Synthesis Prompt 3-19-2020

AP® English Language and Composition
Free-Response Question: Historic Preservation
Question 1
Suggested reading and writing time—55 minutes.
It is suggested that you spend 15 minutes reading the question, analyzing and evaluating the sources, and 40
minutes writing your response. Note: You may begin writing your response before the reading period is over.
(This question counts for one-third of the total essay section score.)
How do we decide whether buildings, monuments, and historic sites ought to be preserved? Some places are consid-
ered important because of what happened there, for aesthetic reasons, or because they embody the distinctive charac-
teristics of a time, construction technique, or style. However, there are those who believe that historic designation is
used as a means to block new development, and as our values as a society undergo transformation, the same aspects
of history valued by a previous generation may no longer be valued; does this mean that historic designations should
be taken away?
Carefully read the following six sources, including the introductory information for each source.
Write an essay that synthesizes material from at least three of the sources and develop a position on the purpose, if
any, of historic preservation.
Source A (Taborrok)
Source B (graph)
Source C (Mason)
Source D (cartoon)
Source E (Over-the-Rhine)
Source F (Leigh)
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Source A
Taborrok, Alex, “Against Historic Preservation.”

Marginal Revolution, 1 June, 2016. Web. 16
January 2019.
The following excerpt is from a blog by two professors of economics at George Mason University.
Repeal all historic preservation laws. It’s one thing to require safety permits but no construction project should
require a historic preservation permit. Here are three reasons:
First, it’s often the case that buildings of little historical worth are preserved by rules and regulations that are used
as a pretext to slow competitors, maintain monopoly rents, and keep neighborhoods in a kind of aesthetic stasis that
benefits a small number of people at the expense of many others.
Second, a confident nation builds so that future people may look back and marvel at their ancestor’s ingenuity and
aesthetic vision. A nation in decline looks to the past in a vain attempt to “preserve” what was once great. Preserva-
tion is what you do to dead butterflies.
Ironically, if today’s rules for historical preservation had been in place in the past the buildings that some now want
to preserve would never have been built at all. The opportunity cost of preservation is future greatness.
Third, repealing historic preservation laws does not mean ending historic preservation. There is a very simple way
that truly great buildings can be preserved–they can be bought or their preservation rights paid for. The problem
with historic preservation laws is not the goal but the methods. Historic preservation laws attempt to foist the cost
of preservation on those who want to build (very much including builders of infrastructure such as the government).
Attempting to foist costs on others, however, almost inevitably leads to a system full of lawyers, lobbying and rent
seeking–and that leads to high transaction costs and delay. Richard Epstein advocated a compensation system for
takings because takings violate ethics and constitutional law. But perhaps an even bigger virtue of a compensation
system is that it’s quick. A building worth preserving is worth paying to preserve. A compensation system unites
builders and those who want to preserve and thus allows for quick decisions about what will be preserved and what
will not.
Some people will object that repealing historic preservation laws will lead to some lovely buildings being destroyed.
Of course, it will. There is no point pretending otherwise. It will also lead to some lovely buildings being created.
More generally, however, the logic of regulatory thickets tells us that we cannot have everything.
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2
Source B
“The Atlas of ReUrbanism: Buildings and Blocks in

American Cities.” National Trust for Historic
Preservation, Preservation Green Lab, November
2016. Web. 16 January 2019.
The following graph is taken from a resource for city leaders and urban planners published by the National Trust for
Historic Preservation. Character score refers to the diversity of age and size of buildings. High character means a
mix of older and newer buildings, and low character means mostly new buildings.
Percent of women and minority owned

enterprises, high versus low character score areas
% in High Character Score Areas % in Low Character Score Areas
City
0 20 40 50 60 80 100%
Portland ME
Salt Lake City
Ft. Worth
Columbus
Los Angeles
Philadelphia
Portland OR
Orlando
Boise
New York City
Des Moines
Anchorage
El Paso
Spokane
Providence
Baltimore
St. Louis
Austin
Tampa
San Antonio
Denver
Buffalo
Cleveland
Seattle
Boston
Charlotte
Winston-Salem
Dallas
Virginia Beach
Houston
Raleigh
Phoenix
3
Source C
Mason, Randall. “Fixing Historic Preservation: A

