Similar tragedies have been happening to houses and townhouses in Manhattan and Brooklyn for as long as I have been browsing Zillow. For whatever reason, I love to spend hours looking at real estate I can never afford. I look at either freestanding houses (vanishingly rare in Manhattan) or townhouses (still in short supply) and I set the "built before" date to either 1900, 1915, or 1850 according to my mood. I imagine that I have won the lottery and can choose one gorgeous historic property to buy. I've seen many stunners from the Federal era (my favorite) to Victorian and Edwardian. But I've also seen many that someone with more money than taste has already gutted and replaced the insides with the same glass staircases, glass walls, potted lights, cold looking industrial floors and walls, and they've removed all of the exquisite molding, cornices, wide plank flooring with a century and a half of patina, etc. And then they have the nerve to put it back on the market as "The perfect combination of history and modern comfort!"