I have always maintained that preservation is just a style - as opposed to
the holy act it is usually depicted to be - and that such is our style choice at
the moment, just as neo-Romanesque was the style of the 1880s.
Today I was walking down 22nd, Fifth to Sixth, and walked past some
restoration work on a 1910s loft building. They had, I noted, peeled off
the crappy old storefront off the front of the building, exposing the original
stonework, which had been jackhammered down to a flat surface in the 1960s to
accomodate the new storefront. Then I noticed that the
jackhammering looked very fresh. Then I noticed that it was very fresh.
Then I noticed that owner and architect had decided to put a new front on, and
had jackhammered the stonework down to a flat surface just in the last week or
so ... to put on a new hi-tech front.
c