In a message , [log in to unmask] writes (about what kind of modernist
Landmarks we will have to preserve):

>  What if a bunch of the really ho hum to bad examples survive to become
>  "historic"?

But I note that we already have a bunch of 'ho hum to bad" Landmarks, and not
from the 1950's.  How about Cass Gilbert's Federal Courthouse in Foley Square
(1920's limestone skyscraper - a real yawn), the Beaux-Arts style Dorilton
apartment house on 71st and Broadway (an astoundingly bad building; so bad
it's good), Riverside Park (an absolutely ho-hum park design erroneously
branded as "Olmsted"), and the New-York Historical Society (perhaps the worst
monumental neo-Classic building in New York).  There are plenty of "pretty
awful" Landmarks, at least in New York.  (What have you got in Ar-Kansas?)

As I have watched them here, preservation battles rarely involve the quality
of the architecture - indeed, the buildings themselves are rarely looked at.
Rather, they involve memory, sentiment and not-in-my-backyard.

Christopher Gray