To Love a Building: The Folklorist

Thursday, May 14, 2015

The Folklorist

A world within a world.

Alone, but not alone.

Condemned, but not condemned—

This house has an incredible attraction.

Outer limits, outer space.

Another world, another planet.

A box, above a box, above a box, above a box—

Layers of contribution to this strangeness and decay:

The bones of a lonely dragon and Charlie Chaplin’s head.
A witch’s eye, a demon’s cry, the sheets from a missing bed.

The Cooper House, University of Wyoming

“It is a desire to be weirded-out, I don't want to get too comfortable. It kind of keeps me writing. The Cooper House is like another planet on campus.” —Maxine Allison Vande Vaarst

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To Love a Building

In How Buildings Learn Stewart Brand mentions how “preservationists have a philosophy of time and responsibility that includes the future. They are passionately interested in the question, ‘What makes some buildings come to be loved?’” (90). Lately I have been thinking about this question and how a building makes itself “fit” for a particular environment and ecosystem. Although we create buildings and make them “fit,” they also create us. Given this, we can think of buildings as a living, breathing, adapting, interacting organism in an ecosystem. If, as Brand suggests, the buildings we decide to preserve are the ones we “love,” what does it mean to love a building? What makes the relationship between a building and a person so strong, so true, so real and so lasting? How does this love continue to burn—to persevere—to preserve? This project sets out to answer these questions in greater detail in an attempt to capture the cultural essence of preservation and sustainability. It is a love story—a sequence of “sonnets.”

The interviews conducted and the poems and photos that follow are an attempt to create a sort of theatre for the “sonnet lady” in a way that brings awareness to historical preservation and sustainability. I have put these actors on stage—engaged them in the theatre—to make this love more visible—more real.

For each interview conducted, I first ask the interviewee the general question, “why do you ‘love’ this building?” Then I ask them to give me a brief personal history with their chosen building. Finally I ask them what architectural features or aspects of the building (if any) stand out to them as forming part of their relationship with the building. What I have seen in my interviews is that a common theme has developed around place and memories—the stories, symbolisms and metaphors that come from outside and within the buildings—more so than particular architectural aesthetics and character-defining features of the buildings. These finding may shed new light on Brands distinction between “High-Road” and “Low-Road” buildings, in that part of the value and ‘love’ for a building cannot be quantified by high-style or made less significant by “Low-Road” features and building materials.

Before writing the poem titled “The Wyomingite” I interviewed Jason Kirkmeyer who has been a resident of Laramie, Wyoming for over twenty years. Kirkmeyer talked enthusiastically about his relationship with the building, citing the “energy” and “investment” inherent in the building as a symbol of Wyoming and westward expansion, which, for him, is a symbol of home. He mentioned how the building itself, with the date 1886 embossed on the façade, mimicked the High Plains in that it is very open but does not look like you should live there. This, he mentioned, is the appeal of the High Plains, the place he calls home. Kirkmeyer states, “this building says so much for me and my family, which has been here for generations.” The lines “we came here, / we built things / and sometimes we left” attempts to capture the generation of pioneers and Wyomingites who came to Laramie and express these ideas of home, family and Wyoming history that Kirkmeyer feels through his relationship to this building. In The Original Green: Unlocking the Mysteries of True Sustainability Stephen A. Mouzon discusses this sort of symbolic relationship with home that Kirkmeyer expressed in his interview: “Buildings, their parts, and the towns they’re built within can reflect our culture in a number of ways, from the scale of our tribes to the scale of our nation. Artifacts that reflect our culture are often symbolic in some way, carrying embedded meaning to members of the culture” (208). The building that Kirkmeyer loves has become, for him, symbolic of the pioneering lifestyles and “home” of The West. Although this building has been unoccupied for many years, it is still standing. It is evident that, perhaps, the community also shares in Kirkmeyer’s love for the “embedded meaning” that this building symbolizes.

In my second love poem titled “The Widow,” I interviewed Jeny Stoesz, owner and lover of Jeny Originals Yarns & Handwovens in downtown, Laramie, Wyoming. Since Stoesz spent a lot of time with her husband and daughter renovating, preserving and maintain the condition of her building, part of her relationship to this building is a labor of love. However, what came through the most in my interview with her and her love for this building were the memories and stories that pass through the building. Stoesz says, “what I love about this building is that it continues like a newspaper.” Stoesz husband, Mike Stoesz, passed away unexpectedly in May 1, 2011, the same month and day that they had opened this building for business in 2006. Both Mike and Jeny had a journalism background and understood newspapers. This is why they got married in the first place—they shared a love for capturing the lives and stories of others through photography and writing. Jeny Stoesz father had also worked in journalism and so she was exposed to the field at a young age. “I was raised in the newspaper. From the time I was ten to the time I was eighteen, I worked in the newspaper every single day,” said Stoesz. It is evident that the newspaper is a way of life for Stoesz and it is through these memories and way of life that she has grown to love this building. For Stoesz, this building is a newspaper and, therefore, functions as a continuation of the love her and her husband shared and the way of life that she has always know. People come into Jeny’s Originals and they share their memories and stories with her. It is the stories that this building contains and allows to pass through it that Stoesz loves, and through loving and caring for this building, she is preserving this place that, in its own unique way, functions as a press. “It is the stories and memories that people come in and share with me that I love,” said Stoesz. And, as I conclude in “The Widow,” Stoesz “let[s] the presses fly!”—the daily ephemera of Jeny’s Originals.

