A Brief History of Buildings That Are No Longer There

The photographs in this book show empty lots, parking structures, modern buildings on historic sites, and in several cases simply a wall with a different shade of paint where a door used to be. There are no photographs of the buildings themselves. The Institute considered including archival images and decided against it.

The decision is explained in the introduction: 'A photograph of a building that no longer exists is a different thing from a photograph of the place where a building no longer exists. We are interested in the second type of photograph. The first type of photograph tells you what was there. The second type of photograph tells you what it means that it is not.'

The book covers two hundred and twelve buildings across forty countries. It does not argue that any of them should have been preserved. It simply documents the fact that they were there and then they were not, and notes what replaced them, and leaves the reader to draw whatever conclusions seem appropriate.

Harold says this is the book he recommends most often to people who are sad, and also to people who are not sad but probably should be.