Like most people who live in Northern New England, I spend much of my time in or near buildings. Thus, I am an expert on architecture. I do not, however, have any training as an architect or critic. I write about architecture out of a sense of enthusiasm, engendered by my Manhattan-dwelling grandparents taking me around to see the great buildings of New York City when I was a kid. My earliest architectural memory is the destruction of Charles Follen McKim’s glorious Pennsylvania Station – something I found thrilling at age seven but which I am now avenging.

My guiding principle? I’ve noticed that most people who consider themselves at least somewhat culturally literate – i.e., people who are interested in music of whatever kind, film, books, perhaps even the visual arts – know little or nothing about architecture. Yet the buildings in our lives have a great capacity to enrich or oppress us. Thus I have a calling to bring my enthusiasm about architecture to bear on raising the general public’s consciousness about the built world.

As an enthusiastic lay person, I don’t pretend to have anything important to say about architecture from an academic or professional standpoint. Architects, or serious students of architecture, will likely find little here that they do not already know. Indeed, they may well discover errors of fact or judgment – in which case, please feel free to let me know.

Although I spent a decade as a fulltime journalist with Associated Press and Maine Times, I now make my living as an attorney. Writing about architecture is NOT my day job. This has the salutory effect of letting me follow my muse, regardless of the commercial or political implications. In December 2004 I received a Service Award from the Vermont Chapter of the American Institution of Architects, commending me for 'outstanding contributions to public understanding of architecture and its role in the environment.'  I should say that the admiration is not unrequited; the Vermont AIA chapter regularly distinguishes itself by transcending the status of mere trade organization and acting as an advocate for excellence and innovation in design.

Most of what is available here was originally published in the Valley News, AIAvt or the Forum (the newsletters of the Vermont and New Hampshire chapters of the American Institute of Architects), Seven Days or Architalx. The Valley News is our excellent local daily newspaper in the Upper Connecticut River Valley – it is a beacon of enlightenment with three great editors (Jim Fox, Anne Adams and Marty Frank) willing to let a lawyer appoint himself their architecture critic. Seven Days is an alternative newsweekly based in Burlington, Vermont – and, as befits a newspaper that is steeped in the arts, publisher/editors Pam Polston and Paula Routly are laudably serious about covering Vermont architecture, an objective with which I can, alas, provide only limited assistance. Architalx is an organization in Portland, Maine that is dedicated to promoting intelligent discourse about architecture, chiefly through its lecture series each spring. Writing for the Architalx publication is what launched my architecture writing career. My friend Ellen Belknap (of the distinguished Portland architecture firm SMRT) is responsible for making that happen, for which I am enduringly grateful.

Finally, I have to acknowledge that I am not the only bow-tie wearing attorney who writes about architecture in Northern New England. The true original is Philip Isaacson of Lewiston, Maine, whose byline appears in the Maine Sunday Telegram. Philip’s book, Round Buildings, Square Buildings, Buildings that Wriggle Like a Fish, is my favorite architectural treatise (even though – or, perhaps, especially because, he wrote it at a kids’ book).

My writing is heavily biased in favor of contemporary design. This is because I am such an ardent fan of historic preservation. Basically, today’s beloved landmarks – the worthy objects of our preservation struggles – did not get to be landmarks by imitating the historic buildings of their day. Rather, these nascent landmarks used the then-available technology, materials and design insights to build well. If we want to add to the trove of landmark buildings, we won’t do it by rebuilding the landmarks of yesteryear.

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