I got this reference question in email from some faculty of mine today:

[We] are looking for an article, I think from the atlantic, more than
a few years ago. It’s called ‘beautiful ruins’, or something like that,
about looking at ruins not as the remains of something else, but as
something with aesthetic value in themselves.

If you could locate it and shoot it to us electronically, it’d be an immense
help.

After banging on EBSCO Academic Search Premier for a while, I sent ‘em back this:

The closest I have found is the attached review of Christopher Woodward’s “In Ruins” from the New Republic:

Pleasing Decay., By: Gurstein, Rochelle, New Republic, 00286583, 2/23/2004, Vol. 230, Issue 6

With the full text attached.

And got back from them:

Thanks Steve. This is it.

Heh.