we were much better at stopping bad things than creating good things, but we were far ahead of other metropolitan areas, especially when you consider our resources. One big difference between being the critic of the Chronicle and being one for a great newspaper like The New York Times is that New York is really unmanageable. Here, it was possible to have an effect—to stop the freeways and keep Fort Mason and the Presidio from being ruined. How were you edited at the Chronicle?
Newhall read my things. So did the city guys, the assistant managing editors, and if they couldn’t understand something, I’d rewrite it. They were good stand-ins for the public. Newhall encouraged me to be controversial and shielded me from the owners. When the architect of Pier 39, Sandy Walker, sued me for $2 million, the Chronicle defended me. Actually, Bill German, then the executive editor, told me that if I lost, the paper would pay half! The suit was thrown out, but Walker appealed. When I learned that the case was back in court, I asked Chronicle executive Phelps Dewey why I hadn’t been told. "We want to win this thing," he replied. When you’re trying to stop something, you have to go straight for the jugular. Most critics today don’t have that instinct— but neither do their papers. I’m vain enough to think that I could have stopped the whole Bay Bridge fiasco if I hadn’t been ill. What influenced you as a critic?
My years in France led me to see art and architecture as expressions of great civilizations. I always cared about heightening the public’s sensibility. I wrote for the educated public, but I wanted everyone else to be able to understand my articles and enjoy them. I saw my role as achieving better design for the whole region. I might have been the only architecture critic in this period who looked at cities at a larger scale—even as large as, say, the Bay Area’s seashore, which became a national park. Today, you can walk on public land along the ocean for 50 miles north and south of San Francisco. That wouldn’t have happened without people fighting for it, and stopping things like the nuclear reactor that PG&E wanted to put on Bodega Head. I played a big part in these initiatives, writing articles
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