Louisville’s famous Twig and Leaf: are diners landmarks worth preserving?

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/apr/07/louisville-twig-leaf-diner-preservation

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At a Louisville intersection, a wiry neon sign subtly flickers ‘Twig & Leaf – Tops in Food’, and has done for 56 years. The Kentucky diner hasn’t changed much in that time: stainless steel bar stools with faded pleather cushions are offset by a light blue clock perpetually stopped at 8.16.

In 2011, it was designated as a local landmark after a CVS pharmacy was rumored to be taking over the entire block. The residents worked to save the diner, but now it just stays empty most nights. It’s a story of placemaking and preservation gone sadly wrong.

In 1959, Herman A Parris renovated a small property that was once a Dairy Freeze in the style of the then-modern diner. Hap’s Big Burger Drive-In lasted for a little over a year before Parris fell ill and sold off the business to Kelly Madison.

The diner thrived for 22 years under Madison, especially during the Kentucky Derby season, and became an endearing staple in the Douglass Loop neighborhood. However, Madison eventually sold the establishment in the early 1980s. Since then, a string of owners has passed through the diner’s doors while its customer base have slowly declined.

“I have been a few times and I have never found the food good. The atmosphere isn’t worth too much either, in my opinion,” said Wesley Scott, a Louisville resident. “I don’t expect much out of a greasy spoon, but when the menu has to be pried off a table, it’s time to throw in the towel.”

Based on its menu alone, it’s hard to imagine that the Twig and Leaf was an institution worth preserving; yet this speaks to the increasing difficulty of weaving preservation and progress, especially as mid-century architecture is becoming historic.

According to Louisville’s metro council, there are several steps to petition for the designation of local landmarks, but ultimately it is a community-driven process.

Two hundred signatures from within the county are sufficient to trigger the public discussion; of those signatures, 101 must be from residents living within a one-mile radius, or from within the council district in which the proposed landmark is located.

The Twig and Leaf collected a total 679 signatures, with 245 coming from within its council district.

There are also nine specific criteria, and a property just needs to meet one of them. “Of course, the more criteria a property meets, the stronger the case for designation,” said Jessica Wethington, a public information specialist with Louisville metro.

The nine criteria range from the property’s “embodiment of distinguishing characteristics of an architectural type or specimen” to “its identification with a person or persons who significantly contributed to the culture and development of Metro Louisville, the commonwealth, or the nation.”

The Twig and Leaf met a total of six.

Rachel Kennedy helped organize the petition and spearheaded efforts to landmark the diner. However, she stressed to the public that the landmarking campaign was to ensure the maintenance of the building housing Twig and Leaf, not the business itself.

“We highlighted that because it’s an interesting example of commercial vernacular architecture. It represents both the development of a building type to serve as a diner as well as a community landmark.”

Focused solely on its form, and not considering its current management, the Twig and Leaf is a valid choice for preservation. However, it lacks the function to truly serve its current community, and that tarnishes its historical relevance.

Marianne Zickuhr is the founder of Preservation Louisville, an organization that is, in simple terms, dedicated to “helping people save things that matter.”

“Something that comes up a lot at Preservation Louisville is the term ‘placemaking’,” Zickuhr said. “It’s an urban planning movement that encourages residents to seek to improve their shared and public spaces as a means to further connect individuals to their communities.”

A diner like the Twig and Leaf easily has the capacity to become a placemaking tool, says Ashlee Thompson, the author of Louisville Diners, which profiles more than a dozen greasy spoons in the city.

“These down-home, mom-and-pop operations serve as community gathering points, places where people aren’t always on their phones or laptops,” Thompson said. “Diner meals don’t require that you dress up or make reservations: you can just walk in, be yourself and order your favorite meal.”

Thompson missed the heyday of the Twig and Leaf, but said that its existence in its current state is an indication of just how powerful nostalgia can be. “Even if we don’t necessarily want something as it exists now, we want it to always be there to remind us of our own experiences with that restaurant.” she said.

Thompson added: “But it’s probably time for the Twig and Leaf to shake things up to get people’s attention. Louisville’s restaurant industry is crowded, and nostalgia alone is not enough to buoy a business’s survival.”

Beyond serving an emotional function – connecting people to their neighborhood – maintaining old buildings has an economic impact as well.

In 2014, The National Trust for Historic Preservation leveraged open property-parcel data in three cities to analyze the connection between smaller, older buildings and the numbers that economists and businesses would care about: jobs per square foot, the share of small businesses to big chains, the number of minority- and women-owned businesses.

In her analysis of the study, the Washington Post urban affairs journalist Emily Badger said:

The novel geospatial analysis, drawn from the District of Columbia, Seattle and San Francisco, suggests that older, smaller buildings do matter to a city’s economy and a neighborhood’s commercial life beyond the allure of affordable fixer-uppers. In Seattle, the report found one-third more jobs per commercial square foot in parts of town with a variety of older, smaller buildings mixed in. In Seattle, [it also] found more than twice the rate of women and minority-owned businesses. In the District, it found a higher share of non-chain businesses.

These buildings often don’t serve the function that they always did, but they are affordable magnets for local businesses, which in turn serve the community simply by keeping money in the neighborhood.

Whether the current management steps up, or another local restaurateur comes in and renews the Twig and Leaf, one thing is clear: in order for the diner to truly serve as a placemaking tool worthy of preservation and as an economic asset, it’s time for the Twig and Leaf to branch out and grow.