Reviling the Buildings of Our Parents' Prime

In "To Be or Not to Be", Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative interim director Steve Rugare addresses the general aversion to the styles of two 1970's Cleveland structures and suggests the impact of the loss of these buildings doomed to demolition (published in the January/February 2007 edition of angle: a journal of arts + culture):

"...These generational tensions are probably necessary and psychologically healthy, and they’re great for us historians, who have a steady supply of new material ripe for revisionist interpretation. But there is collateral damage. The history of American cities is full of “lost” buildings that had few or no defenders when they were demolished just a few decades after their construction. Right now in Cleveland two buildings are poised to suffer a similar fate. Marcel Breuer’s Cleveland Trust Tower (1970) is likely to be removed as part of the project to build a consolidated Cuyahoga County office complex on its site at East 9th and Euclid. Just down the street, Cleveland State University has set January 2008 as the demolition date for Don Hisaka’s Student Center (1974). Before these relatively young buildings are gone, it’s more than an academic exercise to ask why this is happening and what we’ll lose in the process..."

Refer to the previous Design Rag post for the reasons I am in favor of saving the Cleveland Trust Tower.