Hard to believe, but it's been nearly a year since La Ronda, the Mizner designed Mansion outside of Philadelphia, met with the wrecking ball. The day it was torn down proved that although the historic preservation movement has come so far in the past 20 years, we still have a long way to go. Obviously a lot of people in this country still don't value the importance of our heritage.
The great start of historic preservation in the US may have been the destruction of Penn Station in 1963, which even Jackie Kennedy couldn't save. Many organizations (and bloggers!) brought much needed attention to the fate of La Ronda but it was sadly too late. However, the bright spot is that it again brought our architectural heritage into the media spotlight and I hope none of us loose this passion we had for this place. As La Ronda had fallen into obscurity, hopefully other great works will come to light before it is too late.
A great article summing up the whole debacle is in the October 2010 issue of Architectural Digest, written by Jay Pridmore with fantastic photographs by Craig Kuhner. Hopefully this fantastic issue (the best I've seen in years) heralds the direction of the magazine under its' new editor. I'll leave you with the strong closing statement from the article, a quote from Lori Salganikoff:"People have to think past their personal ownership of resources because there are some things that ought to outlive them"
Ditto, Lori.
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