In response to "Preservation Rules and the Brewery": You tell us that local preservationist Jean France stated, with regard to "really important buildings," that in England or Europe, "They wouldn't think of tearing them down. They put up with the inconvenience and the discomfort, because that's how they think."

A cursory look at London, Paris, or Brussels, to list just three European cities of some importance, proves that the opposite is true. These three western capitals have immensely rich architectural histories, but a huge amount of their Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque architecture was torn down over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries alone (and I am not alluding to the destruction wrought by wars or the elements).

In the 19th century, the Medieval walls surrounding certain cities made way for broad boulevards - witness Florence and Brussels. On the orders of the Emperor Napoleon III, Baron Haussmann cut huge swaths through densely built Paris to make way for the wonderful boulevards we so love, which avenues and their buildings are indeed safer and cleaner than what stood there before.

Victor Horta's Maison du Peuple in Brussels? Gone. Les Halles in Paris? Torn down in 1971 and replaced by a ghastly mall. Florence's old ghetto? Erased to make way for the bombastic Piazza della Repubblica. The list goes on and on.

In order to remain relevant, cities need to keep on moving along, and much of the old needs to make way for the new. Hard, but fully informed and historically responsible choices need to be made. Venice and Bruges are exceptionally beautiful and important places, but these cities remain firmly anchored in the past.

Brussels, which was a lovely city before World War II, has lost a great deal of its charm as a result of the economic boom of the 50's and 60's, which led to the evisceration of entire neighborhoods and the erection of too much appallingly bad architecture, only to be surpassed by the architectural calamities that keep on popping up near the heart of the city ever since it became the seat of the European Union.

I was once told that students in urbanism were urged to travel across great distances to Brussels to learn what they should never do. Having said this, I would like to note that Brussels happily still has lovely streets, avenues, and squares with wonderful or oddly fascinating architecture, despite the many entrepreneurs so lacking in taste and historical perspective who vandalized the capital of Belgium.

However, one should not always trust what one sees. In the 80's, when I was a student in Brussels, fa�ades of select old buildings of distinction were preserved, and everything behind these was destroyed to make place for new, supposedly more practical interiors (which were too often of far lesser distinction than what was obliterated).� Although it was claimed otherwise, that does not constitute architectural preservation.

MICHAEL AMY

Amy is an art history professor at RIT.