>From Death in Holy Orders by P D James: > >"In his [Adam Dalgleish's] boyhood it had been fashionable to >despise Victorian architecture and he had viewed the house with a >proper if half-guilty disdain. The architect, probably >over-influenced by its original owner, had incorporated every >fashionable feature: high chimneys, oriel windows, a central cupola, >a southern tower, a castellated facade and an immense stone porch. >But now it seemed to him that the result was far less monstrously >discordant than it had seemed to the eye of youth and that the >architect had at least achieved a balance and a not unpleasing >proportion in his dramatic mixture of medieval romanticism, Gothic >Revival, and pretentious Victorian domesticity."
many things -- truth, beauty, the right of way on city streets -- are in the eye of the beholder. I was reading in the university city review a few months back how the episcopal cathedral on 38th and chestnut was renovated. and how preservationists were appalled. and how one art historian compared it to the taliban's destruction of centuries-old buddhist statues in afghanistan. but at the same time congregation member and uchs board member d l wormley thought the renovations were fabulous. said that preservation groups are entitled to their opinions, but we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one. ---- You are receiving this because you are subscribed to the list named "UnivCity." To unsubscribe or for archive information, see <http://www.purple.com/list.html>.
