The Critic Who Saved The New York Public Library

Wall Street Journal architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable’s was “one of the first comprehensive critiques to appear in the mainstream media, and it didn’t so much run as detonate. At a stroke it shifted the ground of the debate from the library’s “What” to the critics’ “Why?”—galvanizing the opposition and establishing itself as the touchstone for all subsequent discussions of the issue, whatever side you were on.”