THE PROVIDENCE FRUIT & PRODUCE Warehouse has a date with the wrecking ball. And it’s about time.

Even though the produce warehouse is almost 80 years old, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2005, it does not seem, really, to qualify for protection under either of the two prevailing theories of preservation. The theory applicable to the warehouse is that buildings and structures should be saved because they are examples, or artifacts, of the city’s commercial past.

Andrew Dickerman

A view last week of the Providence Fruit & Produce Terminal.

The warehouse might qualify under that theory if a way could be found to reuse it profitably without seriously altering its original design. In that case, it would remain plug ugly but its preservation would record “the way we were” — the way food was once distributed to markets in this region.

In recent years I’ve seen several proposals to reuse the warehouse as a residential or a retail complex, but all had contemplated changes in appearance that would have made preservation for archival purposes moot. Nobody has ever suggested preserving its interior. So if its exterior were no longer going to look as it did when it was still in use, then what good would it be as a historical artifact? Not much.

The other prevailing theory of preservation, one that doesn’t apply to the produce warehouse, is that of preserving beauty. This motive applies very poorly in this case because the warehouse is simply not beautiful. Beauty should be considered a prevailing theory not because it carries weight among professional preservationists (it has not for decades) but because it makes so much sense.

The theory of preservation that prevailed when the preservation movement was getting started was to save actual sites of our history — important buildings, houses where historical figures lived or were born, houses designed by famous architects, and districts of historic significance. For a period in the 1950s and ’60s, beauty prevailed as the motive for preservation because people believed their own neighborhoods were threatened by modern architecture.

They transformed preservationism from an antiquarian hobby to a mass movement. Much of what people feared might be lost is better protected now. Professional preservationists have had to broaden their scope to sustain a purpose for their organizations. The focus has therefore shifted to protecting structures most people don’t care as much about.

The archival motivation for preservation can be applied to almost any structure, some more usefully than others. In recent years, old barns and mills with a sturdy allure have been protected for archival reasons, but preservationists have increasingly focused on saving utilitarian structures of more dubious aesthetic value — such as old gas stations and the produce warehouse. If you can’t demolish a building like the produce warehouse, what can you demolish? Yet, to construct new buildings without threatening more and more green space requires demolishing existing buildings. Better they be ugly ones.

The archival motive, whatever its merits, has the grand demerit of distracting preservationists from the beauty motive. The desire to protect beauty and to promote more of it is strongly felt and widely understood, through education or intuition. It may be the most direct way to foster civic virtue in the public. It should be revived as the main theory of preservation for professionals in the field (including the next director of the Providence Preservation Society).

Blocking the demolition of the produce warehouse would have deprived owner Carpionato Properties of the opportunity to build something new and beautiful in its place. (Carpionato may not deserve such an opportunity if it tried illegally to dodge a promise to preserve it.) Of course, nowadays it is not reasonable to assume that any new building will be attractive. All the more reason, then, to revive the motive of beauty in preservation. Focusing attention on beautiful examples of historic architecture can instruct the public and the professionals to value the traditional principles of civic design that have been lost, and to encourage efforts to revive their practice.

Civic life blood can be pumped from the heart of Providence — its downtown — to its neediest neighborhoods. Revitalizing Olneyville via the Promenade District is part of this strategy. Tough times make such efforts more difficult, and adding beauty to the tool box of developers could make it easier to raise public support for the steps ahead. So don’t let progress trip over misguided preservation, embodied by efforts to save the Fruit & Produce Warehouse.

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Corrections: The Procaccianti Group gets a rose back. It was not responsible for the Dunkin Donut Center’s renovation, as mistakenly reported in last week’s column, “Roses and roseberries for 2007.”

Also, Duncan Pendlebury’s last name need not be spelled with a “berry,” as it was in the berry same column, to be the archetypal architect’s name.

David Brussat is a member of The Journal’s editorial board ( dbrussat@projo.com).