July 7, 2005

The 2006 World Monuments Fund (WMF) Watch List, announced in June, includes ancient and modern structures alike. Every two years the WMF assembles a panel of experts to identify 100 imperiled and irreplaceable cultural and architectural sites around the world.

This year, events in Iraq prompted the inclusion of the entire country. "Looters work night and day to fuel an international art market hungry for antiquities," notes the WMF designation, which also cites recent damage to Iraq's ancient Ziggurat at Ur and the 9th century Spiral Minaret at Samarra. The designation enables work by the WMF, the Iraq State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, the Getty Conservation Institute, UNESCO, and other groups to evaluate the damage and plan for long-term conservation.

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Also, for the first time, the Watch List includes buildings from the second half of the 20th Century. Edward Durrell Stone's 1965 Two Columbus Circle in New York, Richard Neutra's 1963 Cyclorama Center at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and Oscar Neimeyer's 1963 International Fairground in Tripoli, Lebanon, are all slated for radical renovation or demolition by the end of 2005.

"All three sites," says World Monuments Fund President Bonnie Burnham, "have systematically not been recognized by their owners or the community as significant architectural icons, and lack a designation to protect them." The preservation of Postwar Modernism, Burnham notes, is compromised by the influence of, "taste rather than some kind of objective standard. Aesthetic issues are very subjective at such a short remove in time." Considering there have been no public hearings on the preservation of Two Columbus Circle, Burnam adds, "A lot of New Yorkers are wondering whether the Landmarks Commission is doing the best job it could, and whether its process is sufficiently independent of the political process."

Other sites on the list include Frank Lloyd Wright's Ennis Brown House in California, Shackleton's Expedition Hut in Antarctica, the Haji Piyada Mosque in Afghanistan, Ernest Hemingway's former home at Finca Vigia, Cuba, and the 1936 Helsinki-Malmi airport terminal in Finland.

Thomas De Monchaux