Speaking of Caruso and Americana

NY Observer review on architect critic Ada Louise Huxtable's latest book, On Architecture: Collected Reflections on a Century of Change: "If there’s one piece in this collection that distills Ms. Huxtable’s sensibility, it’s “The Way It Never Was,” her assault on the prefab mallification of America’s public spaces. South Street Seaport in New York, Faneuil Hall Marketplace in Boston, Disneyland and Colonial Williamsburg—all create theme-park versions of history divorced from any honest relationship with the past. Ms. Huxtable writes: “They deny imperfections, alterations and accommodations; they wipe out all the incidents of life and change. The worn stone, the chafed corner, the threshold low and uneven from many feet, the marks on walls and windows that carry the presence and message of remembered eyes and hands...There is nothing left of the journey from there to here.."[NY Observer]