RADAR 5 Publication Date: April 1, 2003 Ruins In the 1990s Baltimore lost a third of its population, resulting in thousands of abandoned dwellings—most of which may be officially considered "historic"—from one side of town to the other. Many people look at them with disgust and fear, and applaud their demolition. Sometimes preservationists attempt to make them appear new. But neither side seems to consider the importance of ruins as such, their spiritual and aesthetic potential, or the option of conserving them. In the American southwest, the Navajo respected the physical remains of the Anasazi culture that preceded them. I once sat in the crumbling ruins of an Anasazi dwelling in Arizona that still had pottery fragments on the floor. I put my fingers in marks made by a potter's hands perhaps eight hundred years ago and had a feeling that I have never forgotten. I often remember this experience when among the ruins of the vanished dwellers of my city, the city of my father and his. When I see Baltimore's ruins, I see reliquaries whose forms and patinas took generations to create and which stand as visual documents of the "Eldergone." Earlier Baltimoreans left their marks on worn steps and moldings, and a record of their sense of color in layers of wallpaper and paint. Where walls have fallen or been ripped down, we get a dollhouse glimpse into the private spaces of vanished dwellers. The outlines of homes cling like ghosts to the sides of the surviving buildings. The colors of Europe or the pastels of tropical buildings are no more exotic to me than salmon brick, covered with layers of Baltimore "catsup red" paint. It is often complimented with certain shades of deep green, rich sienna, or ochre on the trim that are "pre-modern." These are our colors. It is curious how we make pilgrimages to the ruins of the world's fallen empires, but hold contempt for the relics of those who made our city—relics that are either in the way of new construction, or lost in well-intended efforts at "revitalization"—or just bulldozed with no plan for the vacant spaces that are left. Our oldest buildings are more than academic examples; they are visual records of that Continuum of which our lives are a part, and like the true symbols they are, say something that words fail to communicate. But we hate decay, and perhaps fear something else these buildings represent, and want them gone. Can we not at least look at these links to our ancestors with some appreciation, before the amputation? Wayne Nield