Around 1976, I visited then Mayor Jean Levesque's office in Salem City Hall.
On the mantel above the fireplace, there was a photograph of Salem's monumental granite railroad station. Its demolition was one of the greatest tragedies to afflict Salem in the mid-20th century, he explained, adding that he kept the photo there to remind him never to let such a thing occur again.
On Sept. 16, 2010, the Salem Planning Board voted to approve construction of a 76-unit housing project (possibly with the addition of a chain drugstore) on the site where the St. Joseph's Church building still stands as an iconic Salem landmark.
Who plans to destroy this monumental example of Salem's architectural patrimony? It is the Lafayette Development Limited Liability Corp., a joint venture between the Bank of America Corp. and the Planning Office for Urban Affairs, a nonprofit housing developer whose president and treasurer was the archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston when the new corporation purchased the St. Joseph's site from the archdiocese for $2 million in June 2005. A local group, the Salem Harbor Community Development Corp., had submitted a qualified proposal for the St. Joseph's property at the same time, but it was not accepted.
The absurdity of this project is as great as Salem's 1960s urban renewal plan, which intended to build a four-lane, circumferential highway around the downtown and through the garden next to East India Marine Hall of the Peabody Essex Museum. The same plan would have demolished all of the brick buildings surrounding Old Town Hall in the heart of Salem.
During the late 1960s, I understand that some members of the Salem Redevelopment Authority took a field trip to look at redevelopment efforts in Plymouth. Afterward, one of them was asked what he had learned in Plymouth that was relevant to Salem.
"Nothing" was the reply, because Plymouth is a historic town, which Salem is not, he explained.
Perhaps the Salem Redevelopment Authority in the 1960s felt it was part of the Enlightenment, as Voltaire was in 18th-century France.
Around the time of the French Revolution, Voltaire advocated the demolition of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris because it was an ugly, dirty, old building that should be replaced with something that looked more like a temple of reason.
Fortunately, Voltaire's ideas did not prevail. And when Sam Zoll became mayor of Salem in 1970, he appointed new members to the Salem Redevelopment Authority with a mandate to make good things happen in Salem.
Should the St. Joseph's steeple and building be demolished because it is ugly and not beautiful?
"Yes," according to someone speaking at a Historic Salem Inc. meeting I attended about St. Joseph's some years ago. However, anyone familiar with the standards and criteria for evaluating historic sites — whether locally, nationally or internationally — knows that informed people talk about the significance of historic places based upon their architectural design, their association with people or events, or their relationship to a specific urban context. "Ugliness" and "beauty" are subjective perceptions that change over time and are not criteria used to define cultural heritages.
In terms of its architectural significance, St. Joseph's Church is a rare example of the "International Style" of 20th-century architecture — the only one in Salem. Other religious examples of this style include the cathedrals of St. Joseph, in Hartford, Conn.; and St. Pierre, in Rabat, Morocco; along with the First Christian Church in Columbus, Ind., which became a National Historic Landmark in 2001.
St. Joseph's is also a monument to the waves of French Canadian immigrants who flooded into Salem to work at the mills in the late 1890s and early 1900s, contributed the money to construct St. Joseph's new building, and have since merged into the mainstream of social and economic life in Massachusetts.
St. Joseph's spire is a distinct landmark visible from Salem Hospital, from the harbor entrance, from the hearing room where Planning Board meetings take place, and to anyone traveling between Salem and Marblehead. Yet the recent Planning Board meeting focused on things like how the air-conditioning units might be hidden on the roof of the new apartment house and whether or not the parking lot lighting would create too much glare. However absurd the discussion, I suppose the board had to stick to its agenda.
The 36-page reuse study of the St. Joseph's site, for which the Planning Department sought proposals in June 2004, paid $48,000 to have done, and released 16 months later in November 2005, was woefully inadequate as a source for creative ideas.
On the other hand, the city of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Conservancy (the equivalent of Historic Salem Inc.) worked together for 10 years to foster the rebirth, in 2005, of St. Vibiana's, the former Roman Catholic cathedral, as an arts center. That building was within moments of demolition one Saturday morning, when a Conservancy board member (who is also a lawyer) happened to drive by and was surprised to see a crane removing the cupola and others ready with wrecking balls. He went to a judge's home and obtained an order that the police should intervene and stop the demolition initiated by the archdiocese without the requisite municipal approvals. The actual rehabilitation costs were less than 20 percent of what the Los Angeles Archdiocese had initially projected.
It is now time for this mayor, city councilors and the Planning Department to face up to the fact that they are currently betraying Salem's past for short-term gains. Digging up the parking lot to find out if one of the statues from the church building that burned down might be buried here does not mitigate sacrificing Salem's soul.
The next procedural hurdle will be whether the Massachusetts Historical Commission and National Advisory Council for Historic Preservation approve or disapprove of using federal housing funds to destroy St. Joseph's and Salem's heritage. Let us hope city officials wake up soon and find imaginative ways to conserve Salem's priceless heritage rather than pursuing the economic interests of the Bank of America, if not their own.
• • •
Stanley M. Smith is a former member of the Salem Redevelopment Authority and a former president of Historic Salem Inc. He retired in 2004 after 25 years as executive director of Historic Boston Inc. This semester, he is teaching an advanced French course at the Harvard Institute for Learning in Retirement and taking a course on Richard Strauss' opera "Der Rosenkavalier."
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