Liberal Talk Radio

I’ve taken to referring to certain examples of America’s modern architecture as “Hitler’s Revenge.”  Many of the architects who reached prominence in the ’70s were either trained or heavily influenced by the Bauhaus, Walter Gropius’ early modern architecture school.  Like their compatriots in Germany’s scientific community, a good number of the most prominent Bauhaus architects had the foresight to escape from the Nazis.  Many came to America, where they found new lives and prospered, and gave us architectural beauties like Marcel Breuer’s Cleveland Trust Tower.

Ugh.  Don’t know about you, but that makes me think of every bad visit to a government office I’ve ever had.  [sidebar: there's a reason why this style is so prominent in the architecture of government buildings -- Bauhaus was, at its core, highly influenced by socialism, and the whole idea was to emphasize function over form, hopefully inspiring those poor souls condemned to work in such places to greater and greater feats of productivity.]

Cleveland’s government apparently feels the same way I do, and wants to tear this monstrosity down and replace it with a new office building.

Now, I know that the Cleveland Trust Tower represents Breuer’s only major work of this sort, and therefore has a great deal of importance to architectural historians.  But I put it to you, dear reader.  Must our current nostalgia for all things “past” extend to such lifeless and unlovable beasts as this?