Update: The buildings behind these façades are now complete. I featured their transformation in this post about the Cupples Warehouses in St. Louis.

Washington, DC is the location of a very strange phenomenon: the façadetomy. Essentially what happens is that developers stopped tearing down the entire building and leave the façade hanging precipitously in space on a steel framework. The picture below illustrates the absurd level that they sometimes reach to save the façade.

None of these views currently exist; the buildings have been completed and now the 19th century facades form the front of one large blocky building, formed by the strict height limits in Washington, DC. These two last pictures are taken in the actual alley that John Wilkes Booth fled down after shooting President Lincoln in the nearby Ford’s Theatre.