As part of its 150th anniversary celebration, the American Institute of Architects released a poll this morning that purports to identify America’s 150 favorite works of American architecture. Being as list obsessed as any other red blooded American -- actually, I said that just to get the word American into this paragraph some more -- I’ve been combing through it.

I was surprised at first to see that so many of the people polled knew about architects' favorites who are less than household names, men like Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, he of the Nebraska State Capitol (67) and the Los Angeles Central Library (120). I understood better when I looked into how the list was drawn up. First the AIA interviewed around 2500 of its own members to get their choices, then whittled those nominees down to 248 buildings, bridges and monuments. After that, nearly 1800 randomly selected "civilians" were asked on line to choose from that list. They were shown pictures of the buildings they were being asked about, many of which they were probably seeing for the first time.

This is called aesthetic crowd control. Having architecture professionals make the initial cut keeps out the riff raff, like gas stations, diners shaped like decoy ducks and Colonial Williamsburg. Otherwise who knows? The Golden Arches (they don’t appear) might have been up there with the Golden Gate. (Number 5). As it is the masses still ranked the Bellagio Hotel and Casino (22) ahead of Monticello (27) and Falling Water (29). But Falling Water doesn’t have Dancing Fountains. And Monticello doesn’t have all night slots. At least not yet.

Top Related posts:
  1. Top 40 Magazine Covers of the Last 40 Years

Rest of the list for "Top 150 Works of Architecture" can be found here:

www.time-blog.com