Historical Structures

"He builds a house
with his hands.
A hundred years go by,
It stands.
It tells you who he was;
A life goes fast.
But the work a mason does,
is made to last.
The work a mason does,
Its made to last."

"The Mason" from the musical "Working"; Music and Lyrics by Craig Carnelia

Pictured:  The Lynnhaven House, located on Wishart Road in Virginia Beach, VA, was  built about 1725 by the Thelaball Family. 

The cost, and thus added value, of preserving a structure is not the current price of its repair and maintenance.  The cost is, instead, the feeling when you look for it and it is gone.  It is the lost opportunity to savor a moment remembered from the past, to step where footsteps before you walked, to experience a feeling of the times that came before.  When a structure passes to the memory of the ages, that opportunity is lost forever, never again to be recovered.  And the future comes with no knowledge of those moments that made it a living place in time.