B. A. Beierle

ADVOCATE.

EDUCATOR.

PRESERVATIONIST.

 
Preservation is about people.
Our stories and connections to each other, our shared past and sense of place are embodied in the places where we live, work, and play. As it turns out, when we’re mindful of the irreplaceable value these places bring to our everyday lives, we learn we have a lot in common. Each year, we travel the state and meet people who are making a positive difference in the livability and sustainability of their communities through historic preservation. We think it’s time to recognize them. This series, People in Preservation, highlights the stories, views, and projects of Oregonians who are working to save and pass forward the places that matter to all of us. For this installment, we sat down with B.A. Beierle. Here’s her preservation story…
B.A. Beierle founded the local preservation education group Preservation WORKS in Corvallis, where she also serves on the City/County Heritage Tree Committee. Beierle, an educator by training, moved to Corvallis with her husband, Lenny, in 2002 after stops in New Jersey and Wyoming. She currently represents the Mid-Willamette Valley as an adviser to Restore Oregon, and helped coordinate Restore Oregon’s first Heritage Barn Workshop. As a private heritage consultant, B.A. works with individuals, groups, and communities preparing heritage plans, neighborhood advocacy, heritage tourism, and education programs. She and her husband are currently rebuilding an 1894 farmhouse that they rescued from a fire training exercise. 
 
In Wyoming, her former home state, Beierle:

  • Served as the president of the statewide preservation organization
  • Saved two 1880s Victorian houses from demolition and adapted them for new uses – one a 135-seat restaurant and the other as Section 8 housing
  • Managed downtown Main Street redevelopment
  • Advocated for the arts industry as a governor’s appointee and for heritage resources as Adviser to the National Trust for Historic Preservation

As a Field Representative for the National Trust’s Mountains/Plains Regional Office, B.A. worked hands-on with preservationists – and would-be preservationists – in over 108 communities in Colorado, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and South Dakota.
R.O. Why should Oregonians be advocates for historic preservation?
B.B.: Oregon has compelling stories to tell. Our geology sculpted our land as the stage for complex themes: early migration of humanity to our continent; First Nations and their hunter/gatherer traditions and later their semi-permanent homes, early agriculture, and land management; early Europeans from Russia, England and France. Our roots reach deep into our democracy. Lewis and Clark’s Expedition of Discovery selected Fort Clatsop by an astonishing vote of white men, a Black enslaved person, and a Shoshone woman long before our Constitution enfranchised Black men, women, and Native People.
Our rich and diverse cultural heritage is rife with anguish. Oregon’s dreadful treatment of Native People, African Americans, Chinese, Japanese, Latinos, and others continues to teach critical lessons about inclusion, equality, and justice. As Lincoln told us: “The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched…by the better angels of our nature.” Preservation of sites tied to our regretful past will only teach us all to embrace our better angels.
From the early 1830s through 1869 about 400,000 settlers, farmers, miners, ranchers, entrepreneurs and their families traveled the Oregon Trail. Their destination was the Eden at the end of the trail, the Willamette Valley. Once there were over 4,600 Euro-American homes and farmsteads throughout the Willamette Valley built with hand-technology by intrepid pioneers. Today less than 220 of those hand-made structures remain. Many are deteriorated or abandoned, and every year more are lost due to developmental pressures, economic challenges, functional obsolescence, weather, age, neglect and a lack of understanding of their cultural importance. These buildings represent the culmination of the Oregon Trail experience. In spite of the importance to Oregon – and American– history, little attention is given to the conservation and protection of these fragile historic properties.
 
R.O. Why does preserving the historic fabric of a community matter?
B.B. Preservation helps us define who we are in space and on the ribbon of time. For some of us, it is a visceral sensation. It conveys a deep sense of homecoming, comfort and belonging. These historic environments, moments and experiences define us. We belong to a place, a time, and our people. I believe these threads weave their way into the tapestry of our individual and collective identities.
 
