For months, friends and colleagues who I admire have spoken out on both sides of the debate over the future of the 142 Free St. The increasingly divisive and personal tone in conversations, public hearings and the press leaves me sad and worried.

Preservation is at the heart of the Portland Museum of Art, the cultural center of my childhood. John Calvin Stevens conserved and adaptively reused the McLellan House while adding his own distinctive touch in the L.D.M. Sweat Galleries. As lead architect for the museum’s restoration of those buildings, as well as the expansion of the landmark Currier Museum of Art in Manchester and renovation of the University of Maine Museum of Art in Bangor, I know that museums are only sustained if they evolve to express the needs of the communities they serve. Portland and the museum’s bold vision deserve no less.

Preserving and renewing historic resources has been my life’s work, beginning with illustrations for the Greater Portland Landmarks newsletter in 1976. GPL’s long advocacy for Portland’s historic character has, with distinguished contemporary planning and design, helped create a more beautiful, diverse and dynamic city than the one I grew up in.

Demolition in a historic district should never be undertaken without deliberation. Twelve years’ service on the Boston Landmarks Commission taught me the power of landmark review as well as the need to accommodate changing needs and values. I worked in the Victorian Libby Building on Congress Square before the Maine Historic Preservation Commission concluded that there was no feasible alternative to demolition for the Payson Wing. Henry Cobb’s design is a model for contemporary design in historic settings, the lead example in a seminar that I taught as professor of practice at the University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design for nearly a decade.

The museum has followed the process outlined in city regulations. Now is the time for the museum and GPL to demonstrate how historic preservation, design excellence and great leadership can sustain civil discourse and community.

Moving forward, the museum can do much to mitigate the loss of 142 Free St. It can document the building inside and out through 3D scanning, drawings and photographs suitable for submission to the Historic American Buildings Survey. This technology enabled reconstruction the Glasgow School of Art after tragic fires. The history of the site should be prominently displayed in the new museum complex. If it hasn’t already done so, the museum should commit to preserving the building until it is ready to start construction of the new wing, and dismantle the existing structure in a manner that illustrates responsible recycling.

Last but not least, as one of the few institutions with the location and resources to do so, the museum can build a landmark for Portland’s 21st century.

On its part, I hope that Greater Portland Landmarks will collaborate with the museum, supporting the expansion and the Historic Preservation Board’s review process. It can play a vital role to ensure that the museum expansion respects the four landmark buildings on its campus, as well as the surrounding historic district.  And it can help put historic preservation at the vanguard of so many other critical issues facing our community, whether highlighting untold stories or demonstrating how historic preservation helps mitigate climate change threatening our coastal heritage.

I look forward to working together to make this happen.

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