Fire

I really loved this house on the corner of Johnson and Chestnut Streets. The fire was earlier this week (fire photo swiped from a friend's livejournal), and was probably caused by faulty wiring. All the residents were safely evacuated, and the owner has insurance, so I guess the main loss is architectural. I wish I had a better photo of it before the fire (pre-fire photo swiped from assessor's website), but the house still had its original wood decorative siding. Now it's going to end up covered in vinyl siding, like the light gray house next to it (which is its twin).

I really really hate vinyl siding (and aluminum, etc.) on old houses. The original wood siding on Victorian houses is usually very decorative and beautiful, while the modern siding is hopelessly generic, mimicking clapboard siding more typical of an entirely different style of architecture. There are some great WWI-era houses over near Washington Park that originally had stucco siding, but are now sheathed in vinyl and don't look anywhere near as cute as they did with the stucco. I know I'm a hopeless architecture geek, but when houses have their original siding (maintained), they look so much better than they do with modern siding added.