Something old, something new.
Photos: Ed Wonsek courtesy The Architectural Team. Illustration: Stephanie Davidson
How to Drop a New Building on Top of an Old One
The two elements of this Boston condo tower were built more than a century apart. Does this old-new architectural combination hold up?
(This story is part of “Look at That Building,” a weekly Bloomberg CityLab series about everyday — and not-so-everyday — architecture. Read more from the series, and sign up to get the next story sent directly to your inbox.)
Façadectomy. That’s the tongue-in-cheek term for a widely unloved architectural compromise that developers sometimes strike: saving the historic veneer of an existing building while demolishing and replacing its internal structure. Façade preservation is especially popular in Washington, DC, where a federal cap on the height of buildings and the strength of the preservationist cause locally makes the case for adapting existing structures, even at great expense.