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Endview
This vision takes on the challenges involved in developing within the area, the lessons of history, the marketplace for new community, and the plan for creating it.
The Eastern seaboard is dotted with the history of our nation. There are constant reminders of the beginning of our country. The problem is that many of the buildings and places of our founding have been reduced to plaques alongside parking lots. Endview and Lee Hall, Virginia, (the plantation house, and the town) stand as sentinels in defiance of America’s myopia about its past, and sound as clarions challenging us to confront our behavior in the future.
The preservation challenge before the community of Newport News, Virginia is not “how shall we isolate our past” but rather “how can we inform our future by celebrating our past?” The plantations of Endview and of Lee Hall are textbook examples of this reality. Buffeted by wars and the transforming events they bring, neither are snapshots of any particular moment in time. They reflect our understanding of the historical record as we know it, and present to us a compendium of the life and experiences of those who came before us, and the buildings and artifacts they left behind.
Historic, rural houses are not islands unto themselves. Unlike their urban cousins, plantation houses existed as a part of a complex series of structures connected to the land upon which they rest. Take away the landscape of their birth and growth, and you irrevocably blur the meaning of the place, and the lessons of history. This conundrum – of saving houses while losing landscapes – is the bane of the modern day historian. It is also the central challenge in the development of the Endview area. Shook Kelley, working with the developer L.M. Sandler & Sons, Inc., developed a conceptual master plan and vision concept booklet to document and promote their in-depth vision for the area, which takes head on the challenges involved in developing within the area, the lessons of history, the marketplace for new community, and the plan for creating it. There is a unique chance to preserve the past and to growth into the future of this area.
The Eastern seaboard is dotted with the history of our nation. There are constant reminders of the beginning of our country. The problem is that many of the buildings and places of our founding have been reduced to plaques alongside parking lots. Endview and Lee Hall, Virginia, (the plantation house, and the town) stand as sentinels in defiance of America’s myopia about its past, and sound as clarions challenging us to confront our behavior in the future.
The preservation challenge before the community of Newport News, Virginia is not “how shall we isolate our past” but rather “how can we inform our future by celebrating our past?” The plantations of Endview and of Lee Hall are textbook examples of this reality. Buffeted by wars and the transforming events they bring, neither are snapshots of any particular moment in time. They reflect our understanding of the historical record as we know it, and present to us a compendium of the life and experiences of those who came before us, and the buildings and artifacts they left behind.
Historic, rural houses are not islands unto themselves. Unlike their urban cousins, plantation houses existed as a part of a complex series of structures connected to the land upon which they rest. Take away the landscape of their birth and growth, and you irrevocably blur the meaning of the place, and the lessons of history. This conundrum – of saving houses while losing landscapes – is the bane of the modern day historian. It is also the central challenge in the development of the Endview area. Shook Kelley, working with the developer L.M. Sandler & Sons, Inc., developed a conceptual master plan and vision concept booklet to document and promote their in-depth vision for the area, which takes head on the challenges involved in developing within the area, the lessons of history, the marketplace for new community, and the plan for creating it. There is a unique chance to preserve the past and to growth into the future of this area.