Getting the Right Shade of Ochre: Valuation of a Building’s Historicity

This article examines the praise and controversy that a change in color to the façade of the Główny railway station in Wrocław, Poland, provoked during 2010–2012. Ethnographically following the definitions and makings of a “historical” color during the reconstruction process, it pinpoints two contrasting and conflicting ways of valuing and devaluing historicity: the “scientifically accurate” historicity versus the “familiar” one. Examining urban experts’ practices of valuating the historicity of this building, the valuation devices urban experts relied upon, and the versions of historicities they consequentially produced, this article shows that the “good” of historicity is not a given but is discovered and learned about by various actors during the very activities that constitute valuation.