Your Daily Photo (With a Name Like Zucky's, You Know It's Probably a Bank Edition)

That's Santa Monica's version of a historic building. It was a crap diner when it was a diner, then there was a suspicious fire back in the early 90s, then it sat for more than a decade, finally a bank agreed to repurpose the structure, even though they couldn't tear it down.

Preservationism can be truly idiotic sometimes. Here's a PDF of the City Landmark Assessment Report.

Weep at the idiocy, and marvel at the petty bureaucratic interference into normal commercial land use.

First Republic Bank (that's their branch at the former Zucky's) was recently sold off by Bank of America to some private investors at fire sale prices. Doesn't have much to do with anything, other than to show what a great job all that TARP money is doing.

Another Ugly, Brutalist, I'm Sorry MODERNIST, Building Gets The Death It Deserves, NYT Critic Appalled, Naturally

Mid-century Modernism in architecture was mostly about the brutal, the inhuman, and the ugly. A squat, ugly, concrete monstrosity that I doubt is viewed with affection by any sane person will hopefully get the death it deserves.

The building threatened is admittedly less ugly than most of its contemporaries, but just cause it has been around awhile, doesn't mean it's worth preserving.

My rule of thumb for architecture, if it was built between 1960-1980, probably best to tear the sucker down. Some seriously ugly buildings were erected in that time frame (at least locally, in your area, your mileage may vary, but I doubt it).