DATE: Friday, November 14, 1997             TAG: 9711130009

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B10  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial 

                                            LENGTH:   55 lines

PRESERVATION A FRUITFUL PASSION

The Virginia Society of the American Institute of Architects today honors John Paul C. Hanbury with its highest award, the William C. Noland Medal, for four decades of outstanding architectural and preservationist achievements.

Portsmouth and Norfolk are spotlighting the architect also, by designating today John Paul C. Hanbury Day. Hanbury, age 63, lived most of his years in Portsmouth. His office is in Norfolk, in a 106-year-old downtown commercial building, which his firm renovated.

In a congratulatory message, Gov. George F. Allen cited Hanbury's ``numerous historic preservation efforts, including the Governor's Office and the Executive Mansion.'' The Noland award will be bestowed in Richmond. Hanbury will be the fourth Hampton Roads architect to get it.

Hanbury has saved many historic structures, either as an architect or as a preservation advocate. He played a leading role in the retention of Portsmouth's 1846 Courthouse, which now shelters art works and activities, and he was the architect for the restoration and renovation of Norfolk's historic Wells Theater, the Virginia Stage Company's home.

Portsmouth is the primary beneficiary of the architect's preservationist passion, which was ignited by the example of Charleston, S.C., where Hanbury was stationed during his Navy years.

Upon returning to Portsmouth in 1959, Hanbury was dismayed by the indiscriminate bulldozing of blighted dwellings and commercial buildings in his hometown.

Portsmouth was struggling to reverse economic decline. Slum clearance was the rage across the United States. Federal programs (home-loan guarantees, the mortgage-interest tax deduction, roadbuilding) were spurring middle-income Americans' migration to the suburbs. Cities desperate to halt the loss of population and tax revenue sought salvation in urban renewal - Norfolk was in the vanguard.

Hanbury elected to live and invest in Portsmouth's downtown and improve its appearance and fortunes by creating support for protecting the city's architectural treasures.

His cause was not preservation solely for the sake of preservation. Hanbury knew that abandoned and deteriorated housing and commercial buildings could not be saved unless individuals or groups or government could be persuaded to breathe life into them, often by adapting them to different use.

As the saying goes, anyone can build a new building; no one can construct an old one. Alexander Wise Jr., director of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, says that preserved structures give communities and regions ``. . . texture, identity, uniqueness, character, a sense of place,'' attract tourists and enhance locales' quality of life. Early American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson would agree. A city, he said, ``lives by remembering.''

Hanbury fully understands such things, including, as Wise puts it, that ``a community, like a person, must have an identity to be healthy.'' Here's to Hanbury's multiple contributions to communities' health.

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu