ABOUT THIS BOOK

Preserving the Vanishing City considers the unique challenges, conditions, and opportunities facing Cleveland’s historic preservation community during the 1970s and 1980s. While pro-preservationists argued for the economic and revitalization benefits stemming from saving and repurposing older buildings, population loss and economic contraction prompted decades of deterioration, underinvestment, vacancy, and abandonment.

Stephanie Ryberg-Webster uncovers the motivations, strategies, and constraints driving Cleveland’s historic preservation sector, led by the public-sector Cleveland Landmarks Commission, nonprofit Cleveland Restoration Society, and a cadre of advocates. She sheds light on the ways in which preservationists confronted severe, escalating, and sustained urban decline, which plagued Cleveland, a prototypical rust-belt industrial city.

Preserving the Vanishing City chronicles the rise of the historic preservation profession in Cleveland and provides six case studies about targeted projects and neighborhood efforts, including industrial heritage, housing preservation and restoration, commercial district revitalization, securing local historic district designations, as well as grassroots organizing, coalition building, and partnerships. Ryberg-Webster also addresses the complexities of historic preservation within the context of rapid racial change in Cleveland’s neighborhoods.

A comprehensive history of preservation within the context of one city’s urban decline, Preserving the Vanishing Cityrecounts the successes, failures, and creative strategies employed to save Cleveland’s built environment.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Stephanie Ryberg-Webster is an Associate Professor in the Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs in the Levin College of Public Affairs and Education at Cleveland State University, and is the coeditor of Legacy Cities: Continuity and Change amid Decline and Revival.

REVIEWS

"[I]nnovative and informative.... The introduction, first chapter, and epilogue nicely capture the big picture, while each chapter provides highly detailed accounts of each episode. This book should lead preservationists and local, state, and federal governments to pursue creative solutions and funding incentives to prioritize reuse of historic buildings.... Ryberg-Webster’s study of legacy cities reframes the preservation narrative, adding a new chapter specific to cities trapped in the tailspin of postindustrial decline.”—Jounal of Urban Affairs

"In a heartfelt narrative that reflects her deep affection for the city she calls home, Ryberg-Webster provides a compelling account of urban preservation in the United States…. The epilogue brings important insights as a conclusion of a thoroughly researched monograph, which is also elegantly written and engaging. Even though the entire book brings the readers through stories that are, as the author says, 'simultaneously inspiring and heartbreaking' about Cleveland, the epilogue raises reflections and questions that are deeply urgent and problematic today in many American cities."—Journal of the American Planning Association

“Ryberg-Webster offers a cogent examination of Cleveland’s historic preservation movement within the context of the city’s decline in both population and economic power. Preserving the Vanishing City chronicles the way preservationists, developers, planners, and residents balanced community priorities and determined what to save. Activists leveraged strategic coalitions, enacted policy changes, and designed innovative programs to preserve the places that tell the city’s story. Their struggles and successes, as recounted by the author, can inform the tactics and priorities of today’s preservationists—especially those working in legacy cities.”—Sara C. Bronin, Professor in the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning at Cornell University, and coauthor of Historic Preservation Law

"[A] valuable contribution to scholarship on historic preservation in the United States. The book also offers insight into the development and planning challenges facing legacy cities.... In Preserving the Vanishing City, Ryberg-Webster provides a useful case study that, one hopes, will stimulate new discussions of how historic preservation can do more to address the problems of the Rust Belt."—Arris

“Preserving the Vanishing City offers fresh strategies for shrinking cities by focusing on what preservation contributed to Cleveland’s revitalization efforts since the 1970s. Most preservation research has emphasized the profession’s origin cities, like New Orleans, Charleston, Boston, and Philadelphia, or centered cities facing overdevelopment and gentrification. More typical places like Cleveland have what Ryberg-Webster calls a ‘staggering oversupply of built things’ and a different set of challenges. Twentieth-century Cleveland led the nation in many trends, from 1930s public housing to 1960s community development. This history of preservation in cities experiencing deindustrialization and depopulation will be enormously useful to policy stakeholders and historians.”—Alison Isenberg, author of Designing San Francisco: Art, Land, and Urban Renewal in the City by the Bay

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Preservation amid Urban Decline

1. Institutionalizing Historic Preservation

2. Documenting the Industrial City

3. Preservation Planning for Downtown Revitalization

4. Urban Pioneering in the Age of Decline

5. Preserving Neighborhoods as the Space of Everyday Life

6. Preservation within a Changing Racial Landscape

7. Rehabbing the City

Epilogue: Preserving the Vanishing City

Notes

Index

REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE

If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you with an electronic file for alternative access.

Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.

It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.