Stealing a dubious scene from the American Film Institute’s screenplay - one that should have been left on the cutting room floor - the American Institute of Architects (AIA) released on February 7 (as part of its sesquicentennial) a list of the 150 buildings that comprise “America’s favorite architecture.” The list, however, says far more about the country than it does about the buildings in it. And the perhaps unwitting responsibility for this result lies with AIA itself, which hedged its bets by creating a survey to determine America’s “favorite” architecture, not its “best,” “most influential” or “most important.”

Then again, the list was not arrived at through an assessment of the opinions of the organization’s membership but through a survey of people outside the profession, though AIA did tip the scales some. Members were interviewed to nominate up to twenty structures in fifteen categories. Structures that garnered at least six nominations made the slate from which the final list was culled. Those 150 structures were selected through a public survey, during which individuals were asked to evaluate 78 structures chosen at random from the 247-item slate. All very scientific and actuarial. So what did that get us?

Chicago, arguably the country’s most important city architecturally, is not represented in the top ten. Nor the top twenty. Nor the top thirty. The city first makes an appearance at number 31, more than a fifth of the way through the list. And the structure? An icon of early skyscraper technology, like Holabird & Roche’s Marquette Building (1895)? Nope. A milestone of modernism, such as Ludwig Mies von der Rohe’s 860-880 N. Lakeshore Drive (1949-51)? Uh uh. (Both designated City of Chicago landmarks, neither made AIA’s list. Structures on the slate not ranked on the list were not published.) No. The top structure in the country’s top architectural city is that paragon of design and technological innovation, Wrigley Field (1914, Zachary Taylor Davis), beating out by seven places the parent company’s other property on the list, the then cutting-edge Tribune Tower (1925, Howells & Hood). So much for informed popular opinion.

But don’t mistake this as a complaint borne of mere boosterism. (Insecure citizens of the Second City so inclined can take whatever pride they feel they need in the fact that Wrigley Field is the top-ranking sports arena on the list.). Nor is it a pique of smug snobbery. This is instead a criticism of the entire undertaking, which gauges not architecture per se, as it purports to do, but the sentiment - good and bad – that structures in the built environment elicit from the populace.

Wrigley Field’s position on the list, after all, owes more to an inexplicable fondness for a losing franchise and Harry Carrey, and perhaps Americans’ lazy tendency towards insatiable sentimentality and nostalgia, than it owes to the quality or significance of the structure’s design. Reflecting an era of unbridled nationalism, six of the top ten structures - eight of the top fifteen - are in our capital city. Patriotism of the flag-waving variety probably accounts for the high ranking of number nineteen World Trade Center (Yamasaki, FAIA; Antonio Brittiochi; Emery Roth & Sons, 1972-77), to my knowledge the only structure on the list not still standing (though number 84 Yankee Stadium’s days are numbered). Further testament to the country’s love-hate relationship with Gotham, eight of the top twenty are New York City structures. I don’t even want to consider what might be implied by the number-22 ranking of a relatively new Las Vegas Strip hotel (Bellagio, Deruyter Butler; Atlandia Design, 1998) over, off the top of my head, the 128 structures that follow it on the list.

In no way scholarship, these inferences into the national psyche were gleaned through just the most cursory review of the AIA 150. Who knows what skeletons might be found in the collective closet with a more thorough examination? But is this what AIA intended with their survey and list? In a letter to the Editor, published in the Chicago Tribune, AIA Chicago Chapter President Laura Fisher wrote “AIA is working toward a better public understanding of architecture. While some of the entries on this list are open to debate, it is important that we recognize the value the public places on our buildings and why.” Who could argue with that? Still, AIA should have been a bit more careful about what it asked for. To think that a survey and resulting list such as this would foster a greater understanding of architecture, rather than the sample of the people surveyed, is optimistic at best, misguided at worst.

Reading those AFI lists - “100 winning cheers,” “100 winning quotes,” etc. - is like watching the squirm-inducing talk show host played by late Saturday Night Live cast member Chris Farley interview a guest, say, hypothetically, Patricia Neal: “Remember when you told Gary Cooper ‘I wish I never saw your skyscraper!’ in The Fountaihead? Yeah...that was great.” Farley’s inane fawning in those sketches told us nothing at all about his guests but instead revealed more about his character than we cared comfortably to know. Similarly, AIA’s list, topped by the Empire State Building (William Lamb, Shreve, Lamb & Harmon1931) and the White House (James Hoban 1792), provides woefully little insight into American architecture. Instead, you can almost hear members of what H.L. Mencken called the “boobocracy” recounting, with the zeal and eloquence of Farley’s pitiful talk show host, their once-in-a-lifetime vacations to New York City and Washington, D.C., and that presents a picture of our collective self equally unsettling to Farley in those sketches.

Exactly what that has to do with architecture, however, is not exactly clear.