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Lecture: Neutra’s Fault Line
April 23, 2020 @ 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
A case study on demolition and historic preservation in San Francisco
Thursday, April 23, 2020
6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
Landmarks Preservation Resource Center
744 Rebecca Avenue, Wilkinsburg, PA 15221
This lecture is FREE to PHLF Members
Non-members: $15
To register: contact Mary Lu Denny: marylu@phlf.org or 412-471-5808 ext. 527
When a San Francisco developer demolished one of the few remaining examples of Richard Neutra’s distinctive houses in 2018, shock waves rumbled through the city’s preservation community because Neutra was one of the most prominent and important modernist architects of his era.The developer’s illegal action—the demolition occurred without a permit—shook fundamental assumptions held regarding permitting, integrity, significance, and the local planning process. Calls for punishment of the developer ranged from large fines to rebuilding the house as it was originally built in 1935. In this lecture, we consider the illegal demolition as a case study of the challenges of historic preservation in the early Twenty-first Century.
About the presenter: Matthew G. Hyland is an experienced architectural historian, with expertise in historic preservation practice and public history education. He has completed numerous Section 110 and Section 106 above-ground compliance projects, intensive-level historic resource surveys, National Register eligibility evaluations, criteria of effects determinations, preservation treatments, and mitigation programs. Dr. Hyland has taught historic preservation at the university level and published articles in peer-reviewed journals on aspects of the history of historic preservation.