I heard an example of this only a few days ago on a US TV show discussing the situation in Oklahoma after the huge tornado that ripped through there causing all that damage. It was reported that "The city is rebuilding" or here is another example after Hurricane Katrina. There are still vestiges of the usage you're talking about but it is no longer normal at all, but it's extremely well written about in books on the history of English and it's often toted as one of the more recent syntactic changes to take place in English (only been a couple of centuries old).
"My house is being built" used to be ridiculed and nearly all the major contemporaries writing about proper English uses basically spat on it as an unworthy horrible innovation. Then it took hold and became standard. I don't know what you mean about the 'ending' but it's just an interpretation of the tense. Basically, it had an unaccusative (i.e. subject undergoes action of verb) reading before a switch to only accepting an agentive reading was possible (when people started adding reflexive pronouns to correctly add in a correct object as well).
You might want to check this paper out.
If you're more like me and prefer podcasts then you can access one from this page, which details the history of the construction and all sorts of interesting details that relate to it.
"My house is being built" used to be ridiculed and nearly all the major contemporaries writing about proper English uses basically spat on it as an unworthy horrible innovation. Then it took hold and became standard. I don't know what you mean about the 'ending' but it's just an interpretation of the tense. Basically, it had an unaccusative (i.e. subject undergoes action of verb) reading before a switch to only accepting an agentive reading was possible (when people started adding reflexive pronouns to correctly add in a correct object as well).
You might want to check this paper out.
If you're more like me and prefer podcasts then you can access one from this page, which details the history of the construction and all sorts of interesting details that relate to it.