There's a fair number of buildings like that scattered around Cambridge. I did a deep dive into them when researching the regional history to teach a class on heritage protection. So many were unfortunately demolished, but there are many out there that underwent an unfortunate...makeover.
I know a lot of people on this forum scoff at the idea of heritage preservation for old buildings, but this is why it is done. Whether or not the building has historical or architectural significance often doesn't matter, it's better to preserve that rather than knock it down or worse, let someone put up an ugly facade over the top.
I know in 50 years people will look back at photos of the of the building at 16-20 Queen and wonder why the fuck we allowed it to get destroyed just to build some shitty generic condo skyscraper on top of it. Or worse, that mess of a condo at 21 Weber/151 Ontario. One commenter made the argument that preserving that old house is irrelevant because it doesn't have any significance, nor does the fact it's old and made of brick make it worth keeping in its current state and that "cities aren't museums". Hell yes they are. The built history of the places we inhabit is extremely important to preserve. There's more than enough space and truly shitty buildings you can demolish to make something new. Knocking a beautiful old hall like the one on Queen or the house on Ontario to put up some extremely ugly condo is obscene. So is wrapping an old building in a terrible facade like this one...or that ridiculous kitsch fake castle we had downtown for the Oktoberfest office haha. Thankfully that is gone and the original building is undergoing a renovation that both preserves a lot of the original architecture but also modernizes it in a tasteful way.
I know a lot of people on this forum scoff at the idea of heritage preservation for old buildings, but this is why it is done. Whether or not the building has historical or architectural significance often doesn't matter, it's better to preserve that rather than knock it down or worse, let someone put up an ugly facade over the top.
I know in 50 years people will look back at photos of the of the building at 16-20 Queen and wonder why the fuck we allowed it to get destroyed just to build some shitty generic condo skyscraper on top of it. Or worse, that mess of a condo at 21 Weber/151 Ontario. One commenter made the argument that preserving that old house is irrelevant because it doesn't have any significance, nor does the fact it's old and made of brick make it worth keeping in its current state and that "cities aren't museums". Hell yes they are. The built history of the places we inhabit is extremely important to preserve. There's more than enough space and truly shitty buildings you can demolish to make something new. Knocking a beautiful old hall like the one on Queen or the house on Ontario to put up some extremely ugly condo is obscene. So is wrapping an old building in a terrible facade like this one...or that ridiculous kitsch fake castle we had downtown for the Oktoberfest office haha. Thankfully that is gone and the original building is undergoing a renovation that both preserves a lot of the original architecture but also modernizes it in a tasteful way.