R.O. What is the future of the historic preservation movement, in general and/or specifically in Oregon?
B.B. Like politics, all preservation is local. Strengthening local efforts and advocacy is key. That said, Restore Oregon must continue to work for statewide incentives and funding.
Unfortunately, historic preservation faces several challenges:

  • Funding. COVID-19 will challenge funding in the foreseeable future on the local, state, and national levels. The unanticipated pandemic costs will devastate government budgets with direct and indirect results on preservation programs. Significant pres- sure will fall on philanthropy to fund critical health and well-being needs. Commercial underwriters – like program sponsors – face their own existential threats. Valued partners – particularly travel and arts institutions – already feel keen budget shortfalls. And we will all be competing with one another for scarce dollars

 

  • Leadership. Our leaders are aging; fewer, younger leaders are ready to assume the mantle of leadership. We must actively look to our allies and partners for potential recruits who haven’t identified themselves as preservationists – yet.

 

  • Perception. Like the arts, too often preservation is unfortunately perceived as fluff and dispensable. It falls on all of us to more effectively communicate preservation’s pivotal role in sustainability, economics, community development, community building and identity, livability, sense of place, education and creativity.

Consider the mayor who described her community as “charming,” but completely failed to understand that the pedestrian-scale neighborhoods she valued as “charming” were its historic districts.

  • Language. We have a language problem. The term “Historic Preservation” has been weaponized as intrusive on personal freedoms. Suggested alternatives include “heritage conservation,” that may more accurately describe our activities. Are they historic resources or historic assets? Rehabilitation suggests recovery after misfortune. We need to reinvent our vocabulary to demonstrate that responsible stewardship and personal freedoms are not mutually exclusive.

 
R.O. How do you think historic preservation can be part of solving major issues we’re dealing with today like climate change, affordability, and sustainability?
B.B.: Preservation is the keystone to all the above issues. Responsible stewards of the built environment are also responsible stewards of the natural environment. Reduce, reuse, recycle applies not only to bags, bottles, and containers, but also buildings, neighborhoods, and entire communities. When we lose a historic resource in whole or in part, we waste not only the memory and culture housed in the resource, but also the materials used in the structure, the earth the landfill sits upon, and the structure’s embodied energy. Indeed, the greenest building is one that is already built.
Modest historic homes provide affordable housing; larger ones provide affordable congregate living. The Oregon challenge is that the land itself is the expensive component of affordable living. We have an opportunity to balance needed, sustainable, densification while respecting those historic resources we value as a community. The first step is to inventory what we have, decide what’s important, and protect those valued resources. We then steward our land thoughtfully and responsibly. COVID-19 has taught us that staying home and driving less is measurably good for global environmental health. Walkable neighborhoods with commercial amenities accomplish the same thing. Often these places are our existing historic neighborhoods. The return of the historic street car – mass transit in all its forms – accomplishes the same thing.
 
R.O. Restore Oregon is working to bring preservation and its tools to more places and people of Oregon so that it can be used to preserve the cultural heritage of all Oregonians, not just the buildings. Do you have any thoughts on that?
B.B.: Cultural heritage is manifested through tangible forms: buildings, landscapes, or artifacts, and intangible forms: traditional skills and technologies, religious ceremonies, performing arts, storytelling, and others. Our tangible and intangible heritage are inseparable, so we must preserve them together.

  • First Nations. Climate/weather, agricultural practices, and land development impact the built cultural patrimony of the First Nations who lived in Oregon. It is our sacred responsibility to protect and celebrate the heritage of those who first called Oregon home.

 

  • Place specific. The cultural landscape is where historic structures sit; context is everything for storytelling. Lighthouses need to stand on oceanside promontories, or their significance is lost. Bridges need to span waterways or their function is meaningless. The Oregon Trail corridor can only be valued where it is, much like the Columbia River Highway. But more modest resources like mill races and Witness Trees tell our story as well.

 

  • Viewsheds. Oregon showcases spectacular vistas. These cultural landscapes combine human and natural systems. Climate change will impact these iconic viewsheds sooner rather than later. They also merit our attention and protection.

 
R.O. Any other thoughts? Words to live by?
B.B.: These quotes continue to inspire me:
“These old buildings do not belong to us only, they belong to our forefathers and they will belong to our descendants unless we play them false. They are not in any sense our own property to do as we like with them. We are only trustees for those that come after us.” -William Morris
 
“Here is your country. Do not let anyone take it or its glory away from you. Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches, or its romance. The world, the future, and your children shall judge you accordingly as you deal with this sacred trust.” -President Theodore Roosevelt, Antiquities Act of 1906
 
“In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decision on the next seven generations.” -Great Law of the Iroquois Confederacy
 
“A country with no regard for its past will have little worth remembering in the future. -Abraham Lincoln