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Form Over Function

All the neighbors could do was stand there and watch. They say it was no accident the wreckers picked the Friday before the 4th of July when hardly anybody was around to take down the Parmelee House in Kenilworth, Ill.

This century-old house was demolished to make way for a so-called "Mc Mansion, CBS News Sunday Morning Correspondent Martha Teichner reports.

With no provision in place for protecting significant historical homes here, developers can pretty much do what they want.

Once a building's gone, it's gone.

Whether we're talking about tear-downs in Kenilworth, the sacrifice of one historic building to save another in St. Louis or, in New York City, the fight over this odd little modernist museum that's not even 50-years-old, we're talking about tough, bruising struggles, right-to- life battles over architecture.

A community, like an individual can determine what it wants to be," Richard Moe, president of the National Trust For Historic Preservation, says.

"Kenilworth, by not having made a choice to protect these structures is now suffering the consequences," Moe adds. "It's too bad. I hope it's not too late."

Forty-five houses have been torn down in Kenilworth since 1993. That may not sound like many, but there are only 820 houses in the whole village.

On Lake Michigan, Kenilworth, is one of Chicago's most desirable suburbs. It was founded in 1889. The houses were built by the cutting edge architects of the day, among them Frank Lloyd Wright.

"It was one of the first planned communities in the country and we're very proud of that," Tolbert Chisum says. Chisum is the president of the Kenilworth village board.

"Candidly, we're probably five years behind," Chisum adds.

For years, Kenilworth talked about coming up with a comprehensive plan, but didn't do it.

"We want to maintain our suburban community the way that it's been for many, many years," Chisum says. "At the same time, you have to deal with the issues of personal property rights.

Tell that to 20-year Kenilworth residents Cameel Halim and his daughter Nefrette.

"They took out very large trees," Nefrette says. Asked how he feels when he looks at the missing trees, Cameel replies bluntly, "Sad and angry."

There is a certain irony about the public service announcement made by the National Trust For Historic Preservation, considering what happened in St. Louis. The group gave its consent to the demolition, yes demolition, of the historic, landmarked Century Building. Why? You guessed it: so a parking garage could be built in its place. As part of a $77 million jigsaw puzzle of a package to save the historic, landmarked old post office across the street.

"I look at buildings as sculpture and it just rips me up to think they would be tearing down that beautiful thing down," artist Alan Brunettin says.

Brunettin and television producer Margie Newman live around the corner from the Century building.

"Every night. Every night I was out there with a still camera and a video camera. Documented the whole thing," Brunettin says.

Newman adds, "It was like watching a murder. It was horrible. It really was horrible. To see and also to know that the ugly politics that had led up to it, and that, in my mind the bad guys had won for all the wrong reasons. It hurt."

That's one side of the story. Here's the other.

"Sometimes the whole picture needs to be looked at. St. Louis had a very shabby-looking living room," explains developer Steven Stogel.

Stogel and fellow developer Mark Schnuck were approached by St. Louis business leaders and politicians ready to raise the money to restore the old post office, vacant since 2000.

"It was very obvious that this was the jewel," Schnuck says.

Each floor of the post office covers about an acre.

"When General Sherman dedicated the building in 1884, he described it as an act of magnificence," Stogel says.

It was also a federal courthouse.

"Some very significant cases were decided in this courtroom," Stogel adds, citing the break-up of Standard Oil and the teapot dome case.

So when the Missouri state court of appeals agreed to move in if the building were restored, it seemed perfect. But the court and the other anchor tenant, Webster University, demanded adjacent parking, meaning the Century Building site. Existing parking lots nearby weren't good enough.

"The net effect has been to revitalize the old post office and to revitalize at least ten buildings in the surrounding area," Moe says.

But for the National Trust, the bottom line was what it regards as the greater good: a ripple strategy that now drives much of its preservation activity.

Moe adds, "Regrettably, we lost the Century. We fought hard for it, with the city, with the developer, with the tenants of the building, and we lost the argument."

The National Trust is still hoping to win the argument over 2 Columbus Circle in New York City.

It's become the poster child for the preservation battle that's shaping up over what The New York Times calls "baby boomers": post-WWII modernist buildings. Examples are Lincoln Center and the United Nations.

Edward Durrell Stone designed 2 Columbus Circle as A&P magnate Huntington Hartford's personal art museum. It has been one of those buildings New Yorkers love to hate ever since it was built in 1964.

Vacant for seven years, the city sold 2 Columbus Circle to the Museum of Arts and Design, which intends to transform it inside and out.

Holly Hotchner, the museum's director, describes the space as windowless and nasty and a place where Central Park can't be seen except out tiny, Swiss cheese windows.

Teichner notes that renovation to the museum must take place both on the inside and outside. "My answer to that is the building failed after five years when it opened originally because it was so deadly as a visitor experience," Hotchner tells Teichner. "To turn this into a truly public space we do have to change it very, very dramatically."

Robert A.M. Stern, dean of the Yale School of Architecture, opposes change to the museum. "It's going to be known as the -- unless we have a miracle -- the museum that trashed Ed Stone's most important New York building.

Stern is just one of the high-power New York names furious that the city refuses to consider protecting 2 Columbus Circle as is.

"You don't kill your old grandma just because of funny breath and bad teeth. And you don't tear buildings down because they don't exactly conform to who you are. That's the whole point."

With the average price of office space close to $500 per square foot in New York City -- more than double the national average -- the temptation to take down the glass boxes of the 1950s and 60s and supersize is obvious, unless you're Aby Rosen..

"Here's a late Warhol, 1985. Says, 'Somebody wants your apartment buildings.' I thought it was appropriate," Rosen explains as he gives Teichner a tour of his art collection.

Rosen and a partner own and manage something like 6 million square feet of prime New York real estate. But Rosen says buying two modernist masterpieces, Lever House and the Seagram Building, was one of the most thrilling things he's ever done.

"We all think that things that are a couple-hundred-years-old need to be protected. It's a wake-up call for all of us that suddenly something that's been only 20-, 30- or 40-years-old might be worthwhile to be protected as well," Rosen says.

Lever House, built in 1952, was designed by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. The Seagram Building, completed in 1958, was designed by Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson.

In the same way canvas is timeless, so is the glass, so is the stainless steel and the façade of this building.

Rosen considers the two buildings as much a part of his art collection as part of his collection of buildings.

But, that begs the question: how does a structure manage to survive the changes in fashion and taste not to mention the politics long enough to be appreciated? The answer: sometimes it's just luck.

Who could have predicted that the High Line, a long-abandoned elevated railroad that meanders for a mile-and-a-half around and even through Manhattan's industrial past -- a strictly no-trespassing, off-limits to the public kind of place -- would find itself about to be reborn as a $100 million park, like nothing else in the United States.

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