Rubble: Unearthing the History of Demolition. This item is unavailable.Rubble: Unearthing the History of Demolition

Rubble rides the wrecking ball through key episodes in the world of demolition. Stretching over more than five hundred years of razing and toppling, this story looks back to London's Great Fire of 1666, where self-deputized wreckers artfully blew houses apart with barrels of gunpowder to halt the furious blaze, and spotlights the advent of dynamite - courtesy of demolition's patron saint, Alfred Nobel - that would later fuel epochal feats of unbuilding such as the implosion of the infamous Pruitt-Igoe housing complex in St. Louis.
Rubble also delves beyond these bravura blasts to survey the world-jarring invention of the wrecking ball; the oddly stirring ruin of New York's old Pennsylvania Station, that potent symbol of the wrecker run amok; and the ever busy bulldozers in places as diverse as Detroit, Berlin, and the British countryside.
Rubble is also an exploration of what happens when buildings fall, when monuments topple into memory, and when "destructive creativity" tears down to build again. It unearths the world of demolition for the first time and, along the way, throws a penetrating light on the role that destruction must play in our lives as a necessary prelude to renewal.

Jeff Byles has written feature articles and critical reviews about architecture, urbanism, and culture for the New York Times, the Village Voice, Metropolis, NY Arts, and other publications. He lives in New York City.