Smash It: Who Cares?

Martin Filler

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Time Honored: A Global View of Architectural Conservation
by John H. Stubbs
Wiley, 434 pp., $85.00

Architectural Conservation in Europe and the Americas
by John H. Stubbs and Emily G. Makaš
Wiley, 729 pp., $110.00

Saving Wright: The Freeman House and the Preservation of Meaning, Materials, and Modernity
by Jeffrey M. Chusid
Norton, 256 pp., $55.00

Today we take for granted the imperative to protect architectural treasures for the edification and enjoyment of our descendants. But in 1963 an outcry from architectural historians, picket lines of outraged citizens, and a fiery New York Times editorial were not enough to save Penn Station from being plundered to make way for Charles Luckman’s irredeemably cheap-looking Madison Square Garden of 1963–1968. Yet from that senseless act of urban self-mutilation quickly arose a more protective attitude toward venerable buildings.

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