Constructive Critique of ‘Significance.’” Places
16(1), 2004.
The following is excerpted from an article in an online architecture journal.
Indeed, newer thinking about preservation recognizes that significance is made, not found. It is socially constructed
and situational, and it recognizes that appraisals of significance may have as much to do with the people and society
making them as with any actual site.1
On reflection, such views reveal how problems with significance may crop up when meanings become overly
narrow; when they stress the assessments of experts and ignore alternative and popular views; and when they fail
to acknowledge change over time. Chaco Canyon National Historical Park, in New Mexico, provides an excellent
example of the changing significance of a heritage site. Chaco is an extensive National Monument, centered on
the impressive ruins of a complex Native American culture, abandoned about 700 years ago. However, since the
nineteenth century, white archaeologists have defined the official significance of the site as consisting largely of the
historic ruins of indigenous Chaco culture and their value for scientific research.
By contrast, Native American groups ascribe sacred and symbolic value to the place, which they believe to have
been created by their ancestors. And, more recently, New Age tourists have begun using the site for their own
purposes, invoking their own version of sacred value. As each stakeholder group has asserted a different notion of
significance—some of which are clearly incommensurable (New Agers burying crystals in kivas* transgresses the
values of both Indians and archaeologists)—conflicts have arisen.
*chambers in Pueblo Indian villages used for religious ceremonies that are usually partly or wholly underground
1 Howard L. Green, “The Social Construction of Historical Significance,” in Tomlan, ed., Preservation of What, For Whom?
4
Source D
Warner, Aaron. Don’t Disturb The Historic Setting.
The following is an editorial cartoon.
5
Source E
“Historic Preservation,” Over-the-Rhine Foundation.

Over-the-Rhine Foundation. N.d. Web. 16
January, 2019.
The following is excerpted from the website of a foundation dedicated to the preservation of the Over-the-Rhine
neighborhood in Cincinnati, Ohio.
In 2006, Over-the-Rhine was placed on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s list of the “Eleven Most En-
dangered Historic Places in America." OTR made the list for two reasons: its national significance and its threat of
destruction.
The neighborhood’s 360 acres is one of the largest, most intact, nineteenth century urban historic districts in the
United States and is believed to contain the nation’s largest contiguous collection of nineteenth century Italianate
Architecture. OTR’s dense streetscapes are full of tenements, churches, theatres, storefronts and social halls that are
largely unchanged from a time when they were inhabited by working-class immigrants in the 1800s. Similar neigh-
borhoods are extremely rare and can only be found in very few other cities…
Most American historic districts have been spared because of their impressive collections of mansions or unique
architecture. OTR is significant for essentially the opposite reason. To this day, its sense of place is that of a working
class, immigrant neighborhood. In the 1800s, wealthy beer barons lived across the street from their breweries and
adjacent to their laborers. OTR’s building stock reflects this diversity of socio-economic classes and mix of uses. We
believe that OTR may contain more intact nineteenth century brewery buildings than any other city in America.
Over-the-Rhine was once one of America’s most densely populated neighborhoods (reportedly more densely popu-
lated than Manhattan during parts of the 1800s) and served as the first American home to tens of thousands of Euro-
pean immigrants. Although the neighborhood was extremely diverse, it was also home to a nationally unprecedented
number of Germanic immigrants. Its magnificent public tenement stock; its rich brewing heritage; and its critical
role in German-American history and nineteenth century immigration all make it a place of national significance…
Cincinnati is a very historic city with an extraordinary number of historic places on the National Register. It has more
such buildings than New Orleans and can boast that OTR is larger than Charleston’s world-renowned historic district.
Unlike these cities, though, Cincinnati has not capitalized on its historic assets. In fact, we have let many of these assets
become an albatross: historic buildings throughout Over-the-Rhine sit vacant and derelict, deteriorating over years of
neglect. Unfortunately, our approach to this dilemma has been standardized and reactionary: demolition…
While earlier decades saw widespread razing of blocks and streetscapes, recent years have brought a new, equally
insidious phenomenon: demolition by neglect. As poverty rates and disinvestment grew in Over-the-Rhine, buildings
were increasingly abandoned and gradually deteriorated. Today, many buildings stand vacant and in dire need of re-
pair, yet building owners remain unwilling to bring their properties up to code. Once buildings reach a critical stage
of dilapidation, they are deemed a danger to the public and are slated for “emergency demolition” by the city. These
“emergency” demolitions—the result of years of neglect—are cutting wide, vacant swaths in the remaining fabric of
OTR. Between 2001 and 2006, over 50 historic buildings were demolished in such a manner. In the first four years
after the National Trust’s 2006 designation of OTR as one of America’s most endangered places, 20 historic proper-
ties have been demolished, and the destruction continues. Meanwhile, dozens more are condemned and in immedi-
ate risk of destruction. Even stable buildings are not safe. Solvent owners continue to seek demolitions as a preferred
approach to neglected properties and some purchase developable historic properties with the intent of razing them
for mere convenience.
6
Source F
Leigh, Catsby. “Historic Preservation.” First Principles.

