Criteria in the hinterlands are much the same, except add POLITICS.  What IS
considerably different here is the supply of monumental buildings.  That
shortage dictates that many of our landmarks are much smaller and simpler
(in fact many are vernacular).  Since I enjoy vernacular architecture this
is a plus for me.  In addition, with fewer monumental public and commercial
buildings, we have been harder hit by redevelopment.

Tom Gray

-----Original Message-----
From: Met History [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, September 21, 1999 9:41 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Masonry Cleaning, good and bad examples.


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