Catesby Leigh

Monuments have always been intended to embody the past and elevate the spirit, but the new $700-million National September 11 Memorial and Museum in Lower Manhattan is a downer in more ways than one. The same goes for the dismal architectural ensemble taking shape around it.The original World Trade . . . . Continue Reading »

The distinguished architectural historian Henry Hope Reed died May 1 at age ninety-seven. More than any cultural figure of his generation, Reed perpetuated an awareness of the classical tradition’s enduring role as the indispensable means for improving the human habitat … Continue Reading »

The statue of a slender young John the Baptist, seated on a rock with a lamb at his side, only a little over three feet tall and carved about four hundred years ago by a sculptor known mainly to scholars, has a lot to tell us about the spiritual dimension of a classically informed culture of design . . . . Continue Reading »

It’s no secret that the state of contemporary religious architecture in America is bad. Really bad. The American idea of inevitable progress runs into a brick wall when we compare the quality of our architectural output a century ago with the stuff we are building now. Every . . . . Continue Reading »