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Historic Preservation Mid-Century Modern New Orleans New York City

Sunday Morning Reading

by Michael R. Allen

Francine Stock’s excellent Regional Modernism reports that St. Louis is not the only city taking aim at the work of New Orleans modernist Charles Colbert. Colbert’s hometown wants to level the playing field: the Recovery School District wants to demolish Colbert’s Phyllis Wheatley Elementary School (1955) as well as Curtis & Davis’s Thomy Lafron Elementary School (1954), also a modern landmark.

The New York Times reports on one man’s grassroots effort to save Admiral Row in Brooklyn, a row of stately 19th century houses once occupied by the Navy Yard’s highest-ranking officers. Architect Scott Witter’s crusade involves a curious home-grown museum, Brooklyn’s Other Museum of Brooklyn, which has found one of the best uses for blue painter’s tape that I’ve seen.