A row of banners lines the main hallway at the Youngstown Cultural Arts Center.

When you visit the center you will probably stop to get a closer look-to gaze across the decades into the faces of generations of local school children. Silk-screened on each banner is a class photograph from a different decade, all bearing witness to the building's earlier incarnation as Cooper Elementary School (it was first called Youngstown School, after the original name of the neighborhood around the steel mill). Down the hallway in a glass case rests a collection of "artifacts" from Cooper School's past: A snapshot from a school event, a ribbon from field day, an old report card.

But, these items would not seem so remarkable were they not sitting in the school building itself.

My longtime interest in historic preservation led me to get involved in the community campaign to renovate and reuse old Cooper School and the effort to ensure that West Seattle High School was restored rather than replaced.

Herald readers may also know that I am currently working to broker a compromise between the leadership of downtown's First United Methodist Church and preservation-minded local developers that could save the 1908 sanctuary from the wrecking ball. My involvement in these three historic preservation efforts comes from my belief that historic buildings serve as a community touchstone-tangible icons of the present generation's connection to the past.

Children are fascinated to learn that the steps they climb to reach the old Cooper School's front door are the same ones their parents or grandparents navigated on their way to elementary school many years ago. This physical connection helps them identify with the building as a part of their shared family and community history.

And, just as the First United Methodist Church provides a familiar, humanizing presence in the midst of the outsized steel-and-glass buildings that surround it, the Youngstown Cultural Arts Center serves as a physical representation of the larger Delridge neighborhood's ongoing revival.

Seattle's original school buildings were constructed in prominent locations in the communities they served, and the 1989 closure of Cooper School downgraded this gateway to the Delridge neighborhood into a darkened, dusty pile of bricks. In that sense, the campaign led by the Delridge Neighborhoods Development Association (DNDA) to renovate and reopen the school was a symbolic effort to encourage reinvestment in the neighborhood.

Now the Youngstown Cultural Arts Center is a neighborhood showpiece. The building's $12 million makeover has added performance spaces, a recording studio and a gallery, plus office space for arts groups and live/work studios for 36 artists. The combination of the center and the playfields across Delridge Way add energy to the streetscape-and the Delridge neighborhood again possesses an impressive gateway.

But, historic preservation can be a hard concept to sell. Put part of the blame on our throw-away culture. Finances also factor into the equation: building new structures is generally an easier and cheaper option than historic restoration and adaptive reuse, if seldom a better solution for the community.

No neighborhood is just bricks and mortar, but historic structures add greatly to a community's identity. They give residents a sense of permanence and serve as a reminder of our shared history. They also remind us that a neighborhood can only be created through the contributions of many people-past, present, and future.