When you have too many people living in the past, you get the mess San Francisco is in with NIMBYs blocking market rate housing projects, declaring rundown laundromats as “historical landmarks” and fights over shadows.
These days economic architecture reigns, and probably for good reason. It's no longer affordable to have ornate brick-work or any kind of embellishment. Interiors are functional and efficient, we've done away with unnecessary mouldings and again dispensed with ornate detail in general.
I wonder how the economics of the property market used to bear the additional cost of all that extra work? Were people just more proud of what they made, or was labour just so incredibly cheap that making a building beautiful made little difference to the bottom line?