The Needs of the Few are Mighty Loud

Are the needs of a very few "historians" more important than the public education of generations of Portsmouth-area children? A rabid preservationist says -- No. The time has come to replace an outmoded armory building with a modern public library.

I’ve been trying to stay off the firing range on the issue of whether the City of Portsmouth should tear down its not-very-old brick armory building and replace it with a desperately needed state-of-the-art public library. Politics is not my bag. The decision appeared to be a no-brainer. Portsmouth does not need a place to store ammunition, and we do need a place to educate our children.

As a full-time history writer, I’m rabid about preservation. But despite its thick brick walls there is almost nothing historically significant about this 1916 building in a town filled with historic buildings that date back as far as the late 1600s. Troops trained here during two key wars. The government didn’t want to build it in the first place and abandoned it in 1958. Since then it has been a recreation center. Two years ago the city leased a gorgeous modern recreation center for us on the other side of town. Not every building is a treasure, even in a town like ours.

Like most of you, I figured that the small protest by a miniscule group of "born-again" historians would quickly dry up and blow away. Not so. A couple of the members in this group clearly care for old coastal defense buildings. The rest appear not to want a library in their gentrified back yard. Their arguments to save the building are paper thin, at best, but their zeal is impressive. They have made so much noise that some citizens think there is a real solid preservation movement afoot. There is not. To be honest, I’ve not met a single local history-lover, other than the armory "born agains", who favors saving the armory.

The crying need to build a new library clearly outweighs the need to keep this largely ignored structure standing. The quiet spot near the mill pond on Parrot Ave right next to the Junior High School is ideal for a new public library. A lot of smart people have taken a long time to reach this conclusion. In the two decades that the town has debated the library issue and searched for a location, thousands of kids have gone through our school system with less library than they deserved. Now with the Information Age fully upon us, while the old library does the very best with what it has, our kids are getting increasingly ripped off. There is no room for exhibits, little room to study, no space for archived books and magazines, just a tiny room for history study with two chairs. To use a public-access computer to get onto the Internet, people sign up and wait their turn. That hurts low-income people most in an era when a month of high-speed Web access costs more than a day’s pay at minimum wage.

Portsmouth has a tradition of recycling old buildings. A house becomes a hospital, a hospital becomes a city hall, while an old school that used to be the city hall becomes an office building. That’s how we do things around here. But sometimes, people, we just have to let go.

Sharing a community means making group decisions. The needs of the many often outweigh the needs of the few. That’s the tough end of democracy. Right now, a very small group of self-interested people are blocking a very large group of citizens. They have wedged themselves firmly into the neck of the bottle on the pretense of saving a building that has long outlived its use. A couple of back yards and a few footnotes should not hold a whole town hostage.

We’re not saving an Indian burial ground here, friends. Portsmouth has a chance to make history by building our kids a new library where they can take in the full measure of our shared and fascinating heritage. Or, we can keep the old armory standing, reanimate the search for another library location and bicker on as usual. Meanwhile a third generation of ripped-off kids are coming down the pike and the Information pipeline is picking up speed. What we do here today – or don’t do -- is the history they will teach their kids. -- JDR