And they’re sure trying.
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Yeah, not to tar all, but the ethical considerations in the building sector just make me think of Donald Trump, that unethical, amoral, salacious joke of a president.
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Typical property prices in Vancouver, though the current spat between China and Canada over the Huawei CFO’s arrest may finally cool the single family dwelling market somewhat.
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Sf planning commission is pretty insane, but they will often accommodate the ultra wealthy to some degree, so this asshole really didn’t need to tear the thing down. And anyone buying a heritage house knows this when they buy one. Usually the commission requires the heritage facade to remain but let you go to town with anything not visible from the street. There are many heritage Victorians that are ultra-contemporary once you open the front door. This house might be more restricted though, I’m not sure.
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Another ploy is to get a renovation permit and then , oops, we tore out everything that needed renovating and there was nothing left.
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Regardless of beauty, it was wrong to teardown the house. I sort of think the result should be forfeiture of the property plus rebuild cost. That seems draconian, but rebuilding a house out of modern materials to the standards of the original seems like a win for the developer.
Some questions are: Should all of a famous architects and designers houses be saved? Are they all worth saving? If something is deemed historical 20 or 50 years ago, can we revisit the need to have it saved? Can we adopt a modern version of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus where subtle or behind the scene changes can be made to a location more livable- as, unless it is a museum piece frozen in time.
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“You can have all the rules in the world, but if you don’t enforce them, the rules are worthless.”
Words to live by.
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Something similar happened in my neighborhood - a non-residential historic building got torn down and replaced by a larger building that included a section that looked like the original building (except not really). Though I’m unclear if that was a similar punishment for an unapproved demolition, or if the developer got the city to agree to a tear-down if they promised to recreate the building (which they really didn’t do; the new building is a cheap, pale shadow of what it was).
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What good is a facsimile if the original has already been destroyed?
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That’s what they tried…but just leaving one corner standing didn’t fool anyone.
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I’d like to sue some companies to do the same thing to my childhood.
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Part of aging with grace is accepting that your childhood isn’t sacrosanct.
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And nothing has happened to ‘ruin’ anyone’s childhood retroactively; it’s just that it happens to now be part of the the past.
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Yeah, that’s what I’m wondering too. He’s going to have to comply with modern building codes. Guess what… it’s going to be a different place. I wonder if a two-level hosue is even allowed to be built now without an elevator, and it will need solar panels, and probably a million other things I’m not thinking of. What a mess! It will still be valuable but it’s giong to be a loss for this buyer.
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I don’t know how the US equivalent of UK Listing works (is it National Monuments, or is that the next tier up?) but my understanding is that here each building is judged on its merits; the architect would be taken into account, but wouldn’t be the sole criterion.
My sister happens to own a cottage designed by the same architect as the Dorchester Hotel in London; the cottage itself isn’t remarkable, but is Listed because of the architect.
Yes, but it’s a big deal; application to central government via the statutory bodies rather than a local official.
Depends what it’s Listed for. If it’s solely for the exterior, modifying the inside would probably get approval from the local planning office without hesitation, but if the interior is the important part, don’t even look at it funny. 
I frequently see a Listed facade propped up by scaffolding whilst an entirely new building is constructed behind.
Sometimes the rules are treated… creatively. This is an example local to me. The Listed part is the roadside facade of the grey-roofed retail unit plus the low building under the orange ‘U’-shaped one.
Here’s another; apparently it’s good enough to meet the regulation!
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That is…most bizarre.
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Indeed. My aversion to all the aspects of my childhood being “remade” is not due to anything sacrosanct about it - it’s just the sheer fucking bald-faced laziness of “hey let’s take everything once popular and reboot/remake it” versus actually creating something original. It’s not like it retroactively makes the things of the past worst (most of the time at least) but it’s certainly not doing anything special either.
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Hard to see why the old facade was even worth preserving; pretty typical/boring very late Victorian.
aren’t those the historical machines for testing if a president was the best or not?
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