Refinding Old Faces

I see that more than six years ago, I posted about the Heights Theater, which was lovingly restored by its current owner/operators. 

Yesterday, one of my local BlueSky parasocial chums, Bob Moffitt, posted about the theater with a couple of those same photos, but he also included a photo of what the theater looked like before the renovation and return to what the exterior originally looked like:

I don't remember seeing that photo before, but maybe I just blocked it out of my mind! I have no idea what kind of work they had to do to restore that to this:

It reminds me of the many brick commercial buildings across this country that were wrapped in aluminum or other nasty materials in the 1950s and ’60s to make them look "more up-to-date." 

In my own neighborhood, there was a small brick bank with palladian windows that was designed by the same architect as the Carnegie library across the street. They were almost mirror images, though the bank was smaller. The library is still there, and the end toward the street looks like this currently:

The bank was refaced and "updated" in the early ’60s to look like this:

The building was torn down in the 1980s, not surprisingly, since there was no reason to keep it. 

Its location is still an empty lot today, while the library was put on the National Register of Historic Places and is a beloved local landmark.