This meme gets repeated often, but it just isn’t true. In many cases, the best stuff is the stuff that got destroyed. Penn Station, the Singer Building, etc., etc. Conversely, a lot of the great stuff from times were designed for pretty modest purposes. In the town I grew up in there were a bunch of old factory buildings that were more beautiful than 98% of the dreck that modern architecture pumps out.
Well, you’re right that it’s not only good buildings that are preserved, but as long as anybody, anywhere preserves a building because they like it, good buildings will be disproportionately saved. I certainly don’t know the rate of that, though, and you’re right that a lot of shitty buildings stick around too.
I guess it would be more accurate to say that it’s primarily the good buildings of yore that anyone is aware of, outside of architecture history. Other than living in an area full of shitty old buildings (Hello, San Francisco!), most people’s exposure to old architecture is going to be through pictures or tours, which tend not to dwell on craptactular buildings. Can we agree on that much?
If you are saying that the most celebrated and noticed old buildings are also usually the best, then I agree.
But that doesn’t really have any bearing on the original claim, which is that old buildings “appear” better because only the good ones got saved. I maintain, and I think the evidence bears it out, that much of the stuff that wasn’t saved because it was"the best" is still really good - things that weren’t designed to be architectural showpieces like prisons, factories, or tenements are still considered to be beautiful by people like me. Meanwhile some of the stuff that WAS “the best” - buildings that was consciously designed for beauty (I cited Penn Station and the Singer Building, but I could easily come up with a million more examples: Hartford Public High School, the old Waldorf Astoria, the San Jose Hall of Records) are gone.
So to summarize, I’m not sure I can agree with you becuase even the supposedly non-descript old buildings that were designed for mostly utilitarian purposes ARE buildings that many of us admire - things like the Lowell Mills or Mansfield Prison. I think the reason that many of us prefer buildings from the past is because, on the whole, buildings from the past were more beautiful than the buildings of today - not because we only selectively remember the good ones or only see the best examples.
