“Today, you couldn’t tear down a McKim, Mead & White building,” said Broderick. “The preservationists wouldn’t let you.” But the firm’s long tenure at the top of the architecture field wasn’t always guaranteed.

“They were the Ralph Lauren, the Rolls-Royce of architecture,” Broderick said. “Then the modern movement started, and boy did they crash. From 1925, when white walls and European modernism began its takeover of architecture, McKim, Mead & White were poison to the profession.”

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