Appreciation …

… Remembering Henry Hope Reed by Francis Morrone – The Municipal Art Society of New York. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

I have collected many stories of Henry and the things he said on walking tours. He had a definite point of view. To some he was a “fuddy duddy.” His scorn for Modernist architecture made him not a few enemies. In fact, that scorn made even MAS uneasy. It’s why, in order to balance the walking tours’ point of view, MAS enlisted the aid of a MoMA intern named Ada Louise Huxtable to put together some Modernist-friendly walking tours. (As readers of this blog well know, Ada Louise Huxtable died this past January, at the age of 91. The twin deaths of Ada Louise Huxtable and Henry Hope Reed bring down the curtain on preservation’s greatest generation.) Henry later shifted his tours to the Museum of the City of New York, but he remained involved with MAS and would even lead MAS tours again.