The overwhelming share of responsibility in the preservation field concerns the innumerable everyday local treasures that make up the greater wealth of any community’s architectural fabric. However, in a field of advocacy where the public often remains unfamiliar with the urgency or value of conserving our Modern heritage, there is an extraordinary amount to gain from focus on exceptional monuments and their uniquely accessible interest to the public. With the potential to catalyze a broader awareness and understanding of the modernist legacy, as the outsized example of Penn Station, among others, did for our 19th- and early 20th-century inheritance, such ambassadorial sites are a tremendous asset to the modern built environment.

 

Succeeding the 2000 publication The Modern Movement in Architecture: Selections from The Docomomo Registers, Docomomo International is working to produce an upcoming book that celebrates a new cross section of member nations’ most eminent Modern heritage sites. In developing the selection process for the United States, the Docomomo US Documentation Committee (led by Michelangelo Sabatino and Liz Waytkus) brought me on in June of 2023, to assist with the task of selecting 10 projects in the United States for the new publication that reflect a diverse array of eras, typologies, locations, and cultural backgrounds and to engage our state chapters in the process.

 

In narrowing our choices to the slim count required, we were not without reservation, the sample of 10 sites reducing the whole of American modern plurality to a glimpse that never felt quite adequate. Nevertheless, our final honor roll embodied as effective a balance of characteristic variety and landmark significance as we could hope for given the constraint. The final list of sites consists of: Miami Marine Stadium, The National Gallery East Building, The Terrace Plaza Hotel, Gateway Arch National Park, The Sea Ranch, The Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, S.R. Crown Hall, The TWA Flight Center, the Glass House, and St. John's Abbey.

 

The next challenge was to adequately address the immense historical, cultural, and technical significance of these projects within the condensed format of the chapter entries for publication and accompanying short-form inventory fiches for internal documentation. More than a stipulation for participating in the 2024 book, writing fiches for these high-profile landmarks aligned with efforts of the newly revived US Documentation Committee to stimulate and standardize the documentary aspect of Docomomo US’ mission. While the book is forthcoming, content from the new fiches has been added to existing register entries available on the Docomomo US site.

 

A few unique challenges arose in writing about this particular roster. While traditional emphasis on canons has been duly questioned among conscientious minds as of late, sites with such incalculable influence as Crown Hall or paradigmatic distinction as the TWA Flight Center, remain invaluable ciphers in revisiting the currents and culture of architectural practice in the most turbulent and transformative century of human history. It seemed negligent to omit mention of the arguably standalone, or at least exceedingly select, merit found among the 10 sites. To integrate such assertions within strictly documentary writing, however, was of course a delicate balance; particularly, within a condensed format more conducive to generalization than elaboration. The rhetoric had to be sufficiently assertive in addressing the thematic weight of the sites’ importance, but without inappropriately superlative language bordering on outright subjective claims.

 

Another detail, key to several sites but prone to reductive miscommunication if addressed irresponsibly, concerned matters of “high” and “low” or “popular” culture. While it would be unduly excessive, particularly in the sparing language of the short form fiche, to repeatedly disclaim such distinctions as transient and subjective, it seemed sufficient to broach the issue with language that could not be construed as endorsement.

 

Our selected sites owe the distinction of representing the United States not to any ivory tower favoritism but to their accessible, protagonistic, and didactic potential in telling the story of American modernism. Neither are they limited in importance to their most salient or iconic attributes. The captivating atmosphere of TWA not only epitomizes the liberation of form and space, it retains the verve of travel in a rapidly shrinking and ever more cosmopolitan world. The collection of architecture at Sea Ranch consists of more than a refined marriage of postmodernism with vernacular tradition; its fundamental spirit is rooted in the ecological movement and fits within America’s long tradition of pioneering experimental communities. The Terrace Plaza Hotel represents not only the extraordinary story of a pioneering woman architectbut is replete with her bold and original solutions from a time when Modernism in America was only beginning to find popular footing and conventional form.

 

Personally, it was a pleasure to work on inventory forms for these iconic sites as one of my first projects after graduating in 2023, and I’m sincerely grateful to Liz Waytkus and Michelangelo Sabatino for the opportunity. Seeing the pride and insight of nations around the world for their own modern heritage is something we can all look forward to in the upcoming Docomomo International publication.