Intercollegiate Study Institute, 16 November,
2012. Web. 16 January 2019.
The following is excerpted from an article in an online journal published by an organization focused on intellectual
conservatism.
The designation of places like the Battery, Old Town in Alexandria, Virginia (1946), and the Georgetown section of
Washington, D.C. (1950) resulted from the architectural standard they set. But it also reflected a new and unprec-
edented motive for preservation: a loss of confidence in American civilization’s capacity to build as well as it had
in times past. Though advocates of the steady broadening of preservation’s purview see it as an indication of the
nation’s increasing cultural maturity, one could just as easily regard it as a symptom of cultural decadence. Indeed,
preservation’s emergence as a major cultural movement is closely associated with one of the great harbingers of the
collapse of American architecture: the demolition, in 1963, of Charles Follen McKim’s classical masterwork, Penn-
sylvania Station in Manhattan, and its replacement with a dismal modernist urban-renewal complex. This catastro-
phe led to the establishment of New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission, and it also contributed to the
passage, in 1966, of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA)…
The NHPA’s passage is a matter of almost macabre irony in that the federal government’s proverbial right arm used
it in an attempt to limit the damage it was inflicting, through urban renewal, with its left. In the very year the act was
passed, urban renewal and the plague of ill-considered architectural mega-projects and cross-town expressways it
unleashed on the nation’s traditional urban fabric got a huge boost courtesy of the Model Cities Act. More than ever,
in other words, historic preservation was now a remedial movement that treated symptoms rather than the disease.
Needless to say, the movement has been synonymous with public hostility to modernist architecture, a routine ingre-
dient of the urban-renewal recipe. In the decades since the NHPA was passed, legions of urban districts or neighbor-
hoods, varying widely in degrees of architectural distinction, have secured designation in order to protect themselves
from the scourge of architecture and urban planning at odds with the sense of cultural continuity most Americans
want their built environment to impart.
7

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AP® English Language and Composition

Free-Response Question: Historic Preservation

Suggested reading and writing time—55 minutes.

Taborrok, Alex, “Against Historic Preservation.”

“The Atlas of ReUrbanism: Buildings and Blocks in

Percent of women and minority owned

Mason, Randall. “Fixing Historic Preservation: A

The following is excerpted from an article in an online architecture journal.

Warner, Aaron. Don’t Disturb The Historic Setting.

The following is an editorial cartoon.

“Historic Preservation,” Over-the-Rhine Foundation.

Leigh, Catsby. “Historic Preservation.” First Principles.

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