Time marches on, but it still gives me a pang of regret

I'm reading a book right now about the ever-changing roles of buildings, especially the famous greats of the world like the Parthenon and the Notre Dame. I'm barely into the book (The Secret Lives of Buildings: From the Ruins of the Parthenon to the Vegas Strip in Thirteen Stories), but reading about the deliberate alteration and destruction of gorgeous architecture still makes me sad. The author strives to convince us that the different purposes these buildings served throughout history, and the changes that were made to them to achieve those ends, lend a mysterious and interesting quality to them. We shouldn't sit and mope about the changes brought to buildings, but try to chronicle them and study what they say about the cultures of the times they "lived" through.

However, whether it's from the time and place I grew up or just an innate dislike of change, I can't help but be horrified at what people will do to buildings in the name of progress or power. Destroying the Parthenon is an old example. Bombing Dresden is a more recent one. Tearing down Dr. Dremo's hit very close to home - and left an open pit of mud that's been there for almost two years now. I know we can't just keep restoring decrepit buildings and expecting them to always be used for the same things forever and ever amen, but a little more respect would be nice.

I guess that's the whole point, though. People's dwellings and places of business, pleasure, and worship occupy very important places in their individual and communal psyches. Tear something down, change it, make it mean something new, and you have a hold over people in a very primal way, and one most of them won't consciously realize. Maybe there is something poetic in using a piece of land or a building to create such powerful feelings in people, and it's not a desecration to capitalize on that power, but an acknowledgment of the innate power of architecture.

Even so, formerly glorious works of architecture reduced to dirty tenements, or worse, rubble still make me a little sad.