These photos awake in me an enormous sadness, longing, a sort of nostalgia wrought of beauty in decay. I’m reminded of those grand old houses on Maple View Pl in Anacostia, all beautiful and tragic, perched up on that hill, perennially hosting the junkie gentry; of the Victorian urban manors around Cooper Circle in Ledroit Park, regal and peeling and full of faded aspiration; of the crumbling, creaky Italianate I grew up in, pancake yellow with brown trim, full of love but wanting for maintenance. What is more devastating than all of the wasted promise in these aged masterpieces, is the failure at inspiration in so many of the new things we’re building in this city. That every new condo on U st is less moving, less full of neglect-defying grandeur and whimsy than these old ghosts, that is sad.