The Building That Isn’t There, cont.

New York Times, October 13, 2003.

Oh, they had thrown a regular fit before, hadn’t they, they being the critics and the architecture scholars and the rest of the International Style crowd, over his American Embassy building in New Delhi. But once they got through their yawping and muttering over the marble, the gold, the water garden, the maharajah grillwork, etc., the name Edward Durell Stone was bigger than ever. It stood for imagination, daring, aloofness from the whole cult-programmed bunch of them.

They might — in fact, they surely would — throw another fit over his new museum for Huntington Hartford . . . the tons of white marble, the precious wood veneers, the gold rugs, the red carpets, etc. At the same time, they would also surely have to deprogram themselves long enough to give credit for genius where genius deserved it. They weren’t crazy, after all . . .

Online:
New York Times