Walter Kerr, the drama critic for The New York Herald Tribune and The New York Times from the 1950s through the 1980s, once said that the difference between a reviewer and a critic is that the former assumes his reader has not seen or read or heard the work in question and the latter assumes he has. In this sense, those who comment for daily newspapers on theater, art, books, or films are almost invariably reviewers, not critics. Such reviewers have long been staples of the popular press. Architectural commentary, however, has not been nearly such a staple.

In the nineteenth century, Montgomery Schuyler wrote discerning commentary for The New York World and The New York Times, as well as for specialized publications. In the next century, The New Yorker magazine made up somewhat for the lack of architectural commentary at the dailies by having first George Chappell and then Lewis Mumford write the “Skyline& ...

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