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30th
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30th
In Stockholm, San Francisco, and Milan, as in Washington, builders of rapid transit systems hired architects and other designers to ensure not only that subways wouldn’t disgrace their homes but also that they would exemplify a modern city beautiful. In the late 1960s and early 1970s Toronto got jazzed up, and attempts were made to redesign prewar systems in Boston and Philadelphia. Washington took the notion of beauty the furthest, for only in Washington did a powerful federal agency have the mission of approving architectural plans without reference to cost. The Commission of Fine Arts may have gone too far in its intervention.
— Zachary Schrag, The Great Society Subway (2006), p. 93, describing how only in Washington does beauty trump cost under government bureaucracy. Weird.
