PRESERVING GOOD ARCHITECTURE—OUTSIDE AND INSIDE (COMMENT).

PRESERVING GOOD ARCHITECTURE—OUTSIDE AND INSIDE (COMMENT). Lee Bryant commented here on my post about my five favorite buildings and expressed consternation at the tearing down of Richmond’s Old City Hall (and its replacement by the equivalent of a “high-rise DMV”). Tastes change and technology changes, and some buildings can’t be saved. I posted here on the debate about preserving interiors. It’s remarkable that the beautiful interior of the Empire State building has been restored. The Burnham Hotel in Chicago chose to preserve the old office fittings in the Reliance Building—the transoms and the doors— so that I am reminded of the “shady detective agencies” that the old Empire State Building interior was supposed to evoke. Here is a photo. Kids, I posted here about how when we were first married, we almost chose to live in the first conversion of a cast iron building to apartments (there was a problem with timing and a problem with curtains for the 16 foot high windows). That building was a pioneer in the preserving of the outside of a building by adapting it a new use, with dramatic changes being made in the interior. Here is an article on the “magnificent emporium” that was the old James McCreery & Co. Dry Goods store, and is now a beautiful apartment building.