When Jeny Stoesz came to me after hearing about my project, she suggested that I might want to interview her daughter to get a different perspective on the same building. I though this was an excellent idea, so my next poem is titled, “The Daughter.” For Jeny’s daughter Erin, the love and relationship with the building that now houses Jeny’s Originals is more about a connection with her father and family than with the stories and memories of the many people who pass through Laramie and come into the store. Although still about memory and place, E. Stoesz expresses the love of proximity to her father and of her family together working towards a common goal and how this building was a place where this happened. “I felt like I was always a part of this building. I spent time taking part in the processes and changes, talking care of it. It was family time when we worked together on this building—memories of when we were all together,” said E. Stoesz. Through this we can see that it is memories that allow a building to survive, but also, the community and family bonds that these building house and bring together. As the last line states in “The Daughter,” “we are all together here.” The “togetherness” lives on through the love and care for the building. Mouzon discusses “the lovable building” and what he calls “group delight:” “Group delight isn’t something a building or place delivers, but rather something that it allows by providing the backdrop upon which interactions between people may occur” (211). For E. Stoesz, these “interactions” between her and her family “occur[ed]” in this building and “allowed” for a group bond to be formed while they spent time together caring for the building.

For Maxine Allison Vande Varst, the lovable building is not so much about the memories of working together in a building, but, more so, a sense of strangeness and otherworldliness that the folklore and history of the building communicates. Vande Varst loves The Cooper House Mansion, which is home to the American Studies program at University of Wyoming where she studies as a gradate student. Although Vande Varst’s love for The Cooper House is about history and place, it is different than the other loves mention in that it is a love for the sense of fear and the unknown that the building communicates. “The allure of this building is that it represents an intrusion of decay and otherworldliness and weirdness into the everyday world,” said Vande Varst. For Vande Varst, the building comes to symbolize the mysterious histories and past lives of people and events that occupied or took place in this building. Similar to “The Wyomingite,” The Cooper House is lovable because it symbolizes a particular aspect of history. For Vande Varst, it is mystery and folklore and for Kirkmeyer it is a symbol of the history of home—of Wyoming and The West. There is a sense of wonder and a sense of place and time in both of these loves. So much of our history is either hidden or unknown and, as a folklorist, Vande Varst is attracted to the lore, strangeness and unknown that the Cooper House communicates in its literal and figurative layers of stratigraphy as expressed in “The Folklorist:” “A box, above a box, above a box, above a box— / Layers of contribution to this strangeness and decay:” (lines 7 and 8). It is a love for the strange and unknown histories that make up this building.

The poems and photography in this project attempt to capture and further understand why, as Brand states, “buildings come to be loved?” We can see here that, through my investigations and interviews of people in Laramie, Wyoming, that a building comes to be loved through the memories, stories, symbolisms and metaphors that come from outside, within and through the buildings. The building, in this sense, acts like a vessel through which our lives are nurtured and held—like a conduit through which we express, experience and cherish our lives: our loves, our loses, our relationships, stories, histories and memories. If a building is able to act as a vessel or a conduit through which our lives can be nurtured, expressed, captured in history and allowed to grow, then it is evident that the building serves to function like a relationship of unconditional love. As Jeny Stoesz mentioned in my interview with her, “love is a respect for something.” If love is built upon a mutual respect, then it makes sense that we would want to love, nurture and preserve something that loves, nurtures and preserves our lives in such an unconditional manner as a building does. If a building cannot come to be loved in this way and if we do not respect and provide for this love, then we will lose a significant part of our building ecosystem and the memories, stories, symbolisms and metaphors of the human story that these buildings capture and preserve. Mouzon states that “if a building cannot be loved, it will not last. Any serious conversation about sustainable buildings must begin with the issue of Lovability. If a building cannot be loved by those using and visiting it, then it is likely to be demolished and carted off to a landfill in only a generation of two, at which point its carbon footprint is meaningless” (199). Mouzon mentions that this would be a loss of “embodied energy,” but it is also a loss of a human story and history. I propose that we must focus on preserving, sharing and documenting the history and stories of our built environment so that they are not lost and forgotten. If we lose, forget or just fail to properly document the history and stories of our buildings, “then it is likely” that they will be “demolished.” And when we lose our built environment, we lose a part of our building ecosystem that has already provided itself as usable and renewable if we just had the love to make that investment in the “embodied energy” the building already possesses. By loving our buildings, we will also be able avoid negative impacts to our environment and communities and, therefore, provide for a more culturally, economically and environmentally sustainable planet.

Works Cited

Brand, Stewart. How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They Are Built. New York:

Penguin Books, 1994. Print.

Frey, Patrice, et al. The Greenest Building: Quantifying the Environmental Value of

Building Reuse. Seattle: Preservation Green Lab, 2012. Web. 15 May 2015.

Kirkmeyer, Jason. Personal interview. 11 May 2015.

Mouzon, Stephen A. The Original Green: Unlocking the Mystery of True Sustainability.

Miami: The Guild Foundation Press, 2010. Print.

Stoesz, Erin. Personal interview. 24 April 2015.

Stoesz, Jeny. Personal interview. 24 April 2015.

Vande Varst, Maxine Allison. Personal interview. 30 April 2015.

Thursday, May 14, 2015

The Folklorist

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