22 Times Buildings Were Renovated And Some Say They Now Look Worse Than They Were Before

I imagine that so many of the before buildings were in such bad condition that it was less expensive and safer to tear them down.

Many of these are not renovations but replacements. This "list" is no list. Totally useless.

A lot of the time, this is done because there's really no other choice. An old building is falling apart and otherwise unsafe/unusable as is. We don't t know the full stories, here. That said, turning something charming and comfortable into something Brutalist or Minimalist isn't usually a good idea. Especially when it's a result of gentrification driving out people in favor of new, wealthier, people.

I don't know any historcial facts or storys behind these bulidings, but people shuld take a look back and appericate the buliding thats aleready there.

A lot of the old buildings got bombed so that's a valid reason to replace them with was considered modern architecture. Sadly even today beautiful buildings get destroyed because a council wants to "step into the future" by building ghastly concrete towers. That's why a lot of cities are so terrible depressing. Grey pavement, grey buildings, black tarmac.

Need Memories and museum.

There's a real discrepancy between what architects are taught to find ''beautiful'', and what the people actually like

Let me just point out that not every building survives hundreds of years intact and very often they need to be demolished, and sometimes it happens that during wars buidings (and not just buildings) are destroyed. In those cases, noone creates an exact replica of something once built, but tries to come up with new modern ideas, not necessarily better of prettier, but that's the way it is.

In Russia this type of architecture is called "Stalinist." The horrific monster buildings he had built in Moscow are called "The Seven Ugly Sisters".

many of these are down to destruction during war...but too many horrible examples of bad taste

Photos a century old don't show what state the property was in when it was renovated or replaced. The Regency-era (early 1800s) buildings where the Birmingham City Library (built in the 1950s) had been bombed.

The title is incorrect: most of these buildings were destroyed by the war and replaced by new buildings, they weren't "renovated".

Going through the post I was like "what??!" in minion accent for every single one of them...

As Tabernus said - the WW2 is responsible for most of this devastations. We must also remember, that a lot of old buildings, especially housing, was not very nice to live in - lack of toilets, dark patios, narrow backstreets, lack of elevators - many of them looked nice but during '50 and '60 they were considered unlivable and obscure. This is why they were demolished and replaced with modernist blocks, even though some of the demolishings were controversial back then. In Poland we have a lot of very modern demolishings (the reason is corrupted governments allowing developers to destroy original urban structure), one of the most known is "renovation" of 14th century Dzialdowo Castle. They put styrofoam on it and then colours. Luckily it was stopped and reversed by the old monuments protection institution. See below: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/DR3tIdFbbUWaxCEasghRxhjHn1kgQXRn654uPjS1ogq2k79wbT9TyPuCJ9Vw6pXt5TIxY4_pjTyvr-SSsw

Now now. I'm sure if the author actually knew what renovation means, they would have chosen differently. But it is so hard to learn new vocabulary.

For a contributor that studied English linguistics their understanding of the word "Renovated" leave a lot to be desired.

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Sometimes this happens in reverse. The Chronicle Building in San Francisco (built in the 1890's), was damaged in the 1906 earthquake & rebuilt by 1915 (very close to it's 1890's appearance). It was modernized in 1962 with an aluminum & glass exterior, and then restored back to it's 1915 appearance in 2014.

This happens all over especially as real estate/rental costs increase. It is mostly not due to war damage or the inability to renovate. Often the facades of the 'new' buildings are put on top of, next to and over the old building in order to increase the space and, therefore, the $$$ made off each site. Several that I am very familiar with were supposed to be heritage sites - before someone with money and connections came in and snatched the property up.

It's not renovating if you replace old with new. Renovating means keeping at least some part of the old.

I loved the old buildings! Idk why anyone would want to get rid of them but it would probably be because to make more stuff :(

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Unanimously, ALL the Thens are far superior to the Nows. So sad to lose all that historic beauty.

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Hey . . . without things this bad to laugh at, I'd have no comedy at all. Tho' it gave a lot of people work and a paycheck, tells a lot about civilization that an eye sore can be so large and obvious in every day life. The way the world is going, after the next war these things will be gone and it will all begin again -- sharpen those pencils and be ready with a GREAT DESIGN. Good art costs the same as bad art -- START NOW!