Ken Burns's World Trade Center Documentary

Writing in TV Guide, a magazine I rarely read (my uncle happened to have an extra copy), Chris Smith reviewed tonight's scheduled PBS broadcast of Ric Burns's World Trade Center documentary. In his review, Smith called the World Trade Center "the Anna Nicole Smith of urban architecture; not the most beautiful thing in America, maybe, but certainly one of the biggest." A rather crude analogy, no? A better analogy might be in order, and I think I have one. I've come to see the Twin Towers as having been to architecture what the Eagles have been to rock and roll. Like the Eagles, the towers were seventies icons that started off slowly and eventually became commercially successful but were hated so much by professional critics that the critics even refused to acknowledge them. I'm not being facetious, either. When Rutgers professor Angus Kress Gillespie was researching his book about the World Trade Center (published long before September 11, 2001), he brought up the subject at an architectural conference, and a critic took him aside to explain that it was something that was just not discussed.

Anyway, the events of two years earlier have ensured that the Twin Towers will be discussed by just about everyone for years, maybe decades, to come, and Burns's film on PBS tonight - it's three hours long - promises to be a fascinating part of the conversation. It explores what the World Trade Center stood for, how it was built, and what it inspired - and how it will be viewed in history. Please be sure to tune in. As they say, check local listings.