The chief legal officer at the National Trust contemplates how the virtual world
can augment reality (literally) at old places.
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Dear Preservation Supporter,

As someone who loves being in old places, I’m grateful that, while sheltering in
place this May, I’ve been able to explore places through Virtual Preservation Month,
[[link removed]] thanks to the sponsorship of American Express. While I’ve missed attending
house and garden tours and other events in-person, it was a revelation to see
the breadth and depth of the preservation world from my laptop.

On the landing page, I could see that we are everywhere—saving threatened
places; digging up new stories in archaeology; discovering hidden pasts behind
walls; making, serving, and eating food; keeping our Main Street businesses
alive; playing games; stitching and pickling; remembering the places of
quarantines past; and yes, even changing the narrative of American history.

Since the advent of the internet and virtual reality, people have pondered what
these technologies might mean for the preservation world. Will people still
value the experience of being at the real place?

Even in the pre-coronavirus world, it would have been difficult for me to be in
Tryon, North Carolina, to hear singer Vanessa Ferguson perform
[[link removed]] at Nina Simone’s Childhood Home. Yet even through my laptop, her performance
felt intimate and personal, and captured the power of creating music where the
famed activist and musician grew up.

Through the Alice Austin House virtual tour
[[link removed]] , I was able to see the incredible view across New York Harbor, and at the same
time see an overlay of historic photographs—images that Alice Austin herself saw
through the lens of her camera—making manifest the idea that the past is
constantly part of the present.

At Kykuit, I may not have paused to look if I were on a tour, but online I stared at the image of an Alexander Calder sculpture against the landscape of
the Hudson River
[[link removed]] for long minutes at a time, losing myself in the magic of that juxtaposition
and the thought that Nelson Rockefeller positioned the sculpture in exactly that
place. I was seeing for a moment through his eyes.

In a sense, the virtual world has always existed in preservation. Books and art
have long played a role in spurring people to see old places anew, from Notre
Dame Cathedral, which became valued again after Victor Hugo published The Hunchback of Notre Dame , to the paintings and writing of the Charleston Renaissance, which helped spur
the preservation movement. The virtual world may be thought of as another medium
that helps people see these old places, no more radical than the printing press,
or that first wax cylinder of music that allowed people to hear concerts from
performance halls all over the world.

Old places are rich and complex in sensory experience, and there are aspects of
place that cannot be replicated virtually. For example, the Pope-Leighey House
[[link removed]] was designed to create an emotional response as people moved through the
low-ceilinged entrance into the height of the living space, and as visually
stunning as the virtual tour is, it cannot fully capture that feeling of
expansion Frank Lloyd Wright designed, nor the faint background scent of the
cypress walls.

It requires some imagination to conjure the feeling of these places online, just
as it does in books, music, or architectural drawings. But preservationists have
always been able to imagine possibilities. Who else looks at a dilapidated
building and sees not only how it looked historically, but a vision of what it
might become?

I hope preservationists continue to embrace the virtual world for its
extraordinary access, information, and imaginative possibilities, and as another
tool to save these places, so that we can visit, in person, when we can.

Warm regards,


Tom Mayes
Chief Legal Officer

Pictured above: Large Spiny by Alexander Calder overlooks the Hudson River in
Tarrytown, New York, at Kykuit, a Site of the National Trust.




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202.588.6000 | 800.944.6847 | 202.588.6038 (fax)

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