The good old days weren’t so good

Preservationists treat pre-1950 architecture as “historic” and irreplaceable, while often criticizing new building on a variety of aesthetic grounds. In his new book The Unfinished Metropolis, Benjamin Schneider points out that today’s historic buildings weren’t so popular when they were new either. He cites a 19th-c. architecture critic who described Victorian row houses as “nightmares of an architect’s brain… piled out without rhyme or reason- restless, turreted, loaded up with meaningless detail.” (page 51).