True Green / The Real Reason We Like to Walk Around Historic Sites

The snowy streetscape on Main Street in Old Salem, North Carolina.

So maybe this blog should be called “True White”, since the whole East Coast of the US from Georgia to Maine is blanketed and paralyzed with a snow storm. I am on a mini-sabbatical in Old Salem, North Carolina which received 6” of snow last night – a sight that is quite rare for this region. Which means of course everything is shut down, at least from vehicular traffic. I got up early and walked around the historic district of Old Salem (something I’m embarrassed to say that I hardly ever do when I’m here) because despite my green inclinations, I, like everyone else, am always in a rush and I jump in my car instead. A good friend of mine lives in one of the early Federal historic houses in Old Salem and he offered his house for my writing retreat. So here I found myself, in the south during a snowstorm, and with the icy roads I decided to abandon my car and walk around the district. One goal was just to photograph the beautiful snow- and ice-covered sidewalks, streets and buildings. A second goal was to use the walk around this historic site to inspire me with the writing of my Best Practices Manual. But as I walked around I thought a lot about what makes a walkable neighborhood, why the New Urbanists keep trying to copy historic places and call them “new”, and why our historic sites (at the National Trust, at Old Salem and all over the country) offer so many lessons if we just slow down a bit.

Stopping to say Hello

A typical house in Old Salem, NC with porch, big overhangs, tall windows with operable shudders.

We should have snowstorms and non-tragic weather events more often, because it makes us take a time-out and breathe a little deeper. As I walked around Old Salem, more and more people came out of their houses and offices and said hello and chatted on the street corners. And this is one of the key things that the New Urbanists and the new LEED ND (Neighborhood Development) standards seek to replicate by taking patterns and rhythms from our historic places, neighborhoods and town centers and overlaying them in new developments – those chance encounters that a narrow street with sidewalks encourages. A chance to say “hello” to your neighbors and meet new people. We try to extract so many architectural elements from all these great places, but what it all comes down to is personal interaction. That’s what so many of us are looking for in our lives – just a chance to say hello…

Old Salem – An Authentic Place

One of the reasons I really love Old Salem is that it’s a living community. Unlike a place like Colonial Williamsburg which is almost entirely a museum, many of the houses in Old Salem are still lived in, many of the buildings have been reused or continue to be used by the operations of Old Salem Museums & Gardens, Old Salem College, and the Home Moravian Church. If you know nothing about Old Salem, please take a look at the website of Old Salem Museums & Gardens. Old Salem is one of the original Moravian communities in America – a somewhat Utopian society based on the Moravian religion – where the Moravian religion continues to be practiced amidst the daily hubbub of 21st century America. Now their website caters to the re-enactors among us (I’m not one) so don’t let that deter you. If you are looking for an authentic place to visit this summer which can transport you to another time without all the hokiness, but purely by the beauty of place and the ability to say “hello” then this is a place you must visit (Winston-Salem, North Carolina, an hour west of Chapel Hill, and an hour north of Charlotte).

The oldest buildings in Old Salem, half-timbered structures, are still integral to the functioning of the city.

And so why is a place like Old Salem inherently green and worthy of discussion in my “True Green” blog? Because all around me I find the innate green technologies that the green techies and architects among us keep trying to replicate – tall operable windows with shudders, front porches with big overhangs, narrow streets, more gardens than non-permeable roads and parking lots, and a green town “square”. But what makes it more special to my thinking, more special than say a totally fabricated new development (such as Seaside in Florida) is that it grew up over a couple of centuries. There are the early half-timbered buildings, the Colonial and Federal red brick classically-inspired buildings, the later Victorian additions such as a hotel and stone Gothic houses. There are many layers, and many styles and eras represented, but they all respect one another and speak to one another. They did 200 hundred years ago and they continue to do so today.

Even the Gothic can be found in Old Salem, NC, a historic site more famous for its Federal architecture.

Well, I would say I have sufficiently distracted myself to keep from actually editing my Best Practices Manual, but a snow storm in the deep south happens so rarely, and even more rarely would I be here to experience it. So I hope that the streets don’t get cleared up quite so quickly, and the cars remain in the driveways, and tomorrow morning I can take another walk to clear my mind and observe first hand why the “greenest building is so often the one that’s already built.”