ARCHITECTURE GAP

I wasn’t terribly surprised to find that among the 12 images of great architecture on your July 19 cover there was not one image of a building in Los Angeles (“Pillars of the 20th Century,” by Nicolai Ouroussoff). The city and its planners have never truly valued architectural history here.

But to find not one letter from the public in the following week’s Calendar did surprise me. Clearly the public doesn’t care either. Perhaps that’s why we have so many mini-malls.

CRAIG L. BYRD

Los Angeles

The depiction of Boris Iofan’s design for the Palace of the Soviets reminded me of another architectural behemoth. Without prompting, I showed it to several others, and they had the same reaction--except for the colossal statue of Lenin, it is a dead ringer for the Tower of Babel as it is commonly depicted in religious art.

What an appropriate symbol it would have been for the doomed Soviet government! I wonder if, either consciously or unconsciously, Iofan planned this resemblance.

STEVE MILLS

Glendale