What alchemy turns a bad old building into a good old building? Vernacular building historian J. B. Jackson insists that a form of death must precede rebirth: “There has to be that interval of neglect, there has to be discontinuity; it is religiously and artistically essential. That is what I mean when I refer to the necessity for ruins: ruins provide the incentive for restoration, and for a return to origins.”26 But busy cities seldom tolerate ruins, and wood ruins can’t survive the elements long. Jackson’s version of reincarnation works best on masonry buildings in the countryside or in old
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