“Lewis Mumford wrote that, in a city, ‘Time becomes visible.’ Not, it would appear, in Raleigh, North Carolina, where a city board has just decided that a rather discreet and understated modern house might need to be torn down because it damages the ambience of a historic district, which is to say it destroys the illusion that the [Oakwood] neighborhood is a place in which time has stopped….
“It’s especially odd that this is happening here, since there is a lot of history for modern architecture in North Carolina, which actually has more significant modern houses than any state except California and New York…”
— From “Is This House Too Modern to Exist?” by Paul Goldberger in Vanity Fair (April 29)