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how did this happen? Who is at fault? Will we ever see this again?

It was actively destroyed. First in the name of Progress, then in the name of Progressives.

Will we see it again?

I suspect not. I lament the tearing down of beautiful old buildings, especially those made of stone, but don't forget that such architecture is wildly expensive, tends to become wildly maintenance intensive, generally very inefficient, and very vulnerable to fire and seismic movement. Sometimes progress really is progress.

Yes, I'd love to see more classical style architecture, but I'm also not one to find making a modern, code-compliant ver$$$ion of it a good expenditure of my hard-earned tax money. For a major monument, to commemorate something for all time? Yeah, maybe. But a neo-classical marble city hall for a city of 50,000 that costs $200,000,000? Hell no.

The simple fact is that labor and materials (and life- all those old grand construction jobs had a list of dead workers) just aren't as cheap as they once were.

Now if someone wants to expend private funds to make something beautiful... power to them.

This really isn't about tearing down old, beautiful building, the examples first used were NEVER built to last; though some have!

One problem with old buildings, is that it often costs far more to update them ( for example, a lot of original electrified, beautiful old buildings in NYC, had the "latest" form of electricity, which was DC current, then the next innovation was AC/DC current.

Into the 1950s, building with AC/DC current could buy some things that would accommodate that kind of ancient electricity; however, they cost more and fewer and fewer such items were made until NONE were.

Sadly, into the mid 20th century, new buildings were now FUGLY beyond words and it has gotten MUCH worse as time passed. Stark, bleak, sterile, unimaginative architecture is depressing and in reality, instead of looking "modern", more and more resemble USSR 1940s barracks.

And as fare as "traditions" are concerned, you can thank the RED DIAPER BABIES of the Hippie Movement for brainwashing a lot of over privileged, pampered, Dr. Spock raised babies and the Dem party, who all helped to destroy civility, good manners, dressing appropriately, morality of EVERY sort, and being patriotic.