Replacing New Hampshire's Old Man of the Mountain

Holdstrong writes "New Hampshire's iconic natural rock formation, the Old Man of the Mountain, fell from its mountain-side perch back in 2003. Award-winning architect Francis D. Treves is proposing a monument to replace it. His idea would feature a replica of the Old Man made out of 250 suspended glass panels and would allow visitors to enter the structure in order to gain views of the valley below. The design has received harsh criticism from the public, in part, Mr. Treves believes, due to the fact that quality images and accurate information about his design have been hard to come by. Replacing a beloved natural monument with a man-made one is sure to bring out emotions. Will a clearer understanding of the design help sway public opinion?"

Comments

Just what I was looking for

[sokoban]

You know, I was trying to come up with something about which I could be completely ambivalent and not care about one way or the other in the slightest.

Then I found this on slashdot.

Slashdot: News for New Hampshire. Stuff that doesn't matter at all.

Man-made is not the problem

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Humans have an uncanny knack for finding faces in randomness. It's been said that this is an evolutionary feature. This explains why we sometimes think we see ghosts or Virgin Maries or even Jesus on the asses of dogs. But in reality, it's nothing more than our brain cleverly interpreting the random patterns into something we can easily comprehend.

So when the Old Man of the Mountain crumbled, we didn't just lose a pile of rocks. We lost one of our conceptual markers. Like the mountain in South Dakota that bears an uncanny resemblance to former presidents, this natural monument symbolizes a very dear slice of our history. To have lost it to nature is a blow to not only New Hampshire but our own national pride as Americans.

However simply replacing it with a glass structure is not necessarily the right thing to do. One key aspect of the monument was its permanence and impenetratibility. By replicating the shape in glass, the monument loses both aspects. It would be, in other words, better to have simply left the rubble alone.

I would encourage you to write your congressmen and representatives to stop this wrong-headed "artistic" solution. In Afghanistan, where the Taliban destroyed centuries-old statues, they are rebuilding them in stone. So too should the majesty of the stone face be returned in stone form.

I'd have to say yes

[cptnapalm]

"Replacing a beloved natural monument with a man-made one is sure to bring out emotions. Will a clearer understanding of the design help sway public opinion?"

Definitely. They will be more accurate with their condemnations.

Leave the rubble alone

[Opportunist]

Sorry for calling it "rubble", but it is. Before you get that wrong, that was exactly what made it special. It was a natural formation that had a remarkable, curious structure. You cannot "remake" that. Should Old Faithful stop spewing, are you going to replace it with a pumping structure? In what way is that special? I could dig a hole right here and install a water pump.

What made this monument a monument was that it was a natural curiosity. Remaking it cheapens it.

Re:Leave the rubble alone

[argStyopa]

"...losing the mountain man was akin to filling in the Grand Canyon with a backhoe..."

Um no, you have your metaphor reversed.
Losing the mountain man would be as if the Grand Canyon somehow naturally filled in, and you DUG IT OUT with a backhoe. Would that be impressive at all? I think not.

I'm not sure if it comes from our increasingly transitory society and general rootlessness, but there seems to be this juvenile preoccupation with KEEPING THINGS THE SAME.

Look, the 'balancing rock' tips over, the 'old man of the mountain' sloughs off, the Appalachians wear away. It used to be that people were so busy staying alive and fending off sabretooths that they didn't care about this stuff, it just happened. Now, when we have a basically safe society people want it and the world around it to ossify and STOP changing - witness the efforts to 'fix' various languages the way they are today, or even this obsession with global climate change. Hell, one could even point to the Baby Boomers who keep pillaging our childhoods for movie fodder, desperate to recapture 'then' and bring it to now.

People: there is no conceivable future that doesn't include change. This pervasive change starts at the personal and extends to the climatological and geological. At some point you have to grow up and accept that it happens, adapt, and move on.