I’m baffled by people who dismiss whole categories of things. Two decades ago, I was summoned to the office of House & Garden’s new editor in chief, Anna Wintour, and saw my dumbfounded expression reflected in her sunglasses as she declared, “I don’t like adjectives. You use too many adjectives. That’s all.” How can you eliminate a major part of speech, I wondered? Did she realize that her ultimate accolade — “It’s so modern” — is one-third adjective? But now I confess complete antipathy to an entire building type: the visitor center.
Additions to accommodate ticketing, tour groups, and interpretive displays have become commonplace at landmarks of all kinds. But leave it to our federal government’s legislative branch — profoundly corrupt and pathologically self-indulgent — to max out the genre. The opening, in December, of the Capitol Visitor Center in Washington, D.C., went nearly unnoticed by the press, which was just as well for anyone implicated in a star-spangled boondoggle worthy of The Guinness Book of Pork.
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