The violent contempt of modernist architects for the
classical revival can be understood intellectually, but no
longer can it be appreciated psychologically. One
understands why Louis Sullivan, for example, despised the
academic classicism of modern France as “the virus of a
culture, snobbish and alien to the land,” which disrupted
the indigenous architectural realism that he had helped
create. Or why a Beaux-Arts essay such as Charles McKim’s
Pennsylvania Station might be thought of as “bogus antique.”
But it is impossible for us to see the demolition of that
station in 1963 as anything other than an impoverishment of
our civilization, an impression instantly renewed by a brief
visit to its successor.

Only in the past generation has it become possible to look
at the classical revival—the half century between the
Chicago Columbian Exhibition in 1893 and the completion of
the Jefferson Memorial in 1943—from a position of genuine
critical detachment. The leading architects have become the
subject of renewed popular and scholarly interest,
especially those who left highly visible monuments. This
includes not solely McKim Mead & White (Boston Public
Library and Columbia University), but Carrère & Hastings
(New York Public Library), Daniel Burnham (Union Station,
Washington, D.C.), and Cass Gilbert (U.S. Supreme
Court). It is remarkable, however, that Warren and Wetmore
have waited so long to receive their due, for their Grand
Central Terminal explains with unusual clarity the success of
Beaux-Arts classicism in solving the architectural problems
of modern life, both the practical