Another Home-icide In The Name Of Progress

photo courtesy of Daily News-Record and photographer
Ian Munro

I don't see myself as a tree hugger, but I am a bit of a house hugger when it comes to preserving historic structures like the Haas House that was demolished on South Main Street yesterday.

According to the article in today's paper, this part of JMU's vast real estate empire was formerly home to a number of leading Harrisonburg families and then for years served as the Episcopal Student Center. At a time when there is an acute shortage of affordable homes in our community I always feel we should consider salvaging existing structures wherever possible to help provide for more student or other needed housing, such as for refugee families, for example.

I understand the Haas house did have some significant structural issues that would have required considerable repair, as did the historic Harrison House just further up Main Street. Yet I can't help seeing each house on earth as the creative and hard work of an unimaginable number of hands involved in the design, site preparation, manufacture and transportation of all of the building materials that went into it. And then there are the many other hands involved in the construction, finishing and furnishing what becomes a home, a memory-filled place of shelter, warmth and refuge to the people who inhabit them. On a much larger scale, multiple homes and businesses in the northeast neighborhood of Harrisonburg were demolished in the 50's and 60's for the sake of a federally subsidized "urban renewal" project carried out in the.name of progress. The predominantly African-American community in that part of our city has never fully recovered from that wholesale demolition. On an even more devastating scale I mourn the razing of more and more Palestinian homes to make room for more upscale Israeli settlements. Meanwhile we are all grieving the devastation of homes, hospitals and other structures in the terrible bombardment of Ukrainian cities. So with the hymn writer William Vories, we pray, "Let woe and waste of warfare cease, that useful labor yet may build its homes with love and laughter filled!"

Let's preserve the earth and its trees and other building materials in whatever ways possible, and not needlessly sacrifice its precious resources on the altar of privilege and in our pursuit of progress.

I'm sure the Jewish Carpenter I follow would agree.

For a mere $150,000, an efficient demolition crew destroyed all of this construction and craftsmanship  forever yesterday. (DNR photo)