In 1908 the Parisian architect Augustin Adolphe-Rey visited New York and gave
a New York Times reporter quite an earful, as presented in an article"New
York as Seen by a French Architect":

Of the 1898 Park Row Building skyscraper, at 15 Park Row, "one side of it is
an entirely bare wall - what difference does it make how the other sides are
treated?"
He hated rooftop water tanks, saying of the Wanamaker building at 10th &
Broadway "the building is a good one - but the tanks take one's attention
away from it entirely!"
He thought the Gorham Building at 36th and Fifth "is the most beautiful
business building in the world" and observed generally "If there were ...
more attention paid by architects to the style of the contiguous buidlings
New York would be a much more beautiful place than it is." [He would have
been a friend of Kevin's!]

For M. Rey the Plaza Hotel was "too much like ice cream.  The design is good
- it has good proportion - but I don't like the color." And the Harmonie Club
at 4 East 60th was "a perfect building... that facade, if it were capable of
interpretation in music, would make a perfect cord!"

Finally he denounced the new Penn Station: "Why is it built like a Roman
temple?  What is the use of all those columns on a railroad station. ...a
great mistake, a splendid white stupidity.  As a library it would be good.
Why, the only way to make it appropriate is to have the railroad company see
that every ticket in it is printered in Latin and order than only Latin be
spoken by every employee!"

Sign me,  Loco Parentis