The wholesale renovation of Chicago’s historic Soldier Field (home of the NFL’s Bears) has been roundly panned by football fans and architecture critics alike since it was completed last year, and now, the federal government has weighed in with its own verdict on the ultra-modernist redesign, stripping the stadium of its place on the list of National Historic Landmarks. The decision “sent a message that resounds far beyond Chicago’s aesthetically mangled lakefront football stadium: The government will react — and strongly — if avant-garde architects and arrogant politicians sack the nation’s most extraordinary places.”