In a war of words, the best wielder of them tends to win. So I’m hesitant to disagree with Tom Wolfe, one of the century’s best journalists and a great word wielder. Nevertheless, it bears saying that Wolfe’s entertaining and lengthy two-part screed in The New York Times on Sunday and Monday was largely rubbish. (See http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/12/opinion/12W OLF.html and http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/13/opinion/13W OLF.html ).

It’s not that I mind Wolfe’s defense of the diminutive, Edward Durell Stone-designed Huntington Hartford building at Columbus Circle, which the newly renamed Museum of Arts and Design proposes to substantially remodel into its home. It’s true I have never liked this building.

Being windowless, it looked like an unfriendly fortress to me. Wolfe’s piece caused me to see it differently. Perhaps it is worth saving.

What I reject in Wolfe’s tale is his meandering history of 20th century architecture, in which he encapsulates his defense of the Stone building.

Wolfe’s rhetoric and logic are as tortured as that of the architectural theorists he decries. Modernist architecture, whether you like it or not, was largely about fully using new technology, such as steelframe construction, in more and better ways, rather than blindly imitating past architectural styles.

Wolfe’s narrative about architects seeking to hide buildings from ‘the dominant regime’ and seeking to avoid bourgeois materials such as marble is simply not that true. Sure, a few theorists might have spouted off such talk, but such motivations were hardly the major thrust behind modernism, much less the architectural styles that followed.

What people like in architecture is notoriously personal and unpredictable. I myself am no fan of the 1950s-era glass and concrete box, preferring the more curvy buildings that new computer technology make possible. Whatever one’s taste, new times and new technology provide the means for new architecture, and by and large, this is a plus, not a minus.

–Alex Marshall