One of the goals of the Laramie City Plan is to preserve the historical layering of the downtown business district. Rather than attempting to remove all traces of the passage of time, and return Laramie’s historic buildings to some frozen moment of the past, the objective is to maintain the city as a "real" place. Real places (as opposed to constructed ones) are in a constant state of evolution. Their buildings reflect that continual change. Layers of architectural and cultural history are allowed to accumulate: additions are made, facades are transformed, and the uses of buildings change. In many cities, the historic districts have been "restored" to original forms. Many people consider such restoration to be the ultimate destruction for historic buildings. In purging architecture of the accretions of time, an artificial form is created and the historicity of the building is lost. In the buildings of Laramie's downtown business district, the evolution of their forms and functions can continue to be read.
The debate over the restoration of a historical moment or the preservation of historical accretion is known as scrape versus anti-scrape. Scraping proceeds on the premise of "restoring every building to its own style" [Ref 20]. Critics have pointed out however, that "You cannot grind old bones new. You may repeat the outward form (though rarely with minute accuracy), but you cannot the material, the bedding and laying, and above all the tooling. There is an anachronism in every stone" [Ref 14] . By trying to recreate a historic moment that may never have existed in the first place, such anachronisms are lost and buildings can be transformed into sterile charades of their true form. The anti-scrape school would argue that you not only lose the past by stripping buildings of their layered history, but that you trivialize the present.