wall every day. Oh, those who "will not see."
I'm speaking now because I would regret not having put forth a final effort here before the monsters of destruction get their way. "Speak now or forever hold your peace," as they say.
- - -
"THERE ARE SOULLESS MEN WHOSE HAND AND MIND TEAR DOWN WHAT TIME WILL NEVER GIVE AGAIN"
-anonymous, [and probably killed by the monitizers of destruction.]
