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Appalled by this razing of the nation's architectural heritage, ARCHITECTURAL FORUM this month teamed up with the eleven-year-old National Trust for Historic Preservation and Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art to spotlight some outstanding pieces of architecture worth saving. Examples were found in almost every section of the U.S., turned up in out-of-the-way places, took surprising forms (including a jail). Items: ¶ The East Front of the U.S. Capitol (TIME, June u, 1956 et seq.), the traditional backdrop for presidential inaugurations. Architects and historians (keep it as it is) are lined up against Speaker Sam Rayburn and the Congress' Commission for the Extension of the Capitol (remodel it). Current status: inactive, with Capitol Architect J. George Stewart authorized to begin alterations, but no contracts let. ¶ Walnut Wood, the n 2-year-old Gothic Revival mansion in Bridgeport, Conn. (TIME, Oct. 21), designed by igth century Architect Alexander Jackson Davis. It became a hot political issue in last year's mayoralty race, apparently won a stay of execution when Democratic candidate Samuel J. Tedesco won on a save-the-mansion ticket, was doomed again by Winner Tedesco when backers failed to raise the $75,000-$100,000 required for its preservation. Status: in doubt, with demolition temporarily staved off by a Superior Court injunction. ¶ Pittsburgh's Allegheny County Jail, part of the massive Romanesque courthouse complex that famed 19th century Architect Henry Hobson Richardson thought would be judged his finest building. ("If they honor me for the pygmy buildings I have already done, what will they say when Pittsburgh is finished?'') Its heavy, grey-pink granite masonry now soot-blackened, the jail is under attack by builders who would like to replace it with an office building, is as fiercely defended by a "Save the Jail" group, including Architecture Historian Henry Russell Hitchcock, who calls it "a treasure of which Pittsburgh is the custodian." Status: besieged but still standing. ¶ Chicago's Auditorium Building, the first major work of Chicago Pioneers Adler and Sullivan, which served as the setting for Republican Candidate Benjamin Harrison's nomination for the presidency in 1888, and is ranked by Frank Lloyd Wright as "the greatest room for music and opera in the worldbar none." Closed as a theater since 1940. used for three years as a servicemen's bowling alley, the 4,200-seat house is now part of Roosevelt University, is empty, flaking and slowly deteriorating. Status: good chance of survival, with nearly every top U.S. architect, museum director and historian enrolled in a fund-raising and rehabilitation campaign.
