I just read a nice backgrounder at BBC on architectural preservation, and it set me to thinking.
The problem with the old Penn Station in New York City was that it had two entirely separate functions, only one of which was aligned with its owners' interests. It was grand architecture, the loss of which saddens, but it was also a place of business.
Now, a business has a legal responsibility to make money for its owners by satisfying the needs of its customers by providing the company's goods and/or services, without undue waste of the owners' resources. This says to me that a place of business should make itself pleasant chiefly by being efficient at receiving customers, serving them, and sending them on their way when they are satisfied. It should also be an environment that doesn't harm or hinder the employees in the performance of their duties. In a word: businesslike. Grand architecture is sort of the opposite of businesslike -- I'll come back to that presently. Corporations really shouldn't indulge in grand architecture, because inevitably will come the day when they decide that, for its cost, grand architecture is underproductive and will have to go. That day will cost them dearly. No; a space well-structured for the needs of the business and the customers, which doesn't demand notice, is in my opinion the best sort of commercial architecture.
On the other hand, the function of civic government is to realize those commonly agreed aspects of that which makes civic life worth living. Aside from law and order, streets and sewers, schools, a city should provide unstructured spaces which serve to refresh the spirit: parks, plazas and, yes, grand-architectural shelters where one can go singly or in company to ignore external efficiency and more efficiently make use of one's self.
To put it simply: grand public places should be owned by the public, as theirs is the interest which those places serve.
