Playing with mud Historical District- Granada

    There was a time in the 1960’s when urban renewal in the United States was all the craze. Urban renewal caused structures that had been built hundreds of years ago to be razed, and, in their place, modern buildings went up with modern materials and modern ideas about what people were supposed to live in. In Granada, in the Historical District, there are strict rules against changing old. Any modifications have to be approved, and the outsides of all buildings must remain intact and true to the century they were built. Many of these buildings have walls of adobe, one of man’s oldest construction materials. Walking the Historical District, old homes, warehouses and businesses are being gutted, repaired, and brought into our century. Piles of sand and bags of cement are close at hand as day laborers mix and fill wheelbarrows with plaster for men with trowels and hawks. Adobe walls are repaired when they can be. In this district of Granada, things seem to look as they always have, because the codes say that it will be so. Old, with our help, doesn’t have to go gently into the good night. Since Adam was created out of mud, and it was good enough for our Maker, why would we want to tear down mud buildings made out of the same stuff as we are?