In this recent New York Sun article, Julia Vitullo-Martin says that a lot of mediocre modernist buildings are about to become landmarked in Manhattan:

Since landmarking has the effect of rigidifying current use and preventing evolutionary change, New Yorkers need to pay close attention to this debate.

The Municipal Art Society’s watch list of 30 Under 30 includes, for example, the egregious Marriott Marquis Hotel designed by John Portman, the immense IBM Building designed by Edward Larrabee Barnes, and Philip Johnson’s cathedral-size AT&T/Sony Building. Do New Yorkers really want these structures pre-empting all future uses? Are we confident enough of their merit to protect them into perpetuity? Will Walter Gropius’s MetLife Building, looming over Grand Central Terminal, be next on the list of buildings to be protected?

The problem is that modernist architects espoused a good number of truly bad ideas, which are far more important than their familiar contempt for color and ornamentation. At its most fundamental, modernist architecture intended to break with the past, defy the streetscape, and rend the urban fabric. In urging that buildings be landmarked, preservationists are not merely advancing the benefits of modernism’s clean, uncluttered lines. They argue the benefits of what are often modernism’s depredations, such as the superblock.

Of course, some of the debate will be settled by deterioration. As a Yale architectural historian, Vincent Scully, pointed out in 1999, modernists embraced an aesthetic of impermanence — with the result that most of their buildings will not survive because they were poorly built. Mies van der Rohe may have defined architecture as the will of an epoch translated into space, but much of that will is crumbling beneath its shoddy materials.

Many of the finest modernist buildings have already been landmarked. Joseph’s Urban’s sublime New School for Social Research, for example, on West 12th Street, is protected by an individual designation. Mayer, Whittlesley & Glass’s Butterfield House, across the street, is protected by the overarching of the Greenwich Village Historic District. The best-known modernist buildings were designated when they became eligible. Gordon Bunshaft’s 1952 Lever House on Park Avenue, for example, was designated a landmark in 1983, a year after eligibility.

The prospect of Gropius's Met Life building (formerly known for years as the Pan Am building) being landmarked is a bit depressing though. It's an enormous battleship of a building, totally dominates nearby Grand Central Station, and divides Park Avenue in half. It was one of Gropius's last buildings, but it's also the building that New Yorkers love to hate, and probably wouldn't miss if they were assured of something better in its place--or an unobstructed view down Park ave.