On Friday the Hearings Officer published the decision on the appeal of bike parking at Gaiety Hollow, the home, museum, and garden of Elizabeth Lord and Edith Schryver. The Officer affirmed the City's denial of alternative parking not to code.
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Not Lord & Schryver, but maybe a helpful way to think.
Myrtle Card and Ernestine Levy in Salem, circa 1900
(Detail, Oregon State Library) |
The Lord & Schryver Conservancy had contested the requirement that the parking be located near the front entry, saying it threatened to violate the historic integrity of the house and garden, which when it was established in the 1930s as the home and offices for Lord & Schryver would not have had bike parking.
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| Beginning and End of Decision |
But the code is fairly clear, and since we routinely allow elevators, drip irrigation, wheelchair ramps, and wireless communication antennae on or at historic buildings, it's hard to see bike parking as any more disruptive.
The decision as issued does not read as a particularly difficult or complicated one, and the Hearings Officer affirmed the requirements of code and the City's insistence on them.
The Conservancy could appeal to LUBA, but hopefully they will not, and instead will embrace bikes as consistent with early feminism, with the ecological and aesthetic values of the garden, and with historic preservation in general.
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| The consuming myth of autoism, 1937 - via NYRB |
It is cars, of course, that do the greater harm to historic preservation efforts, and this is sometimes a blind spot for preservationists, who might have forgot that
Salem's first preservation effort was about a demolition for parking.
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David Duniway led the first preservation efforts in Salem.
Not coincidentally, parking was involved. |
(
See previous notes, including several on the bike parking debate, here.)
3 comments:
What would the impact on Gaiety Hollow be if the City decided to build a 150,000 square foot police facility with a 260 space parking garage two blocks away! That is one of the two alternatives that the City Council will consider in late February at a work session and then a public hearing. I think that would change the character of the neighborhood and make it less amenable to walking and biking.
(Eh, this is a little off topic...but it's also interesting and relevant in a more general way! See the redirect below.)
The truth of the matter is that Mission Street is changing along here, and the long-term trend will not be altered by the presence or absence of a Police Facility at that site. A Police Station might accelerate the trend, but choosing the O'Brien site for a Police Station will not somehow keep Mission Street "pristine" or otherwise free of "encroachment." The block just south of the library will get redeveloped at some point regardless. It's mostly zoned "commercial office" and "commercial retail."
If you would like to continue the conversation or debate, let's move the thread to this post on the changing character of Mission Street! It's a worthwhile topic, but just probably not best for here.
Let's keep this post for any further discussion of the more narrow question about bike parking at Gaiety Hollow.
Ah, you should have been a librarian. Everything in its place!
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