What Lost Architecture Should We Rebuild?

The East Wing of the White House seems less than essential, but what should we reconstruct?

Central Europe in 2025 is full of magnificent buildings designed centuries ago that were blown to smithereens in 1939-1945, but have since been carefully rebuilt.

Even in cities that didn’t suffer much in WWII like Prague, there are numerous Ship of Theseus questions about whether some 400 or 700 year old building really is the same building today as the original after its various fires, structural collapses, poorly-conceived renovations, lootings, and other misadventures that architectural flesh is heir to.

But, perhaps surprisingly, highbrow Central Europeans have largely put aside such interesting philosophical conundrums and charged ahead to reconstruct many of their grandest buildings.

What about in America? What lost treasures should we reconstruct?

We don’t often have the Nazis or Soviets to blame for the destruction of our lost architecture, but we’ve done a fair amount of damage ourselves to our best works.

For example, Chester and Nell Arthur commissioned Louis Comfort Tiffany to redecorate the White House in 1881, with the most jaw-droppingly gorgeous feature being Tiffany’s glass screen in the entrance hall.

In 1902, Teddy Roosevelt junked the by-then-unfashionable Tiffany glasswork. All across the country, huge numbers of Tiffany lamps and the like were tossed into the rubbish in the early 20th Century because people were sick of them and wanted something new.

Now, of course, we miss them.

The most written-about lost building in America is probably …

Paywall here.