GUIDELINES, OR LACK THEREOF
The following letter was originally sent to Adrienne A. McCalley and is reprinted here at the author's request.

Dear Mrs. McCalley:

Thank you very much for your letter of September 16, and thank you for continuing to be a supporter of the NHA. I have researched the plaque program during my year-long tenure here, and find it to have been the result of a rather uncharacteristically incomplete thought process. I noted from my reading that the program itself was "retired" many years ago during the tenure of executive director Jean Weber. Having just come from New Zealand where we oversaw a registration program, I know how difficult it is to administer such a program, and I am not surprised (and somewhat delighted, in fact) to know that the NHA retired it long ago.

Unfortunately, the program suffers chiefly from a lack of guidelines; for example, there is nothing in the program that would indicate it to be our right to reclaim a plaque once awarded. I know this will be disappointing to you. It is to me. However, where we can improve as a community is in the setting of easements and restrictions when selling a home, thus ensuring that the house is not gutted in such a way that will not compromise its original integrity. Unfortunately, too many homes are sold without such covenants, and by that time it is too late even for the NPT and the NHA to act on them.

Sincerely,

- Dr. William Tramposch

Executive Director

Nantucket Historical Association

P.S. Regarding the Williamsburg "recreation": Having worked as a director at Colonial Williamsburg for ten years, I am fascinated with the perception that many have about the restoration being a "recreation." Eighty-eight of the original buildings were original when the restoration process began; all of the rest were reconstructed only after remarkably extensive architectural research. In fact, the abundance of original fabric was one of the great appeals to the original supporters of the "restoration" of Williamsburg. Would that Nantucket had the preservation restrictions

that Williamsburg has! Ironic, isn't it? I