I used to have an old van I drove until the main bearing finally gave out after hundreds of thousands of miles. It wasn’t a particularly good van, but I kept repairing it and patching the rust holes with expanding foam insulation and Bondo. I actually left one hole open because the dog liked to look out of it.
The van didn’t get particularly good mileage and, in its later years, consumed more than a modest amount of oil. And it didn’t look very good, although not much worse than most old vans. I kept driving it, and pouring money into it, simply because I liked it.
That, I think, should be reason enough. You shouldn’t have to come up with reasons to justify liking something.
All this is a roundabout way to clarify my feelings about the old Nichols Library, which according to my mail is something I need to do. I do not think it should be torn down; quite the contrary. I believe it and the original city hall, which is now a restaurant, are the two most important buildings we should preserve forever.
What I said was that since I don’t own the old library and don’t have the money to buy it, it would be far better to tear it down than to mock its historic importance by pasting its stonework facade onto a bigger modern building. That would be an insult to the memory of James Nichols.
And it can’t be what the Naperville City Council meant when they drafted the covenant to preserve the library’s facade in perpetuity. Clearly, the intent of that covenant was to maintain the building’s appearance while allowing it to be used for something other than a library. I believe covenants like that should be respected and not circumvented through verbal trickery.
The building must have been perceived to have value when the covenant was written or they wouldn’t have done it. Old buildings give a city a sense of permanence. They remind us of our heritage and of our unique culture that evolved through generations of hard work and sacrifice.
There are other reasons that are often given to preserve historic buildings. We have heard many of them in recent days, such as the idea that they give a town a look that attracts visitors. An urban activist once claimed that new businesses prefer old buildings. “Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings,” she wrote. “But new ideas must use old buildings.”
Perhaps, but such reasons are impossible to prove, and they shouldn’t even be necessary. If a building is perceived to have value, that should be enough. You should not have to come up with reasons to justify liking something, or believing it should be preserved, any more than you should have to justify the van you drive or the pet you own.
I realize there is potentially a lot of money at stake, and that other possible uses for the old library wouldn’t be anywhere near as profitable as the plans the developer recently released. But it seems to me that it would have been prudent to settle things like covenants and variances beforehand, instead of assuming those roadblocks could somehow be evaded.
It’s also not clear what would happen to the building if the covenant is enforced. The building would make a beautiful restaurant, especially if the back patio were restored, but that may not happen.
So the developer will probably get his approval. If so, I hope the City Council will simply ignore the covenant, and allow the site to get a nice new building instead of the architectural monstrosity that’s been proposed.
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