Vanishing Landmarks

The figures are sobering. Of the many thousands of buildings across Canada that were raised before the Second World War, a considerable proportion are demolished, gutted, or quietly left to crumble with every passing year. The rate at which recognizably historic structures disappear from the streetscape shows little sign of slowing. Advocates of architectural preservation, a movement that has lately acquired real institutional weight, contend that safeguarding even a single threatened landmark can anchor a community's sense of its own past. A handful of municipalities have already enacted sweeping protective by-laws, and planners are still cautiously assessing the consequences. The genuinely thorny question now confronting officials is how far public authorities ought reasonably to go in shielding aging buildings from the relentless pressures of a rapidly redeveloping city.