As a general rule, the siding colour matches or, at least, coordinates with the colour of the garage door and front door in new homes. These two homes are the only ones I know where it is not just the colour but the actual siding that matches. It must have been an extra cost exterior accent offered by the subdivision developer thirty years ago in London.
The second home no longer has the rare matching features. The garage door was replaced with a dark grey one and the front entry door has been replaced with a black door. It matches the new, black eave troughs and the black matches nothing else. The once unique home has lost its uniqueness, unless you count the fact it now sports lots of uniquely unmatched colours and shades.
You may not agree but I feel the way we treat our built heritage is wrong. If it's old, it gets almost automatic respect. If its not old, too bad. Our art gallery, at the Forks of the Thames in downtown London, was originally blue to refect its location at the forks. Today the building is dark grey. I guess the architecturally designed building wasn't old enough to rate protection.
A lot of buildings do not age well. Features that gave them visual sparkle are lost with the passing of decades. It doesn't take many years to mess up the look of a structure. How to provide protection, guidance and assistance without making people get their knickers all in a knot over losing their god-given-right to mess up the look of a building is one tough question. (Often it comes down to cost.)
I've noticed that by the time a building is being argued over as a heritage structure, the building may already have been modified. If the building under discussion is still visually intact, the remainder of the streetscape may not be. Buildings do not exist in a vacuum. They shine best in the right environment. Think of Old Quebec. Now there is place with sparkle.
My Byron neighbourhood in London originally had some unique properties. One by one these places are being modified and updated out of existence.
2 comments:
I'm not sure. I do know that heritage buildings usually get that status for good reason. Protecting them is a different matter.
Newer buildings? That's a matter of time.
You are right but for me that is the problem. Plus, I'm not sure it was always thus. When my wife and I were in Slovenia we saw a monastery that is only standing today because it was treasured from the moment it was built. Why do we demand that a building survive for a century or so before we may lift, and just may, it's not definite, a finger to help it last for a second century? The London art gallery as it stands today is but a shadow of the building originality envisioned by Canadian architect Raymond Moriyama. It had a good reason to be cherished but it wasn't. It didn't even make it to forty. I've loved cities since I was just a little boy and one thing that struck me as a child was how neighbourhoods decayed. When a building with some very positive visual elements has them calously removed, I think of it as a form of decay. Right now, in London, our ancient Middlesex County Court House building has been sold to a local developer. No one knows what is in store for the building but its present ownership does not bode well for its future. Please check out the threatened building: https://www.pc.gc.ca/apps/dfhd/page_nhs_eng.aspx?id=415&fbclid=IwAR2zKUSpBIYCga1iPoziX-TAgtv9M86LQJYdifzfwP_UtJeGd1bPxf3MCBo
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