[LouisVanDerWright]

Anyone who tears down solid brick pre war construction is an idiot sophist. There is no justification for it unless it's totally beyond repair (and that's VERY difficult to achieve). Simply put its short sighted. These buildings are indeed better than anything we can build today, not just because the craftsmanship, materials, and artistry have disappeared, but because they've already survived selection bias and stood the test of time. All of the shoddy buildings from that era are gone, only the really good ones still stand. You are not getting triple wythe Chicago common walls back. It's not happening in any financially practical way. You certainly aren't going to get that with hand molded face brick and carved limestone. I'm rebuilding one floor of facebrick like that with limestone arches and corbelled cornice and that small amount of masonry is $18,000 and I FOUND the limestone for free... And that's only tearing off and rebuilding a single wythe of brick, it would probably be $40k to rebuild all three layers.