SERTIFIED

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Thank you for destroying me, my reputation, and my friends.

Your report of the very informal (and, I thought, private) get-together at Winthrop House about ten days ago has only just reached me. I was rather surprised to find your reporter there, taking notes at what I assumed to be an off-the-record conversation. However, since he seemed very bright and pleasant. I merely asked to be permitted to check any "quotes" he may have taken down. Alas, he forgot to check.

Still, perhaps it is not too late to set the record straight:

1. I can't imagine having said that "Leverett House is Completely crazy--it doesn't relate to anything except perhaps something in Queens or Long Island." My recollection is that we discussed the ornamentation on the new buildings, particularly the decorative touches around the roofs, and I made some such reference to those details. As a complex of buildings, I think Leverett House is anything but "completely crazy;" it might have been preferable to use some bricks to relate the new buildings to the older Houses nearby, and so I said so.

2. The references to Dean Sert's adherence to the "Mediterranean tradition" sounds terribly chauvinistic as reported by you. My point was ... that the honorable and very ancient tradition of the Mediterranean basin had influenced Sert, and that the choice of these materials, colors, and forms was therefore not an arbitrary act, designed merely to shock...

3. My key point, however, was one made by D.Nikolaus Pevsner in a speech about a year ago--i.e. that good architecture is produced not only by good architects, but by good architects working together with good clients. Dr. Pevsner pointed out that prior to the Industrial Revolution, well-to-do clients had the time to inform themselves on matters of architecture; since that time, clients have been too busy. That is why it seemed important to me that the Harvard Corporation avail itself of the services of disinterested professional consultants, just as the State Department has done in its programs for the construction of new embassies abroad.

For the record, I think very highly of Dean Sert's work and the work of the others whom I am supposed to have "ripped," according to your headline writer. I like some of their buildings better than others, but I am certain that the intention behind all of their buildings is of the highest order. Peter Blake   Managing Editor, "Architectural Forum"