My column on April 13, 2004, was titled “A Hero’s Welcome.”

Earlier on March 24, I, along with a few hundred others, had a chance to listen to a lecture and slide show by Bernd Foerster, a preservation pioneer and early supporter of Troy’s historic architecture from the 1960s.

Foerster was the former dean and professor of RPI’s School of Architecture. He delivered his lecture at the First United Presbyterian Church on Fifth Avenue. The event was organized by TAP (Troy Architectural Practice) and supported by RPI and Siena College.

I admired Foerster since I was a teen, and my barely holding-together (signed copy to me) of his “Architecture Worth Saving (Rensselaer County)” is a prized possession. This 200-plus-page book, published in 1965, promoted restoring, not destroying, historic structures way before it became the preservationist’s mantra.

Shortly before that, I showed his documentary “What Do You Tear Down Next?” at the Ilium Roundtable, a 1964 film that showed the start of the destruction of hundreds of downtown buildings in Troy and Schenectady. This film made you wonder what local officials were thinking as historic building after historic building was unceremoniously razed and replaced by – well, usually nothing.

The mantra was, “Troy has forgotten what it was and not yet........

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